Earlier this month, I got a new pair of glasses to replace the Meta Ray-Bans I’ve been wearing every day since the fall of 2024. There’s nothing wrong with the Ray-Bans (some might disagree), but over the past few months, I have noticed people asking about my “spy camera” more frequently than I’m comfortable with. My daughter was concerned enough to let me know that in many of the forums she frequents, men who wear these classes are thought of as creepers. I heard someone on a podcast call them Cybertrucks for your face.
As a daily wearer, *I* know that I’m not constantly recording video or taking pictures of people without their knowledge and consent, but for folks who only read about wearable technology, it seems reasonable that they’re always “on”, so I don’t blame them. Stories like this are part of the reason why: Meta Just Patched a Major Privacy Flaw With Its Smart Glasses. And this: Meta Quietly Added Facial Recognition to Its Smart Glasses.
In truth, I very rarely used the camera. Its single best use was in recording my puppy as I played with her with both hands. The Meta AI never proved helpful when I asked it to tell me about what I was looking at. It’ll get there, and had I been able to hook them up to a different LLM, my results might’ve been different.
The one feature of the glasses that was groundbreaking for me was the speakers. While wearing them (assuming the battery hadn’t died), I could watch the quick video a friend sent on my phone w/o my family having to hear the audio. I could listen to podcasts whenever I had a few moments, but didn’t have earphones handy. I caught up on a lot just walking to and from my parking spot. And of course, I could use them for phone calls.
So I got another pair of connected glasses, but without a camera. I still have the audio always available, and I can go back to the half-rim glasses I prefer over the heavier look of the Ray-Bans. They’re just glasses with Bluetooth speakers, treated by my phone like headphones, so I can also have conversations with an LLM by tapping one of the arms. I’m really hoping Siri improves as much on iOS 27 as the beta testers say it will. There are surprisingly few audio-only glasses easily available in Canada. I tried and returned a couple of very cheap pairs from Amazon (one wouldn’t allow my optician to swap in my prescription lenses, and the other didn’t isolate the sound at all). There are a couple of name brands that ship from the States, but in the end, I went through AliExpress and got a pair of Mijia Smart Audio Glasses from Xiaomi shipped from China.
They do the job I want nicely, and the battery easily lasts all day, which couldn’t be said for the Ray-Bans. That said, there are a few things I miss about the Ray-Bans. I initially thought the charging case was kinda dumb, but now that I have yet another proprietary cable to keep track of, I can see the convenience of the case, which charges via USB-C. I miss the hardware switches and buttons (one of each). I miss the transition lenses I had installed in the Ray-Bans when I’m outside, but not when I’m inside.
So now I’m wearing normal-looking glasses but still have the benefit of private audio always available. Feel free to ask any questions, or to yell at me for ever giving Zuck some of my money. I found it a worthwhile experiment with an emerging technology.
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