Meta glasses, feature by feature — from Meta’s own pages.

What Meta glasses do

Every current Meta model — Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, the Meta-branded frames and the Meta Ray-Ban Display — shares one architecture: a camera in the frame, open-ear speakers and microphones in the temples, and Meta AI running through the Meta AI app on your phone. You capture photos and video hands-free, take calls and listen to audio, and talk to the assistant, which can describe what the camera sees, answer questions and translate. The Display model adds a small display in the right lens and a Neural Band on the wrist for gesture control; it is the only Meta frame that shows you anything.

Prices, from Meta’s shop page as recorded in our price table: $224 (Gen 1 Ray-Ban Meta on sale against $299 list) to $379 for current-generation Ray-Ban Meta, $399–$499 for Oakley Meta, and $799 for the Display.

Are Meta glasses waterproof? IPX4, explained

No. Meta’s water-resistance help article gives Ray-Ban Meta an IPX4 rating and describes it plainly: safe if you get caught in light rain; cannot resist submersion or extended exposure to water or other liquids; wipe them dry and clear the charging contacts if they get wet. In practice: sweat, drizzle and a splash are fine; a pool, a shower, snorkelling or a dropped drink are not, and water damage is rarely covered by any warranty in this category. Meta publishes that rating for Ray-Ban Meta only — the same page lists the Display and Oakley models without a figure.

For scale, IPX4 is the same tier most AI glasses sit in; OXIVUE’s M02C is rated IP65 (dust-tight, jet-resistant) and the M14 IPX4. None of them are swim glasses — our water-sports guide is blunt about it.

Translation: 20 languages, 6 of them offline

Meta’s live-translation articlelists six languages that work offline with a downloaded pack — English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German — and fourteen that need a connection: Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish, Greek and Dutch. The translation appears as text in the app with optional audio through the speakers, and Meta notes you need current firmware and app versions. Twenty is a shorter list than the “40+ languages” that cheaper frames advertise (ours included) — but it is a published list, which is worth more than a bigger number without one. If your pair is not on it, no glasses will help you; if it is, the offline six are genuinely useful on a plane or in a metro.

App, account and countries

Setup, translation, battery settings and updates all run through the Meta AI app, which needs a Meta account. There is no subscription for the glasses. Meta’s supported-countries pagelists 18: the United States (with Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Australia. Outside those, the glasses are neither sold nor supported, which matters if you travel with them or buy one second-hand. Meta’s battery-saver articledescribes a mode that pauses “Hey Meta” wake, auto-transfer and volume adjustment and caps video at 1080p/30 to stretch a charge — Meta’s own acknowledgement that the assistant is the battery’s biggest cost.

Prescription lenses

This is Meta’s clearest advantage. The prescription help page gives an eligible range of -12.00 to +6.00 total power for Ray-Ban Meta, ordered from Ray-Ban.com or a certified retailer with a valid prescription, or added to a pair you already own. Almost no sub-$200 AI glasses offer this; OXIVUE does not, and our prescription guide says so first. If you need Rx lenses, the comparison ends here and Meta wins.

Pros and cons, as Meta states them

Pros

• Prescription lenses through an actual optical network (-12.00 to +6.00).
• A published translation list — 20 languages, 6 offline — rather than a marketing number.
• The Ray-Ban and Oakley frames and the shops to try them on in.
• A display option (Display model) if you need text in your eyeline.
• Support in 18 countries, with firmware and app updates.

Cons

• A Meta account and the Meta AI app are mandatory; the glasses do nothing without them.
• IPX4 only: rain yes, water no — and Meta publishes no rating for the Display.
• $224 on sale to $799; the $224 floor is a discounted outgoing generation.
• The camera films where your head points, not where your eyes look — true of every frame in the category, including ours, and the most common reason people are disappointed.
• Sold and supported in 18 countries only.

What $149–$199 gives up — and what it does not

A frame like the OXIVUE M02C at $159 has the same shape: 8 MP camera, open-ear audio, an assistant and two-way translation through a free app, with no account and IP65 water resistance. What you give up against Meta is the Ray-Ban licence, the prescription programme, the display option, the offline translation packs and the retail network. What you do not give up is the day-to-day use — capture, calls, translation — which is why the honest comparison is about the platform, not the hardware. The alternatives guide ranks the options; the comparison page has every spec side by side.

Bottom line

Meta glasses are well-built camera-and-audio frames whose real product is the Meta platform: the account, the app, the optical network and, on one model, a display. Read Meta’s own pages before buying — linked above — and decide whether the platform is what you want. If it is, buy Meta. If you want the capture, the audio and the translation without the account, that starts at $149.

Frequently asked questions