Photographs of General Douglas MacArthur sporting Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses introduced the style to the masses, and the brand has only become more popular since then. Ray-Ban sunglasses feature prominently in blockbuster movies and hit songs; a certain Top Gun wore Aviators to great effect while a California rock band name-dropped Wayfarers in their song lamenting the end of summer. The first generation of Ray-Ban smart glasses that keeps you connected. In doing camera-equipped smart glasses, Facebook has also found one of the last things to copy from Snapchat. Both Bosworth and Basilico didn’t mention Spectacles by name in our conversations, but it was clear that they think Ray-Ban Stories are going to be more universally appealing than Spectacles. Facebook says the glasses take about an hour to fully charge and that the battery will last for roughly six hours with intermittent use.
He said there’s “definitely some concerns” that people didn’t appear to notice that I was capturing pictures and videos — something that would be more obvious if I had pulled out my phone. Facebook lent clubmaster me a pair of Ray-Ban Stories with sunglass lenses so I could decide for myself. After about a week of trying them out, it’s clear the glasses look and feel very much like a regular pair of shades.
The touchpad on the side of the frame is a welcome inclusion for volume adjustment. With their core ability of taking photos and videos, Ray-Ban Stories are essentially a sleeker version of Snapchat’s Spectacles, which first debuted in 2016 to a lot of hype that quickly fizzled. These Ray-Bans don’t have displays in the lenses, like the latest Spectacles that were unveiled earlier this year.
The glasses will become a perpetual viewfinder, emphasizing each wearer’s perspective over the experience of being in any group. As a result, people wearing them may be more drawn to capturing scenes from their unique point of view than actually participating. Also, since more than one person at a time might be wearing the glasses in any given group, this effect could be magnified, and social cohesion could be further fragmented. The smart sunglasses come in three classic Ray-Ban styles, with a number of color and lens combinations. The glasses will start at $299, with polarized and transition lens options coming in at a higher price point. The perfect match of Ray-Ban’s legendary style and Essilor’s expertise in sight.
We can tell who is on a phone because we can see the phone in people’s hands. Figuring out who is wearing Facebook’s glasses will be more challenging. In part, the Google Glass experiment failed because Glass looked different from normal eyewear, and we could easily identify and avoid those wearing it.
They don’t look as goofy as the Snap Spectacles, and they’re far more comfortable to wear than Bose and Amazon’s Frames. I could only use the Stories in limited situations though, since I need prescription lenses to actually see well. Unlike carrying a phone or a devoted camera, you won’t have to reach into your ray ban new wayfarer pocket and pull it out, by which point the moment is probably gone. And you don’t have to hold a device in front of your face, taking yourself out of the moment so that you don’t really get to experience it the first time around. The frame that started it all, the RB3025 Aviator is Ray-Ban’s first design.