Pros & Cons
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- Shoots videos in 3K
- Longer battery life than the Ray-Ban Metas
- AI assistant provides helpful info
- Minimal sound leakage
- Clear audio quality
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- Difficult to frame shots
- Limited bass on audio playback
- AI assistant can make errors
Oakley Meta HSTN Specs
| Connection | Wireless |
| Glasses Features | Camera |
| Glasses Features | Microphone |
| Glasses Features | Speakers |
| Input Controls | Voice |
| Voice Assistant Compatibility | Meta |
The Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses let you capture photos and videos from your own perspective—perfect for sharing on social media. Priced from $399, they deliver many of the same features found in the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses ($299) that launched in 2023, such as open-ear speakers and a built-in AI assistant that can identify and describe your surroundings. However, the Oakleys justify their $100 premium with a sportier design, sharper 3K video recording, and double the battery life. While they’re not the most practical option—since a phone and earbuds still offer better audio and camera quality—the hands-free convenience and well-executed features make them an appealing option if you’re drawn to the concept and style.
Design: Stylish Enough for Most Occasions
The Oakley Meta HSTN glasses are available in a range of frame and lens colors, and cost $399 to $499 depending on the style you choose. For this review, I tested the $499 limited edition model with Warm Grey frames and Prizm 24k gold-tone polarized lenses. Others in the line have black, brown, or clear frames and black, blue, gray, or red lenses. Prescription and Transitions lenses (which darken or lighten depending on the ambient lighting) are available, but I did not test them. Regardless of lens type and frame color, the underlying technology inside each model is the same.
For the most part, they look like ordinary glasses at a glance, with the camera lens and the capture LED at the front corners serving as the only telltale signs of the embedded smarts. Both the speakers and the microphones are nestled in the temples, and the physical controls are limited to a capture button at the front of the right temple, a power switch hidden in the front left inner hinge, and a touch panel for volume control along the side of the right temple. The inner right side of the frame has a small LED for notifications.
While the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are aimed at casual, everyday wearers, the Oakley glasses are geared toward sporty users, though both have the same IPX4 resistance rating. The limited edition Oakleys look good and would fit right in at a ball game or on a beach trip. You could probably pull them off for a variety of occasions, but if you want a more timeless look, the Ray-Ban Metas are probably the better pick.
The lenses on my unit measure 1.78 by 2.01 inches (LW), and the frames are 5.25 inches wide. The one-size-fits-all frames felt a touch snug when I first put them on, but they were comfortable enough that I adapted quickly and had no problem wearing them for hours at a time.
Features: Smart Glasses for Instagram Addicts
Both the Oakley and Ray-Ban Metas are social-focused smart glasses. You can use their embedded cameras to snap pics or videos from your perspective and share them seamlessly to your Instagram or Facebook account. They also let you take calls and listen to music. Both sets of glasses have Meta’s AI-enabled assistant built in to receive voice commands, translate conversations, and even describe and answer questions about your surroundings.
The term smart glasses has evolved to encompass a variety of products. Neither the Oakley nor the Ray-Ban glasses have any augmented reality (AR) capabilities to overlay a map or a screen over your vision like the RayNeo Air 3s ($269), the Rokid Max 2 ($449), or the XReal One Pro ($649).
Besides their looks, the Oakley and Ray-Ban glasses have some differences in terms of features. The Oakleys can shoot video in 3K (instead of 1080p on the Ray-Bans), they have a bigger battery meant to last all day, and the two open-ear speakers have been repositioned to better direct audio toward your ears with less leakage.
Both sets of glasses have a 12MP camera for stills and come with a handy case for storing the glasses and recharging their batteries. They can pair directly to your phone via Bluetooth and connect to the cloud through Wi-Fi. Both have 32GB of flash storage to hold recorded photos and videos until you can connect and back them up.
Battery Life: A Small Step Forward
The biggest functional upgrade of the Oakleys over the Ray-Ban Metas comes from the battery. They promise eight hours of battery life with ordinary use, and the case holds five additional charges for 48 hours in total. The Ray-Ban Metas hold roughly four hours in the frames themselves, with an additional eight charges in the case, for 36 hours total.
With ordinary use in the real world, the Oakleys' battery lasted about twice as long as the Metas in my testing. I wore them for three hours while exploring downtown Chicago, and used the glasses to take a lot of pictures, talk to the AI assistant, and intermittently listen to podcasts. When I got home, the glasses still held close to 60% of their charge.
For comparison, the Ray-Ban Metas afforded about 3.5 hours of consistent use in my testing. At that point, the glasses went down to 15% remaining battery, and the voice assistant prompted me to “charge your glasses for full functionality,” meaning it could no longer shoot video at that capacity.
