The popular messaging app Facebook with luxury eyeglass maker Ray-Ban has launched Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories ‘smart’ eyeglasses on September 9. The wearable comes in three different designs with a variety of frame color options. Customers will also have options with lenses, depending on their needs.
The smart glasses include dual 5-megapixel cameras that can take photos and 30-second videos. As a privacy feature, the glasses have external-facing LED lights that illuminate when the cameras are active. The smart glasses’ temples also function as earphones and have touch-activated controls for music playback, calls, and volume. The Facebook x Ray-Ban smart glasses compete with Snap’s Spectacles smart glasses, which have similar features.
Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories are priced in the range of $ 299 to $ 379. The frame comes in four different colors, black, blue, brown, and green and these come with six options for lenses as well, including regular lenses, polarized lenses, and transition lenses. Clear, with blue light filter, brown, dark gray, green, polarized dark blue, and transition clear, with the dark green lens are among the options available to users.
The product can be purchased through Ray-Ban’s website and from some retail outlets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. India’s availability has not yet been announced.
The advanced smart glasses could be paired with smartphones through Bluetooth v5 and are compatible with smartphones that are running, including Android 8.0 and above and iOS 13 or above.
Smart glasses are connected to smartphones via the Facebook View app, which acts as an “operating system and content sharing companion.” This app allows users to import data from smart glasses and create and edit content to publish on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, etc.
The smart glasses are equipped with dual-band Wi-Fi in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The battery is charged in the included case, and the smart glasses are charged through a special port on the hinge. A USB Type-C cable is provided to charge the carrying case.
Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories come with a Facebook Voice assistant that will help users control various functions of the smart glasses hands-free. The voice assistant will keep a log of the commands given by a user, but the social media giant mentions that users can erase their log, turn off voice storage along with Facebook Assistant from settings.
Related: Facebook to add voice and video calling feature to main app
