While not as practical as a smartphone and earbuds, the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses are an undeniably fun and easy way to shoot POV videos and get real-time information about your surroundings.
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.