In a second battery test, this time simulating heavy usage, I played streaming music constantly on the Oakleys at 75% volume until they needed a charge, and they went down to 15% remaining after just over four hours. Meta claims five hours of continuous music playback on a charge, and my result was comparable. As for other use cases, the glasses promise 90 minutes of battery life for video calls (via Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram while continuously sharing your view), or up to 19 hours on standby.
With intermittent usage, the Oakleys are better equipped to last all day on a single charge than the Ray-Ban Metas. This is still a weak spot of the line compared with audio-focused smart glasses like the Amazon Echo Frames ($269.99), which allow for six hours of music playback, and the Nautica Smart Eyewear Powered by Lucyd ($159), which powered through 13 hours of usage in my tests. Neither of those models has a camera, however.
Setup: Simple Syncing
The glasses come packed inside a hard plastic charging case that flips open from the top. You also get a quick start guide, a small booklet with safety and warranty info, and a cleaning cloth. Note that it doesn't come with a charging cable, so you’ll need to use your own USB-C cord and brick when the case runs low on battery. Don’t take the glasses out of the case right away. You’ll need to start the pairing process with them still inside.
To set up the Oakleys, you’ll need a phone running at least Android 10 or iOS 15.2. Download the Meta AI app (which was previously called the Meta View app when I reviewed the Ray-Bans), then either create an account just for the app or log in using your Facebook or Instagram credentials.
Add a new device using the Meta AI app, then remove the protective tab running down the front of the case to put the glasses and case into pairing mode. If pulling the tab doesn't work, you can also press and hold the button on the back of the case to initiate pairing.
Use the app to sync the device to your phone, then you’ll need to wait a couple of minutes for updates. After the updates, the app will ask you to put on the glasses, then the specs will walk you through the controls and features. The app asks for permission to access your location, then prompts you to connect a music service like Spotify, a messaging service like Messenger or WhatsApp, and set up AI by picking your voice of choice. You can choose from a few generic options or a variety of AI-generated celebrity voices such as Awkwafina, Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell.
Controlling the Glasses: App and Onboard Options
The Oakleys' simple and intuitive onboard controls mirror those of the Ray-Bans. Press the capture button above the right temple once to take a photo or hold it to start a video. In either case, the glasses make a sound to confirm the input, and the white LED shines from the front to let your subjects know you’re recording (Meta also offers a brief PSA about respecting others’ privacy when you first set up the glasses).
Videos last 30 seconds by default, but you can change that to 60 seconds or three minutes in the app, and you can stop any video early by hitting the button again.
Aside from the capture button, a touchpad runs along the side of the right temple. Tap this area once to play or pause your music. Double-tap to skip a track, or triple-tap to go back one track. Swipe forward on the touchpad to raise the volume or swipe back to lower it.
In my testing, the onboard controls were consistently reliable and responsive. You can also perform all of the same functions with voice controls by saying “Hey Meta” to access the company’s AI assistant, followed by a command.
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The Meta AI app lets you tinker with more detailed settings and manage and sync your photos and videos. In the upper left corner of the home page, you’ll see a small icon of the glasses and their battery life; tap that to access the device page, complete with your captured gallery. You can set your gallery to automatically back up to your phone’s library or sync your media manually.
A gear icon on the device page lets you configure video settings such as default duration and resolution, customize the touchpad gestures, and activate features such as wear detection and adaptive volume. You can access this same device page by tapping the glasses tab in the lower right corner of the app’s home page.
(Credit: Meta/PCMag)Otherwise, the app's home page provides sample prompts for the generative AI, the Discover tab surfaces videos from different creators, the History tab lets you browse your past voice commands and the given responses, and the Notifications tab shows updates and status messages.
The app is intuitive to use for the most part, but I occasionally encountered a crash when accessing the Meta AI settings, and I’d have preferred the gallery to be a standalone tab instead of tucked into the device page.
Music Quality: Limited Leakage
The speakers in the Oakleys impressed me. They struggle with similar audio shortcomings as the Ray-Ban Metas: They don't get as loud as ordinary earbuds, they lack bass, and they leak sound. That said, those weaknesses are inherent to open-ear headphones in general, and the Oakleys have taken strides to minimize sound leakage and improve the overall audio quality and clarity of music.
As far as volume, I couldn’t hear the words of my fantasy football podcast over a nearby highway or train, but the audio came through clearly enough in quieter settings. I didn’t notice the effect of the adaptive volume when I first enabled it, but when playing music in a quiet environment, turning up the volume actually made it loud. The Ray-Ban Metas didn’t sound loud to me at any volume.
The Oakleys also fare much better in terms of sound leakage than the Ray-Bans. I played music through them in a quiet room at 50%, 75%, and 100%. A friend in the same room was consistently unable to identify what song I was playing at 50% volume. At that level, he could hear that I was playing something, but couldn’t glean any details. He picked out every song once I raised the volume to 100% and had intermittent success at 75%.
