Meta and its AI glasses hardware partner EssilorLuxottica are already well ahead of its competitors when it comes to the best smart glasses, but now it’s reported that the company is preparing to launch Ray-Ban smart glasses aimed at consumers who wear glasses every day. Bloomberg reports that versions for the visually impaired, codenamed Scriber and Blazer, could be released as soon as next week.
Two new models are launching: the “Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer Optics” (2nd Generation) and the “Ray-Ban Meta Scriber Optics” (2nd Generation). Both frames are designed with prescription needs in mind, rather than having them adjusted later. This means that consumers can order them with lenses fitted directly to their vision, avoiding the additional step that was often required with previous versions.
The glasses feature features from previous Ray-Ban Meta editions, including built-in cameras, microphones, and open speakers, as well as voice control powered by Meta’s artificial intelligence. Users can take photos and videos, listen to audio recordings, and access real-time translation through the frames of the glasses.
To make the glasses more comfortable to wear, features such as adjustable nose pads, flexible hinges, and customizable temple tips have been added to improve comfort and fit, allowing the device to fit comfortably under the clothes people already wear every day.
The expansion into prescription glasses fills a gap that has long been underserved. A large portion of the world’s population relies on glasses or contact lenses, and previous versions of smart glasses often either weren’t available or required additional customization.
All of this marks part of a broader push toward prescription users that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased in an earnings call earlier this year. “Billions of people wear glasses or contacts for vision correction. And I think that we’re at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.”
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