Facebook has launched Ray-Ban Stories – smart glasses that give users an authentic way to capture photos and video, share their adventures, and listen to music or take phone calls.
The glasses will be priced from USD299 upwards and available in 20 style combinations. They are now available for purchase online and in select retail stores in the US as well as Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the UK.
From daily activities to special milestones like birthdays, Ray-Ban Stories’ dual integrated 5MP cameras let you capture life’s spontaneous moments as they happen from a unique first-person perspective. A user can easily record the world as they see it, taking photos and up to 30-second videos using the capture button or hands-free with Facebook Assistant voice commands.
A hard-wired capture LED lights up to let people nearby know when you’re taking a photo or video. Streamlined, open-ear speakers are built in, and Ray-Ban Stories’ three-microphone audio array delivers richer voice and sound transmission for calls and videos. Beamforming technology and a background noise suppression algorithm provide for an enhanced calling experience from dedicated headphones.
Ray-Ban Stories pairs with the new Facebook View app, so one can share their point of view, stories, and memories seamlessly with friends and social media followers. The Facebook View app on iOS and Android makes it easy to import, edit, and share content captured on the smart glasses to apps on the phone: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and more. One can also save content to the phone’s camera roll and edit and share from there. Post-capture enhancements built into Facebook View helps create unique content to put a special spin on the posts.
Ray-Ban Stories are available in 20 variations, in some of its most popular styles — Wayfarer/Wayfarer Large, Round, and Meteor — and five colors with a range of lenses including clear, sun, transition, and prescription.
The Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses come with a specially-designed portable charging case, so that the users can easily recharge their glasses while on the go. A fully charged case gives an additional three consecutive days of use.
Miniaturisation was the key while building these glasses. EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company, and Facebook worked together from concept through final design to seamlessly integrate smart technology into an iconic form factor, which was a great challenge in and of itself. Components had to be re-engineered so that everything — two cameras, a set of micro-speakers, a three-microphone audio array, an optimized Snapdragon processor, a capacitive touchpad, a battery, and more — could fit into the smallest possible space and the lightest possible frame.
The media capture has been designed to stand up to a lot of movement — from head swiveling to take in a scene to the speed of capture from someone on their bike or speedboard. Optimisations from computational photography work include HDR and Low Light Fusion, Video Stabilisation, and Denoising. Machine learning-enhanced tone rendering was applied to enhance photos and videos, so they feel as authentic as the moment itself.
Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and Facebook View are ads-free experiences, so there won’t be any ads when using the glasses or app. Facebook also clarified that it won’t use any photo and video content for personalised ads.
Also, photos and videos are encrypted on the smart glasses, which can only be paired with one account at a time. So, if someone loses their glasses and someone else tries to pair them with a new phone and Facebook account, any data and media left on the glasses will be automatically deleted.
The Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses weigh only about five grams more than the original Wayfarer design.
