No company has achieved proper augmented reality glasses in a former the average Black Friday shopper can afford, but you can buy a pair of smart glasses that do capture some of the ways AR glasses could be useful. The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses were released in 2023 and updated again in 2024 with new styles and AI-powered skills. The glasses won’t do anything to alter how you see the world around you, but they do make a pretty tremendous pair of wireless headphones, act as a social-media ready action camera, and a burgeoning tool for learning about the world around you with Meta AI.
For Black Friday 2024, you can get the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses for 20% off from a variety of online stores, taking the smart glasses’ $329 starting price down to $263. In some cases, your purchase will come with a $90 store credit that you can apply for future purchases to sweeten the deal even more. Here’s where you can buy the glasses on sale.
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
$263 $329 Save $66
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are a sequel to the original Ray-Ban Stories; smart glasses that can take photos, play music from a variety of streaming services, and, thanks to Meta AI, answer questions and identify objects around you.
Combining all of this functionality should produce something clunky, but somehow doesn’t
Even if you set aside the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses’ features, they still look like a stylish pair of sunglasses. Ray-Ban Wayfarers aren’t for everyone, but there’s no denying that they’re iconic for a reason. Meta and Ray-Ban did collaborate on some other shapes and sizes, including the rounder Headliner style and the cat-eye Skyler, but if the style options don’t convince you, maybe what the glasses do will.
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses have an ultra-wide 12-megapixel camera for capturing photos, built-in speakers and microphones for playing music and handling calls, and access to Meta AI. Using Meta’s AI assistant, you can ask questions and have your smart glasses answer, use the camera on your smart glasses to identify objects and remember things for later, or even have Meta AI translate text for you. The odds of any one person using all of those features in a single day is unlikely, but as long as there’s one or two things that the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses can do that you find helpful, the glasses are worth keeping around.
Even if you set aside the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses’ features, they still look like a stylish pair of sunglasses.
20% off, and a $90 credit, but no prescription
For Black Friday, you can get the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses for $263.20 rather than $329, and if you order from Amazon or Target, you’ll get an additional $90 credit that you can use in store on other purchases. It’s a pretty good deal, though keep in mind, it doesn’t include the cost of prescription lenses, which are only offered at the point of purchase from Meta and Ray-Ban directly. If you purchase from Amazon or Target, you’ll be buying the smart glasses without a prescription.
If you’re at all interested in the possibility of AR glasses, until Meta releases the consumer version of its Orion AR glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are the closest you can get. As it turns out, they’re pretty great on their own, especially on sale.
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