Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) Smart Glasses Get 20% Price Drop Ahead of Black Friday

By
Scott Hayden
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7

Meta is tossing out a limited time 20% discount off all Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) smart glasses, which you can nab from now until December 1st.

The News

Released in 2023 starting at $300, Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) are capable smart glasses in their own right, including video/photo capture, onboard AI assistant, and the ability to play music and take calls.

The second gen version released earlier this year, starting at $380, bringing with it better battery life, higher-quality video capture, and improved audio/mics. You can check the spec sheet below for a 1:1 comparison.

Still, at $240, Meta’s latest deal makes Gen 1 the cheapest it’s ever been, with the 20% discount available across all Gen 1 lens and style combos.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

You can get the deal from now until December 1st direct through Meta, which includes expedited shipping, as well as partner retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Ray-Ban Stores, and Target in the US.

Many supported regions are getting the deal too, which you’ll find in local pricing across Europe, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK.

Meta is also tossing out 20% off prescription lenses when you purchase Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1 and 2) and/or Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, which will only be available through Meta from now until December 1st.

Ray-Ban Meta: Gen 1 vs Gen 2 Specs

Gen 1 Gen 2
Camera 12 MP ultra-wide
12 MP ultra-wide (improved sensor)
Photo Resolution 3,024 × 4,032 3,024 × 4,032
Video Resolution 1,440 × 1,920 @ 30 fps
Up to 3K @ 30 fps (includes livestreaming ability)
Storage 32 GB 32 GB
Microphones 5-mic array 5-mic array
Speakers Open-ear speakers
Improved open-ear speakers (louder, better bass)
Processor Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1
Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1
Battery Life (Glasses) ~4 hours ~8 hours
Battery Life (Case) ~32 hours ~48 hours
Charging Speed Not clearly stated
~50% charge in ~20 minutes
Water Resistance IPX4 IPX4
Frame Styles Wayfarer, Headliner, Skyler
Wayfarer, Headliner, Skyler, Oakley HSTN, Oakley Vanguard
AI Features Basic Meta AI
Enhanced Meta AI, new capture modes
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My Take

While Meta is clearly using the big Black Friday sales rush to flush old stock, I honestly hoped for a much larger barn burner, although it’s pretty clear why we’re not seeing the any super deep discounts.

As occult corporate calculus goes, Meta and EssilorLuxottica probably don’t want to make Gen 1 too attractive to people who might otherwise just spring for the more expensive Gen 2. This makes me think that 20% off is about as low as Meta will go this year around, although I’ll be keeping my eye on post-Black Friday sales to confirm.

Still, there are some caveats potential buyers should be aware of: neither are better at capturing video than your smartphone, and they don’t play music better than even mediocre wireless ear buds. You also have to use Meta AI, which is… okay, making it more of a fun toy (or Christmas gift) than a must-have addition to your smartphone.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DR: What if the only reason they sell is because they are pretty?

    I REALLY want to see real world usage statistics. There is no doubt some actual utility you can get from AI assistants, and taking pictures has been the main use of glasses like HMDs since Google Glass. But as far as I can tell people could still mostly buy them as fashion accessories because they are Ray Bans.

    Everybody incl. Apple and Samsung are now struggling to catch up with Meta's surprising sales hit, but this is all on the promise that people will somehow use them as their first steps into a sort of AI assistant real world metaverse. And that may be a big miscalculation if they are bought primarily as (photo) glasses.

    The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses seriously upgrade the number of use cases, but currently lack an SDK that would allow custom apps, with Meta only offering one to developers for connecting smartphone apps to the glasses. And the display glasses come with significantly increased size and weight, no longer as unsuspicious as their regular smartglasses, and at a much higher price that very likely still makes Meta lose money on every single sale.

    The potential is no doubt there, but we are still very far from smartglasses doing even a small fraction of what smartphones can do today. So while we are seeing regular reports on how well they sell and what Meta does to push them further into the mainstream, what we'd really need is more info on how impactful the smart part of smartglasses is in reality. Or if everybody is just chasing large user numbers, blindly hoping they will somehow magically translate into the next smartphone-like platform in the future.

