Smartphones are identified for being a one-size-fits-all know-how resolution. They work for nearly everybody, and if they do not give you the results you want proper out of the field, there are a great deal of accessibility options and {hardware} equipment that can make them good. If smart glasses just like the Android XR ones I attempted at Google I/O 2025 are a future smartphone substitute, that is an issue.
Something you put on in your face must be way more private to you than a telephone you stash away in your pocket or bag. Smart glasses must match your private fashion whereas additionally feeling snug, accommodating the assorted face and head shapes on the market.
For prescription glasses-wearers, there are extra concerns. You want to have the ability to match all kinds of prescription lenses inside smart frames at an inexpensive price.
So far, there is not a single pair of smart glasses and even one VR/XR headset that matches the invoice.
Meta appears to have gotten closest with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, providing the know-how in a handful of Ray-Ban kinds. They’re accessible in traditional Wayfarer frames or a classy Skyler look, plus just a few others. However, Meta did not make the smart glasses accessible for low-vision customers. The prescription lens vary for Ray-Ban Meta is merely -6.00 to +4.00 whole energy, which leaves lots of people out.
Last yr, I wrote that whereas I beloved the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, I’d by no means put on them once more. It wasn’t as a result of they weren’t helpful or too expensive — it was as a result of my new eyewear prescription now falls outdoors Meta’s extraordinarily restricted vary.
Smaller manufacturers appeared to have solved this drawback already. Solos’ AirGo 3 smart glasses help an unlimited prescription energy vary of -15.00 to +10.00 when utilizing skinny lenses. There’s no excuse for Meta providing such restricted help for prescription lenses when different corporations, like Solos, have figured it out.
This is an accessibility drawback, plain and easy — not everybody can or desires to put on contacts, and glasses-wearers should expertise smart glasses and Android XR, too.
I’m hopeful that Google’s strategy to Android XR glasses is the one to unravel this accessibility subject as soon as and for all. It’s not making an attempt to make smart glasses all by itself, neither is it limiting the corporate to a single eyewear associate. While Meta selected to work with EssilorLuxottica — a legacy eyewear and optical model managing in style names like Ray-Ban, Oakley, and LensCrafters — Google picked two new-age companions in Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.
Both manufacturers are comparatively new within the eyewear house, at the very least by comparability to EssilorLuxottica, however they have been abundantly profitable. Warby Parker and Gentle Monster are extraordinarily in style amongst youthful audiences and have new, hip kinds.
I’ve little question that Google’s upcoming Android XR glasses can be better-looking than Ray-Ban Metas, as a result of the latter prohibit Meta’s improvement to the older fashion of Wayfarer frames. Meanwhile, Google has the potential to make smart glasses know-how that’s frame-agnostic. In different phrases, it can design smart {hardware} that can match into a wide range of frames and kinds, so there’s one thing for everybody.
I emphasize the phrase potential as a result of there is no assure that Google would not simply comply with in Meta’s footsteps. It may choose one or two frames from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to Google-ify and name it a day. I’m actually hopeful that does not occur as a result of Google has a novel alternative to do one thing that is by no means been accomplished earlier than within the smart glasses house.
It can leverage partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to make smart glasses which are trendy, snug, and help a variety of prescription sorts for the lots, not simply the choose few who occur to have the ability to use Ray-Ban Metas.