Mate’s new $799 Ray-Band Display smart glasses. So, they have a show. They have this completely new transparent interface. And I’m going to level with you. This is the first time I’ve been convinced by a technology product designed for your face. There are some things that aren’t there. But I was surprised that it can already start to make you see how smart glasses can do a lot of what your phone can do, but better. So, you can think of them as a three-part product. First up are the glasses which are basically a more advanced version of the regular Rayban Mets. So they have the same basic hardware as cameras that can now record at 2 and 1/2 times the resolution as two speakers, one for each ear and no less than five microphones. But still with some key additions you now get transition lenses by default when you’re out and about and then auto-tint like sunglasses. There is a large battery that they custom designed to fill every millimeter inside these arms to hold the last key. This new display is powered. So, this display, it’s like a projected image that you see a little bit next to your right eye. It was impossible to record. So, I’m trying to recreate it for you, but it looks like this. And I want to make a very important distinction. This is not augmented reality. This display does not track your surroundings. It refers to this small glancing window as a specific location. And there are a few things I immediately found surprising about these display glasses. One, the storage case is absolutely sick. It feels super premium and can convert itself between glasses storage mode and then flat pack so you can fit it in a pocket. Two is how bright this internal display is. It’s brighter than any smartphone screen I’ve ever used.
Three is that because the display is achieved using a form of indirect projection, this means that even at full brightness, no one else can see what you’re looking at. My screen is on right now and you can’t tell, which I think is wild. This is a major red flag technology that transparently has already been fixed like the Gen One product. Then four is how comfortable the thing is considering all the technology that’s going on inside. It’s a little more than a simple pair of Ray-B Band Mets. You can tell the difference, but at the same time, this is no VR headset. It weighs 69g, which is pretty cool, but pretty mind-blowing considering that’s a normal pair of Ray-B bands, you know the ones that do absolutely nothing but shade like the 45. And it’s all tied to these overextension hinges which means they have some give when you put them on. I was wearing this for an hour and a half and I forgot. Okay, so the specs. The second part of this product is how you control those specs. Now, you can still use the touchpad on the arm. And while there’s still a capture button for snapping photos and videos like the regular Ray-B band, it’s this new neural band that’s designed to be the primary controller for the display glasses. And it’s really freaking good. So, you wear it on your wrist. It’s like a watch. It’s comfortable. It’s light, but it doesn’t clock. It’s actually measuring electrical impulses from your wrist muscles so you can use hand gestures to control the thing. These are two very difficult things to strive for and achieve at the same time.
Because if you think about it, the more naturally you feel something, the more likely you are going to do that thing naturally and then confuse your old neural band. Now, it obviously doesn’t have the crazy eyetracking elements of the Apple Vision Pro, but the way the hand controls work reminds me a lot of it. You double tap like this to turn on the screen as it turns off after 20 seconds of inactivity. There are plenty of types of pinching like this. Ah you can navigate using an imaginary joystick basically sliding on your fist and you can adjust the volume by holding and then rotating and you can do that in any menu. And the big upside over Vision Pro is that because it doesn’t rely on the camera to see these gestures, you can do them anywhere. And that leaves us with the final piece of the puzzle, smartphones and software. So Meta isn’t exactly hiding the fact that they think this is a device that will one day replace phones, but that day isn’t today. Right now, I’d say about 50% of what the glasses can do depends on your phone. So what does it do? When you turn it on, the first thing you see is the home screen It shows you upcoming events, notifications, time. So after 30 minutes or so, I start to realize that I don’t need to do this anymore. And it’s from there that you swipe to the side and you can see all your apps. And you can kind of understand that it’s not a super slick UI. Like it doesn’t sound cheap, but it’s a 60 frame pars super wellan animate I mean it’s $800. I think Ray-B band displays are really trying to bring something to market before Apple makes a more affordable vision product to normalize the idea of smart glasses, but to make Meta the company you associate them with. And I think now that this thing is out, it’s going to get a lot better very quickly. Now, maybe you can tell from the amount of videos, but this might be the busiest few months of my entire life. We just had an Apple event in California. I got a trip to Korea for a really cool super secret hands-on. Then I go back to the US and the only way I travel that way is with Sur SharkVPN because the moment I land in a new country, I use it to connect to the UK server and it’s like I never left. Dodgy Airport Wi-Fi has no creepy hackers. My banking app doesn’t panic and block me. Netflix doesn’t suddenly decide, in fact in this country, you’re only allowed to watch 17 seasons of Kdramas where every problem seems solvable with a piggyback ride. And it’s so reassuring that it usually takes less than a minute to get in touch with someone on live chat if you need to talk to them. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.