I reviewed the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and they’re so much fun you’ll ignore the red flags

When most people think of smartglasses in 2026, they likely picture the Ray-Ban Meta. Since release, they’ve defined the genre, combining useful functionality and fun features with a stylish, popular, and comfortable frame.

Is this reputation deserved, or has another, less favorable reputation started to turn people off, and if so, are they missing out? I’ve been wearing the Gen 2 versions to find out.

9/10

Sunglasses?

Yes, Transition lenses available

Speakers

2 open-ear speakers / 5 microphones

Durability

IPX4

Connective Technology

Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), regardless of the style you choose, are the smartglasses most people will enjoy using due to some fun features, comfort, and relataively reasonable price.

Pros & Cons

• Light and comfortable to wear
• Fun camera
• Audio is great for podcasts and spoken word
• All-day battery life
• Wide choice of lenses and styles
• Prescription option available

• AI features lack wide appeal
• No standard option to take landscape orientation photos
• Privacy concerns may be off-putting

Specs, price, and availability

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) are available to buy now. We have reviewed the Wayfarer model, but several other styles including the new Blayzer and Scriber are also available, but the functionality does not change.

The Wayfarer model starts at $379 and can increase to $459 depending on the frame finish. If you want to add a prescription lens, this costs extra. There’s a choice of single vision or progressive lenses, and the price will vary depending on your requirements.

Ready to wear, all day long

I wore the Wayfarer-style Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) for a year. I had my prescription made up in the Transitions lenses, so I could wear them indoors and out, and in place of my regular spectacles if I wanted.

I purchased the Gen 2 Wayfarers at the beginning of the year with essentially the same intention, after happening to try on a pair of Gen 2’s at my opticians, and being surprised how different they felt on my face.

On paper, there are only a few small differences between the Gen 1 and Gen 2 Wayfarer Ray-Ban Meta, but they make a big difference. The weight has been reduced by four grams to 48 grams, and when this applies to something hanging off your face, you really notice.

The Gen 2’s are much less fatiguing to wear, because the weight reduction is felt on the bridge of your nose. It causes less discomfort, stops the smart glasses slipping as much, and means you can wear them for longer.

I once did a four-hour car journey wearing the Gen 1’s, and I was very pleased to take them off at the end. I have worn the Gen 2s for many more hours than this without any problem. While pressure on the bridge of your nose has been reduced compared to the Gen 1s, the glasses can still weigh down, so don’t expect them to feel the same as a lightweight, non-smart pair of glasses.

I also swapped to the matte black finish from the glossy black, and the finish is better suited to wearing them with clear lenses. It makes the shape less noticeable (my optician politely called the glossy black versions a “bold” look) on your face. If you intend to wear them a lot, take the finish into consideration.

Comfort is one of the most important aspects of smartglasses, and the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) are the most comfortable smartglasses I’ve worn.

So much fun to be had

There’s a slight upgrade over the Gen 1’s 12-megapixel camera in the Gen 2, allowing it to record 3K video for a recommended three minutes, but otherwise things are basically the same for the hardware. There’s a physical shutter button on the right-hand arm, or you can ask Meta to take a photo or video for you.

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2)’s camera is fun. I love the first-person perspective and how you can use voice to take a photo, allowing you to capture some unique and interesting photos that would be impossible with a phone. The photos won’t challenge the best camera phones, as noise and pixelation are common, but the photos are fine for quickly sharing.

An idiosyncrasy of wearing the Ray-Ban Meta’s camera is that you can’t see the photo you’re going to take, as there’s no screen or viewfinder. There’s some magic happening behind the scenes, though, as photos are likely straightened automatically, due to your head never being exactly level when you take a photo.

Like before, photos are captured in portrait orientation, making them ideal to share on Instagram Reels. There’s no option to switch to landscape, but an increase in resolution does make it possible to crop images down to it, as at 3024 x 2268, they’re perfectly usable for social media.

Photos are bursting with color, have surprisingly good contrast and white balance, and are perfectly set up to share online without any editing. This is especially important when the process can be entirely hands-free.

Meta can’t resist stuffing its AI into the photo editing process inside the Meta app. There are four options: Animate, Edit, Restyle, and Ask, and all use AI. You have to describe how you want to change the photo, instead of using sliders.

The camera separates the Ray-Ban Meta and Meta’s Oakley range from most other smartglasses, including the Even Realities G2 range. Used responsibly, it’s fun and creatively exciting, and a genuine reason to buy.

All the AI you (don’t) want

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) connect to the Meta AI app, which is available for Android and iOS. I’ve been using the smartglasses with an Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, and they took just moments to set up, and the Bluetooth link has been rock solid. Photos and media transfer to the app automatically. It’s all seamless and completely maintenance free.

Meta wants you to use its AI features with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. There’s visual search and translation via the camera, plus you can ask it general questions, and also ask it to perform different features like playing music or taking a photo.

How useful these features will be may depend on your comfort levels using voice control in public, but they do work well. I like how you can ask it to play and pause audio, which is handy when your phone isn’t close and your hands are full.

You can use Meta AI and voice control to send messages via Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp, and make phone calls too. The voice recognition is accurate and really fast. Ask it to take a photo and share it to your Instagram Story, and it happens almost instantly.

Open the app, and it doesn’t feel like an app to control or customize your smart glasses, but a storefront for Meta’s AI features. You can create videos from your photos, restyle images, or ask questions in a search prompt.

