Basilico was leading Luxottica’s own smart glasses efforts at the time and knew the eyewear giant needed to partner with a tech company to build them. I expected the speakers on both sides of the frame to be soft and hollow, but they were surprisingly loud and full. I can see the audio playback over Bluetooth coming in handy for taking phone calls or maybe listening to podcasts, but I’d prefer to use proper headphones for listening to music. The audio doesn’t sound specifically targeted at the wearer’s ears, making it easy to overhear when you’re standing next to someone wearing the glasses.
However, speakers on both sides of the frame can play sound from your phone over Bluetooth, allowing you to take a call or listen to a podcast without pulling your phone out. A touchpad built into the side of the frame lets you change the volume or play and pause what you’re hearing. The Ray-Ban Stories in the iconic Wayfarer style — those chunky ’50s-era frames that still look fashionable today — weigh just five grams more than the standard version.
The arms on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are slightly wider than a normal pair, but they don’t look geeky. (They also don’t have a waveguide, or a microprojector for display optics, since they’re not powering AR overlays). Packed into the arms are a power button, a capture button, a three-microphone array, two tiny speakers, and a touch panel.
For example, to take a picture or video, users have to either use a voice command or push a button on the side of the glasses. A white LED light on the front indicates that a picture or recording is in progress. Give your patients the style they want and the vision they deserve with Ray-Ban’s enhanced style features and Essilor’s proven lens brands.
No brand of sunglasses is as easily recognizable and iconic as the classic clubmaster. If you own a pair of Ray Bans, you own a piece of nostalgic history. The brand was created in the 1920s as an answer to pilots’ complaints about frequent headaches caused by sun glare and overpowering hues in the sky. This style is still sold today and has become one of the most popular trends in sunglasses of all time.
On the front of the specs are two 5-megapixel cameras, as well as a barely-there LED indicator light that lets people know the wearer is recording. Ray-Ban Stories are the first product in a multiyear partnership between Facebook and the European eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s clubmaster parent company. While they’re limited in what they can do, Ray-Ban Stories are the most normal-looking, accessible pair of smart glasses to hit the market so far. Both companies also see them as a step toward more advanced augmented reality glasses that overlay graphics onto the real world.