By comparison, a friend readily identified every song I played on the Ray-Ban Metas even at 50% volume. If audio privacy is a significant concern to you, you’ll still want to look for a different device, but the Oakleys take a step in the right direction.
As far as bass, well, this still isn’t the right gadget if you want your music to thump, but every other aspect of playback sounds pristine. The opening of our bass test track, "Silent Shout" by The Knife, fell flat as it leans heavily on a driving kick drum. Sound quality during “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel engrossed me. As with the Ray-Bans, I heard each instrument clearly, but the Oakleys did better with separation, and I felt immersed in the swells of music. The treble and mids of music sounded good at all volume levels with no noticeable distortion.
Photo and Video Capture: Fun on the Run
Just like on the Ray-Ban Metas, using the Oakleys to take pictures and videos is a blast. The picture quality is largely the same; I noticed some soft detail in some scenes with the Ray-Bans that didn’t carry over to the Oakleys. For example, with the Ray-Bans, a shot of my cat nestled under blankets showed blurriness where the blankets and cat overlapped, while similar pictures with the Meta show clear detail through the frame.
For photography, the Oakleys share a weakness with the Ray-Bans inherent to the form factor: You can’t actually frame your shot. Any modern smartphone offers settings to adjust things like exposure, ISO, focus, and zoom, not to mention the ability to check the frame as you snap the shutter to precisely center your subject. With the Oakleys, you just look and snap, and hope it turns out.
Taking pictures is such an easy endeavor that you can quickly snap a bunch, with the fixed focus lens admirably keeping your view area looking sharp. When I snapped a pic of my cat from across the room, the feline was in focus, and the software had cropped in slightly. Since there's no way to manually zoom in while taking a shot, the cat did end up in the background of the photo. The Oakleys still capture enough detail for cat pictures to look appropriately cute, especially when I was closer to my subjects.
They did even better with landscapes. Pictures I took of various buildings and landmarks throughout Chicago look nicely detailed and textured. If you’re looking to take a picture to share your point of view on social media, these glasses work quite well. If you’re looking for precision as an aspiring photographer, any modern smartphone will do the task better.
As far as capturing action, the Oakleys shoot video at 3K at 30 frames per second, while the Ray-Bans are capped at 1080p. Videos suffer from similar framing issues and are best used for posting on your social channel. In that context, the extra resolution might not make a huge difference to someone watching it while casually scrolling through their feed. Still, the improved resolution is a welcome upgrade, and using the Oakleys to record play sessions with my cats was a delight.
In this circumstance, the Oakleys helped me capture something I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. I live by myself, so I can’t otherwise record my playtime with my cats without setting up a tripod or taking up one of my hands. With the Oakleys, I can just hit a button and start playing, making it much easier to capture spontaneous moments.
Meta AI: Mostly Accurate
While on my downtown Chicago adventure with the glasses, I quizzed Meta AI on everything from skyscrapers to directions to nearby plant life. It got most of my questions right, serving as a sort of virtual tour guide and assistant.
After I got off the train downtown, I looked at the cloud-scraping antennas of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) a few blocks away. I asked, “What am I looking at?” Meta AI described the scene as “a city street with tall buildings and cars.” I pressed for specifics on the building, and it said, “a tall, dark-colored building with a grid-like pattern on its facade.”
Once I hiked over to the Willis and looked up again, the AI was finally able to recognize and name the specific landmark. I asked how tall it is, and it responded correctly. Then I asked if it's the tallest building in the world, and it said no, the Willis has been surpassed. I asked, “By what buildings?” and the AI got confused. It had been playing tour guide wonderfully, but it’s a concierge that needs a reset every few questions. It responded to that query with the statement “you’re looking at a building” and told me to rephrase if I wanted specifics about the building.
Later, it incorrectly identified the Daley Plaza as the TD-Centre of Chicago (I don’t believe there is such a place in Chicago), but Meta AI got the answer right when I asked again. When I walked to Millennium Park, it correctly identified both the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and the Cloud Gate sculpture, aka “The Bean," and it told me both the official and colloquial names. It even provided information about when Millennium Park and the Bean were built.
While downtown and in my neighborhood, I asked Meta about various trees and plants. To the best of my knowledge, it always identified the plants correctly, and it also answered follow-up questions about care and maintenance for each.
Using Meta AI to get information on my surroundings was pretty seamless, and it could even tell me how far I was from a specific landmark (though it clarifies that it can’t provide turn-by-turn directions). Talking with it was informative and fun, and I’m sure it would be a helpful tool for those with a mild visual impairment. As a tour guide, it’s a work in progress. Its answers are mostly right, but you’re still better off verifying them before touting your own newfound expertise on a subject.
Back at home, I again asked Meta AI, “What am I looking at?” It correctly said that I was in front of a TV displaying a video game. I followed up with, “What video game?” and it incorrectly guessed Horizon: Forbidden West. The correct answer was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but both are story-focused single-player games with somewhat realistic graphics, so it was close.