Oakley has revealed its Meta Vanguard glasses, a new line of eyewear that uses artificial intelligence to bring you “real-time personalised performance insights”.
For those who don’t know, Oakley is owned by the vision and eyewear company EssilorLuxottica, which also owns Ray-Ban. The new Oakley ‘smart glasses’ are described as the next step in EssilorLuxottica’s partnership with Meta Platforms, which has already brought us the Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses.
The Oakley Meta Vanguards were showcased at the Meta Connect keynote on Wednesday, alongside several other new collaborations between Meta and Ray-Ban.
Oakley Meta Vanguard details
Oaley’s new ‘smart glasses’ feature the brand’s signature Prizm lenses with a 12MP ultra-wide camera that has a 122-degree field of view.
The $499 / €549 glasses also feature high-decibel open-ear speakers with advanced wind noise reduction, which Oakley says is “perfect for running down a noisy road or biking through 30mph winds”.
Oakley says the glasses are also optimised for comfort during long workouts and they’re compatible with cycling helmets.
What is probably most remarkable about the new Oakley sunglasses is they can integrate with Strava and Garmin to provide you with real-time personalised performance insights, with up to nine hours of battery life to get you through “your entire marathon or century ride”.
However, details on what this will look like or how it will function are currently thin.
In its own press release, Strava says you’ll be able to use the glasses to graphically overlay performance metrics – such as distance, average pace and elevation gain – from your Strava activity onto videos and photos captured by the glasses.
As with many of the best Oakley sunglasses, you can switch the Prizm lens on the Meta Vanguards to customise your look and optimise the glasses for different conditions.
Two new Meta Ray-Ban glasses
Also revealed at Meta Connect were the new Meta Ray-Ban Display and second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses have an integrated display for the first time. The fully-colour visual display in the right lens is said to show weather, incoming messages, video calls and AI information such as step-by-step instructions, and more.
You can order the glasses with your own lens prescription, and they come with a Metal Neural Band, a wristband to control the glasses.
Costing $799, the glasses will be available in the US at the end of the month and in Canada, France, Italy and the UK next year.
The second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses have an extended battery life of up to eight hours, an ultra-wide 12MP camera that captures 3K ultra-HD videos, and a range of new styles and colours. The glasses are available now for $379 / €419.
Meta also revealed Conversion Focus at the Meta Connect keynote. Said to be coming soon, this new feature uses AI glasses' open-ear speakers to amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to and distinguish it from other background noise.
