Meta released the second generation of its Ray-Ban glasses in October. I’ve been testing them over the last couple of weeks and I really like them, even after factoring in the premium you pay in comparison to regular Ray-Bans.
The $299 Headliner model I have feels identical to traditional Ray-Bans but with more smarts. Similar to the first model, they allow you to capture video, snap pictures, place calls through your phone and listen to music. The speakers also are 50% louder, according to Meta. There’s also a better camera that takes photos in portrait mode instead of landscape, which makes them better suited for social media posts.
Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which includes its wearable products such as the smart glasses and the Meta Quest, contributes less than 1% to the company’s revenue. Even so, its wearables represent Meta’s attempt at making headway in the devices space in addition to its massive advertising and social media presence.
Here’s what you should know about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
What’s good
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are marketed to show that they can be worn every day just like a regular pair of sunglasses. To do that, they need to be as comfortable, stylish and useful as your regular pair. Meta and Ray-Ban nailed that aspect.
They’re comfortable to wear and aren’t clunky. They weigh just a few grams more than regular Ray-Ban glasses. And, while I was testing out the glasses in the office, I was asked several times why I was wearing sunglasses indoors, so that gives you a gauge of how similar they look to classic Ray-Bans. They don’t look weird.
I wore my smart sunglasses without using any of the tech features, and they work just as well as a normal pair of polarized Ray-Ban sunglasses.For people who want to replace their corrective lenses, you can get prescription lenses just like you would with the pair you already use.
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
They’re convenient if you want to take pictures in the moment without having to reach for your phone. You just press a button on the right side of your glasses or say, “Hey Meta, take a photo.” I liked using them to snap pictures walking around New York City. Just check out this side by side of the same tree. The one on the left is taken with my iPhone and the one on the right is taken with my glasses.
The photo on the left was taken with an iPhone 14. The photo on the right was taken with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
It’s easy to import the pictures or videos to the Meta View app on a phone, and then you can save them to your camera roll.
It’s obvious to others when you’re taking a photo or video. The circle on the right side of the glasses flashes when you take a photo and it pulses when you’re filming, so it would be difficult to take a photo or video without someone noticing.
That’s an important feature for Ray-Ban Meta glasses to become engrained into mainstream society. People around you know when you’re recording. You can’t even block the light and take a photo. The glasses will refuse to snap the picture if you try.
An LED flash goes off when you take a photo with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
The audio and calling capabilities are my favorite part, though.
You can use the glasses in place of your earbuds. I walked around New York’s Central Park with them while listening to music and prefer the audio experience over earbuds in a setting like this. The sound is still full, but I was more attune to my surroundings, which was helpful when an unleashed dog ran up to me and when a biker sped through a red light.
Listening to music is sort of like having a soundtrack playing in the background, as opposed to an immersive experience that many new headphones provide.I’ll admit, I don’t have AirPods with the noise transparency option so it’s worth comparing that feature if you have the AirPods Pro or AirPods Max.
There is definitely more audio leakage with these than I found in my 3rd Generation AirPods, so I’d probably still go with earbuds on the train if you don’t want to bug your fellow passengers. But the glasses were quiet enough that they didn’t bother my roommate while I listened to music at home.
I liked that I could tap once on the right side of the glasses to pause and resume my music and could slide my finger to adjust the volume.
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
The glasses also work well for phone calls. I made calls with them, both in my room and in noisy areas, and the recipients had no complaints about the audio quality. The conversation on my end was clear and I liked that I could accept incoming calls by double-tapping on the right side.
They’re easy to charge. The glasses come in a hard shell case that charges the glasses when they are stored. You use a USB-C — which does not come with the glasses — to recharge the case, but you get roughly eight charges before you need to do that, which is a big step up from the three additional charges in the previous model.
What’s bad
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
My biggest knock on these glasses is that it’s difficult to take pictures if you’re wearing a ball cap. This isn’t an issue for someone who doesn’t wear hats, but it was annoying to have to push my bill slightly up whenever I wanted to snap a photo without the camera getting my hat in it, too.
Brims of hats get in the way when trying to take photos with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
While the glasses let you use voice commands to send messages or ask questions such as “What’s the weather?” it felt more like a novelty to me and I can’t see myself consistently using them. I’m also a big sports fan, and this voice assistant can’t tell you the score of the game from last night like other assistants.
If you use Siri or Google Assistant on a watch or phone often, then you may find some of the voice commands useful. I just don’t use them often.
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
The battery life isn’t great if you want to use these as your all-day, every day glasses. They get roughly four hours of battery life for mixed use, which is a combination of all the features the glasses offer, but that can vary depending on how sparingly or not you use them.My review unit charged from 7% to full in about 50 minutes, which is fast.
But if you need to wear them all day with prescription lenses, then you might run into some issues, at least with the full functionality, since you don’t really have the option to just take them off and let the glasses charge in the middle of your day.
Finally, the glasses are water resistant, but not waterproof, so you have to be cautious in rainy weather in a way that you don’t have to be with regular glasses.
Should you buy them?
The Ray-Ban Meta Headliner smart glasses.
Jake Piazza | CNBC
I’d buy them. I really enjoyed the music, headset and photo features of these glasses, and because they still retain the comfort and style of classic Ray-Bans.
Normal black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses cost $171. The Meta version of those costs $299. Is the ability to snap pictures and videos of your surroundings and use them in place of earbuds and a headset worth the additional money to you? It is for me.
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.