Holy crap, these Meta glasses are pretty terrific. I agree the camera isn’t that great, but note to all they are wonderful for two (and a half) specific purposes:
First of all, for those of you who are ADD and want a way to listen to a podcast or book tape when a meeting is a mind-numbing exercise, these are perfect. I was using these bone conduction headphones for it, but Trang is too smart, she knows when I have these on I’m not listening to the party I’m supposed to be in.
These speakers are great and you it work with any Bluetooth-capable application, so you can listen to podcasts, music, and so forth, just by tapping at the right temple. With a swipe up to increase volume, swipe down decreases and this works really well.
Second, I can see that taking a quick photo of something, its way more convenient than whipping out your phone. Contrary to what people think, it definitely has business uses. If you are in a meeting and want to get a picture of a whiteboard for instance. It is a little inconvenient for Instagram posting because you have to go to your phone to find the photos. There is manual syncing and there is a way to do automatic syncing as well, but you still have to edit with your camera roll.
The half of a thing is that “Hey Meta” works pretty well for quick lookups, so you don’t have to be such a nerd during dinner when you want to find a fact (when did World War II start for instance).
They look normal
I got the Wayfarer versions and for something with a five-hour battery life, you have to look closely to see the arms are a little bit thicker. And the case is great with magnetic charging. I’m definitely going to have to figure out how to stick an AirTag to the case because I’m sure I’m going to lose them.
Setup Works (beware of privacy and authentication)
Wow, I’m actually pretty impressed at the setup, you open the box and you QR close the Meta View application and setup is not as easy as Apple but pretty close if you don’t control the phone operating system. It does a good job of leading you through the authentication, so it can read Bluetooth, and it allows access to contacts for calling.
The setup is initially very strange with all kinds of authentication questions (meta, Facebook, Instagram, oculus, horizon), I just don’t get it, but I think I’m logged in right 🙂
It also lets you listen to your Phone, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger calls which is kind of cool. It is a zillion popup as it interfaces with iOS privacy controls.
And make sure to really read the privacy things, basically, you should say no to most of these especially where they say sharing is.
If you go to advanced setup, you get more dialogs which I don’t completely remember.
Also, at some point, it asks to log in to the glasses WiFi access point which isn’t that great but at some point it asks if it can log in to WiFi. I discovered it doesn’t work with WPA3, but it does work with WPA2. Glad I have one SSId with WPA3 and another with WPA2/3 running. It just says it can’t connect but that’s the problem.
Taking photos and videos and camera syncing to the phone
The photos and videos are really a dream when you just want to take a photo of something. The video lasts about a minute so for simple things like capturing a household item they are great. Note that you can’t stick a piece of tape on the glowing light so beware if you see a light flashing on someone’s glasses. There is manual import from the glasses and if you put them into your case and you set the WiFi then you get automatic imports into your camera roll
Daily driver with Transition Lenses
The transition lenses are just perfect, completely clear and then they are sunglasses too. So it works as something that you can wear indoors and outdoors. And the plastic is pretty good, just be careful with cleaning them. I haven’t tried the transitions yet, but they do work well in the dark which is great.
Save 40% during Black Friday with Amex Platinum
By the way, right now if you have Amex Platinum, if you buy to sign up for rewards, it is $30 off for a $150 purchase and Rakuten has a 12 points discount, so for the $380 cost, it is $60 off plus $91 worth of Amex points if you make Rakuten give you Amex points, so basically its 40% off.
The discount dropped to 10 points on Saturday and it looks like my second $30 didn’t work but all and all not a bad deal.
