Facebook’s hardware efforts over the years have been, to put it bluntly, weak. Sure, the company’s enjoying the recent runaway success of its unchallenged
Meet the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, the most recent, and likely ill-fated hardware endeavor from Mark Zuckerberg’s
However, unlike Google Glass with its small screen and internet connectivity, there’s no promise of a futuristic, wearable computer here. Facebook’s newest bit of hardware comes with such a comically limited and shoddily executed feature set for the price that it’s hard to take it seriously as a product at all. This is just an expensive toy for influencers seemingly designed to make Facebook look “cool” again, built for a world where “Stories” are now widely known as ephemeral and easily forgotten snippets of our social media lives.
At least Ray-Ban did its job
Credit: danica d’souza / mashable
Before I get into all the things I think are silly and pointless about the Ray-Ban Stories, I will give credit where it’s due: Ray-Ban did the work here.
To put it simply, the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are pretty much just Ray-Ban frames with dual 5MP cameras built-in (one on each side where the sunglass lenses meet the stem), as well as speakers sitting near each ear. Theoretically, that latter feature means you can enjoy music or podcasts, or make phone calls with the onboard microphone. That microphone also enables the use of Facebook Assistant so you can issue voice commands for snapping photos, if you so desire.
A portion of the outer side of each stem is also touch sensitive, so you can tap it to control music playback (one to pause, two to skip ahead, etc.), or swipe forward or back along the stem to adjust volume. The last hardware features to note are a camera button on the top side of the right stem, a small LED next to the right camera lens (to signal active use), and a power switch on the inside of the left stem.
While the glasses look a little hefty at first, they’re actually pretty lightweight and I didn’t have any noteworthy comfort problems beyond my personal distaste for eyewear in general. (I wore glasses for years and hated it so much I eventually had lasers blasted into my eyes so I wouldn’t have to do it anymore. It’s great, you should check it out!)
The Stories smart glasses are available in three styles that should be familiar if you’ve ever shopped for regular Ray-Bans:
Credit: ian Moore / mashable
These Stories smart glasses look good simply because…they look just like normal Ray-Bans. It’s by far the smartest decision Facebook made when developing this product, as Ray-Ban brings a level of aesthetic respectability that something like Google Glass could never offer. Even if you raise the standard of comparison a bit by bringing in the considerably less embarrassing
Ray-Ban also made a fairly stylish, leather charging case for the Stories glasses. There’s nothing fancy going on here, as it’s got the typical oval shape you’d expect from a glasses case, with a Ray-Ban logo on top and a USB-C port for charging on the back. It’s a good deal bulkier than a regular glasses case but it should still fit in your bag. No complaints there.
Alright, enough of that. Let’s get to the bad stuff.
Just pull out your phone instead
Let’s revisit my earlier point about how Stories are just Ray-Bans with cameras built-in. I’m bringing it up again because that’s the chief selling point and the main reason why they cost $300, rather than the $200 or so it would cost to get a nice, regular pair of Ray-Bans. Spoiler alert: Those in-frame cameras don’t really do anything special that the smartphone in your hand can’t already do better. What’s more, phones give you a more exact viewfinder for framing shots thanks to a large, visible screen — you can’t beat that. Not without a heads-up display, anyway.
In fact, you need to use a phone to make the Stories function at all, as they hinge on the new Facebook View app, which is available on Android and iOS. Oh and yes, you will need an active Facebook account to set up the glasses.
The View app itself isn’t much to write home about. It’s mainly a gallery of your photo and video captures with basic editing tools as well as a share button that, at least on iOS, brings up the generic OS-wide sharing interface for beaming things to iMessage contacts, recently used apps, etc. There’s also an option to automatically send all captures to the phone’s photo gallery, which is nice. When the app detects a new capture, it doesn’t show up right away. Instead, a button appears on the bottom right corner of the app’s home screen that will deposit all outstanding captures at once. This only takes 10 to 15 seconds.
You can add some goofy shake or zoom effects to photos that take advantage of the dual cameras’ depth and produce short montages out of videos, but other than that, the editing suite is entirely too slight. For as absurd as the Snap Spectacles are, at least you can add AR effects to videos captured with those glasses. In all, there just isn’t a single outstanding camera feature in the Ray-Ban Stories View app.
Credit: screenshot: facebook
At least taking photos is easy and they do look decent. Long pressing the camera button or saying “Hey Facebook, take a photo” will both do the trick. All the photos I took with these glasses came out looking vibrant and sharp enough, and the dual-camera arrangement means you get a nice amount of depth. There’s definitely a distinctive look to these shots that’s slightly more akin to what the human eye sees than what a regular smartphone camera would see. I don’t think it’s inherently better, mind you, but I can’t knock its uniqueness.
It’s just that you get so much more out of the average phone camera. Even recent mid-level phones like the
Before you protest — yes, people do wear sunglasses at night and indoors. Famous, influential people like Vogue editor Anna Wintour and Kanye West often wear sunglasses in the dark, which we know is
I also found it a little tough to compose shots because again, instead of a viewfinder, you just have your eyes to rely on. So occasionally the subjects of my shots would be off-center when that wasn’t my intention. Cropping can easily fix this, but still, I had to point it out.
I suppose there is some value to P.O.V. videos that you can’t easily produce with a phone, but there’s a very serious limitation at play here that makes Ray-Ban Stories stories nearly useless. You’re going to want to sit down for this one: Videos that you record with a short press of the camera button can be a maximum of 30 seconds long. I get that the point is to make short, shareable content, but 30 seconds is way too stringent of a time limit. You know a good way to make short videos? By editing them down from longer ones. It’s how every piece of filmed entertainment in history was made (and also all of those TikToks).
Hold onto your AirPods
By far the most inexcusably meaningless feature Facebook included with the Ray-Ban Stories is the ability to listen to music or podcasts via Bluetooth. Like I said, once the glasses are paired to a phone, they act like any other Bluetooth audio device, transmitting phone audio through speakers in the smart glasses’ stems.
Frankly, the audio quality through these speakers is so tinny and weak that it negates any usefulness they might have. I tried listening to Outkast’s gorgeous, perfect album ATLiens in honor of its 25th anniversary and the bass was so nonexistent that I felt like I had personally disrespected Big Boi and Andre 3000. This might be a matter of me having bad hearing, but I also had to turn the volume up quite a bit to hear the music enough to actually enjoy it.
Credit: danica d’souza / mashable
This presents another issue, which is that these obviously aren’t earbuds and thus the sound is much more audible to people near you than a dedicated in or on-ear Bluetooth audio device would allow. I took the glasses off, set them on my bed, and walked seven or eight feet away with the volume slightly above halfway, and I could still hear some noise, even if I couldn’t precisely discern it. It’s the kind of thing that would definitely annoy someone sitting next to you on a park bench or in a subway car.
That’s also the reason why I wouldn’t ever bother to make a phone call in public with the Ray-Ban Stories. My business needs to stay my business.
Honestly, don’t even bother
Beyond its myriad failed hardware efforts, there are a lot of reasons not to like or trust Facebook as an institution. At any point in the last five years, it could’ve
The photos look nice, but so do photos from the phone you already have. Videos are just too short. You can’t do some of the fun things like add AR effects to said photos or videos like you could on older, similar products such as the Snap Spectacles. Listening to music is a nightmare. And taking photos with a pair of sunglasses — even one that lights up to let bystanders know you’re doing so — still makes me feel like a creep. On top of all that, they cost $300. Facebook, that’s several swings and several misses.
Andre and Big Boi, if you’re reading this, please know that I’m sorry.