    • Yes, they're pretty and they take pictures. That's the Trojan horse through which we hope to arrive to the other stuff once they are on the head of people

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        For Meta it doesn't really matter if this works or not, as long as Facebook and Instagram keep laying golden eggs that pay for everything that Zuckerberg wants and gets due to his class B shares in Meta Platforms. These come with 10x the voting power of the publicly traded class A shares, giving him 60% of the total vote. So when he decided in 2021 that the Metaverse was going to happen now, that was what they went for with no way to stop or fire him. And now they are going for smartglasses, with no way to stop or fire him. If it doesn't work, he'll just try something else.

        The question is really how much the industry should follow Zuckerberg's ideas based on how successful they turned out to be in the past. I'm pretty sure that Apple is still serious about making Vision a viable consumer product, and they are massively investing into media like immersive live event streaming that only make sense on a high end HMD. Like the just announced Real Madrid documentary shot on 30 Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive cameras for USD 30K each.

        So even if Apple now rushes to release some "me too" smartglasses, we will very likely see a Vision Air in a few years. I'm not as sure about the future of HMDs running AndroidXR, which Google describes as "Android XR is an AI-powered operating system coming soon to headsets and glasses". Google being seduced by the current AI and smartglasses hype may lead to them abandoning another VR capable class of headsets to solely focus AndroidXR on much less capable AI assistants in a much smaller form factor.

        Which is why it would be so important to learn if smartglasses are actually used beyond the "they're pretty and they take pictures" as actual smartglasses.

    • Dragon Marble

      "Smart glasses accounted for more than a third of EssilorLuxottica's growth in Q3 2025" — UPloadVR.

      So people are not just buying Ray-Ban, they are buying Ray-Ban Meta.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        But that doesn't answer what they are using them for. The official price on the Ray-Ban website for the Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer Gen 1 is USD 329, USD 459 for Gen 2, and the price for the Original Wayfarer Classic sunglasses these are based on is USD 244. And if you go directly through their AI glasses page, the Gen 1 list price is only USD 299, a mere USD 55 more than the regular glasses, though real world prices after rebates etc. may be very different.

        So there is quite a chance that people buy the Meta version just to give it a try, as they only add 20% to the price, and then after some initial tries never even bother to charge them. They surely are a novelty and a reason for more people to buy Ray-Ban glasses. But we know from VR HMDs that most of them end up on a shelf, with the Quest 2 and later having a much better retention rate than Rift & Co, though still only about 40%.

        For a device that so far has very limited use, but still works as regular sunglasses, the equivalent to "sitting on a shelf" would be "sitting on a nose uncharged/unused". I do not doubt that Quest 2 was the best selling HMD ever, I do not doubt that Meta Ray-Bans are what drives EssilorLuxottica's growth in what I'd suspect is a pretty saturated sunglasses market. What I doubt is that sales numbers represent active users numbers, basically that the features that make the Meta Ray-Ban smarter than their dumb Original Wayfarer Classic cousins see a lot of use. And that's quite crucial for the whole device category, hence my demand for usage statistics instead of only sales statistics.

        • Dragon Marble

          When a camera and a microphone and headphones are sitting on your nose — and good quality ones — you will use them. I use them all the time, to the point that I regret not getting the transition version because I want to use them indoors as well.

          I use the AI and live translation only occasionally, but they are very useful when you need them.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            When you have paid hundreds of dollar for a VR HMD with many good games available, you will use it. Or not, as the 60% that stopped using their Quest 2 a few months after the purchase. Again, I am not looking for sales numbers or anecdotes, I'm looking for usage statistics. I know they sell well, I know they can be useful, I know that some people love them and use them all the time.

            What I want to know is how many people that bought them still use the smart features after a few weeks, or at all for anything but taking pictures or blocking the sun. As with everything XR, numbers are hard to come by, and it took a lot of cross referencing from different sources to find out the retention rate on Quest 2, which by now has probably dropped significantly. Getting the retention rate was important to estimate how well VR is received by the average users, which provides some insight into the readiness and longterm market chances of a device. And it turned out to be not that well, with the majority not seeing the increased immersion worth the hassle/discomfort after a while, instead switching back to flat games on PCs/consoles/phones.

            Smartglasses users will typically also carry a smartphone that can do pretty much everything the glasses can do and more, with better cameras and a screen to see what picture you will take, but requiring to pull out and hold the device. So I'd say there are a number of good reasons why current smartglasses might be abandoned or reduced to mere sunglasses. Asking for any use other than taking pictures would probably drop the actual usage numbers even further. And what I am looking for is evidence aka statistics, not personal opinions or claims of inevitableness by individual smartglasses lovers or haters.