You can tell when a piece of new tech gets the promotion from gimmick to mainstream by the price tag. The gimmicky stuff tends to start sky-high and then nosedive into the bargain bins when it becomes clear that, no, this isn’t catching on. The ones with staying power don’t dive to that extreme, but they do get rock-solid deals of their own, like this 25% off Amazon sale on the 1st-gen Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart AI sunglasses.
The Ray-Ben Meta Wayfarers earned their spot in the everyday eyewear category by selling better than any other smart glasses. This model has all of the Meta tech, along with the Transitions Graphite Green lenses that spare you from having to do the indoor-outdoor glasses swap. The $95-off deal running now at Amazon drops their price to just $284 — an excellent price, and just enough of a discount to let you buy confidently without worrying they’ll be imminently discontinued.
So, What Do They Do?
The earliest smart glasses got knocked for being sneaky spywear, but 12MP ultra-wide camera of the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarers are far more attuned to filming your kid at the playground or in a game. A five-mic system captures audio alongside the video, and you can livestream directly to Facebook or Instagram from the glasses themselves. Video calls get a unique trick: You can flip between your phone’s front camera and the glasses’ POV camera mid-call, giving the other person a live view of whatever you’re looking at.
Open-ear speakers handle music, podcasts, and calls without earbuds. The audio is discreet enough that people next to you won’t hear your playlist and clear enough that phone calls work without reaching for your phone. Meta AI — activated by voice — can analyze what you’re seeing through the camera and provide context, answer questions, or surface information based on your surroundings.
Decades of Cool
The Matte Black Wayfarer frame is the classic Ray-Ban silhouette, made famous by James Dean, the Blues Brothers, Tom Cruise in Risky Business, among others. That iconic look means these read as normal glasses to anyone who isn’t looking for a camera lens. Privacy controls let you toggle voice commands on and off and manage preferences through settings.
Now that these first-gen Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarers are down to $284 at Amazon, the smart glasses are on a pricing par with the premium photochromatic version of the original. With this offer bringing you the great many tech benefits that come with Meta AI for the same price as the ones that merely look great and shade your eyes, who can say no to a free upgrade?