It’s a mixed bag. I replaced the background in a photo with an AI-generated one of a field filled with flowers. It looked fine, but it certainly wasn’t realistic. I added an animation to a still of me driving a car. The video edit showed turning the steering wheel, but the view outside the windscreen remained a straight road.

That’s not so bad, but there’s an entire section for Meta’s AI video generation feed, presented in a vertically scrolling, TikTok-style format, and it’s all awful. The menu for the smartglasses looks and feels like an afterthought.

If you already use AI a lot, whether it’s for image generation or visual search, you’ll find value in Meta’s efforts, which easily compare to other options and do not require an additional subscription to use. However, if you rarely, if ever, mess around with AI, then there’s nothing here that will encourage you to change your ways.

A feature you’ll want to use

There are speakers in the arms of the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), and they can be used for music and calls. Think of them as a pair of open-ear headphones you don’t put into your ears, and you’ll understand the experience.

They don’t block out any external sound, so they aren’t ideal for detailed listening in environments with a lot of background noise. If you want noise cancellation of any kind, these aren’t the headphone replacements for you.

Audio is controlled using a swipe panel on the right-hand arm, with a tap to play or pause, and a swipe to adjust the volume. It works really well, and the controls are accurate and responsive.

I find the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2)’s audio most helpful when I’m just doing quick things at home, when I don’t want to get my headphones, but can fill the time with a podcast. Spoken word is more of a strength than music, and the sheer convenience of just tapping to play can’t be overstated.

The microphones are great and pick up your voice even in noisy outdoor environments, so you don’t have to raise your voice if you want to use Meta’s AI features. Both the microphone and speakers make calls sound good, and the smartglasses are a great alternative to using headphones or earbuds for hands-free conversations when out and about.

High-quality option

One of the big advantages of having EssilorLuxotica and Ray-Ban behind the smartglasses is the variety of lenses available. Not only for colors, but also for light-reactive Transition lenses, Polarized lenses, and prescription lenses too.

I purchased prescription lenses for my Gen 1 smart glasses, and the good news is that they also fit the Gen 2 models, and swapping them out is easy. I took them to my optician, who also made some small adjustments to the frame’s fit at the same time. Ensuring the lenses from the Gen 1 still fit the Gen 2 was a fantastic and very consumer-friendly decision, as the lenses are a significant investment.

My lenses are Transitions, and for the most part, they’re effective. Where they fall is used inside a car, where treatments on the windshield stop the lenses from darkening as much as they do normally. They’re also quite slow to react when you go inside after being in the sun for a while.

This aside, the official lenses from Ray-Ban are superb quality. I’ve used a few different prescription lens options with other smart glasses recently, but none come close to the sharpness and clarity of the Ray-Ban lenses. Yes, they can be expensive, but you really are getting the best.

A significant upgrade

Ray-Ban states the internal battery will last for eight hours on a single charge, or around five hours of continuous audio playback. The case contains a battery, and it has enough energy to power the Ray-Ban Meta for a total of 40 hours.

This is a serious upgrade over the Gen 1s, and I simply haven’t worried about battery life. I’ve worn them all day for photos and audio, put them back in the case, and I haven’t needed to charge the case for about a week. How long the battery will last for you will depend on your use.

Use responsibly

Wearing a camera on your face has, unsurprisingly, become a controversial subject. Whether it’s people being creepy or being coached in a courtroom, the minority has been gradually spoiling it for the majority.

Concerns over how Meta handles data shared with its AI (and platforms in general) are nothing new, but the prospect of Meta-approved third parties watching your private videos and seeing your photos is a smartglasses-specific, and very worrying problem.

How does this impact wearing the Ray-Ban Meta? I haven’t been shunned or approached about them, so it hasn’t caused me personally any serious problems, although I have noticed a few people look at my eyewear more closely than usual in some circumstances, but this may be due to the design more than anything else. No one has asked me if I’m recording them, or if I’m wearing smartglasses.

It’s obvious when you are recording due to the LED ring around the fake camera lens, but there are ways to cover this without impacting functionality, if you’re so inclined. Responsible owners will not want to do such a thing.

If you’re at all concerned about inadvertently invading someone’s privacy, it may be best to leave the Ray-Ban Meta at home. Only you can decide if this sounds like something that will stop ownership in general from being an option.

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) look great, feel great, and have a wide range of style, lens, and color choices to make it easy to find a design that works for you. The prescription lenses from Ray-Ban are excellent, and the slight changes to fit for Gen 2 makes them more suitable for long-term wear than the Gen 1 versions.

The question is, are they worth wearing long-term? There’s fun to be had with the camera, and the first-person perspective is unique and fun, plus if you’re an Instagram addict, they’ll definitely add something special to your content.

Meta AI features range from occasionally helpful, like live translation, to slop like changing photos into videos, but if you already enjoy messing around with AI for image and video generation, the Meta app combined with the Ray-Ban Meta’s app is a powerful combination that also doesn’t require any extra spend.

I really like the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2). They blend useful, enjoyable, and unique functionality with a standout design with improved comfort and fit, and a choice of styles that make it relatively easy to find the right pair for you. Their reputation as the current benchmark for smartglasses is well deserved, and if you’re at all interested in trying the trend out, these are a brilliant choice.

9/10

Sunglasses?

Yes, Transition lenses available

Durability

IPX4

Included accessory

Case with battery

Connective Technology

Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3

Provided you can get past the privacy concerns, the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) are the best smartglasses for most people who want to try out the latest trend in wearable tech.