Smartphones are recognized for being a one-size-fits-all expertise resolution. They work for nearly everybody, and if they do not be just right for you proper out of the field, there are a great deal of accessibility options and {hardware} equipment that may make them excellent. If good glasses like the Android XR ones I attempted at Google I/O 2025 are a future smartphone substitute, that is an issue.
One thing you put on in your face must be far more private to you than a cellphone you stash away in your pocket or bag. Sensible glasses have to match your private type whereas additionally feeling comfy, accommodating the varied 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 good frames at an inexpensive value.
To date, there is not a single pair of good glasses and even one VR/XR headset that matches the invoice.
Meta appears to have gotten closest with the Ray-Ban Meta good glasses, providing the expertise in a handful of Ray-Ban types. They’re out there in basic Wayfarer frames or an elegant Skyler look, plus a couple of others. Nonetheless, Meta didn’t make the good glasses accessible for low-vision customers. The prescription lens vary for Ray-Ban Meta is merely -6.00 to +4.00 complete energy, which leaves lots of people out.
Final 12 months, I wrote that whereas I cherished the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, I would by no means put on them once more. It wasn’t as a result of they weren’t helpful or too dear — it was as a result of my new eyewear prescription now falls exterior Meta’s extraordinarily restricted vary.
Smaller manufacturers appeared to have solved this drawback already. Solos’ AirGo 3 good glasses help an infinite prescription power vary of -15.00 to +10.00 when utilizing skinny lenses. There is no excuse for Meta providing such restricted help for prescription lenses when different firms, like Solos, have figured it out.
That is an accessibility drawback, plain and easy — not everybody can or desires to put on contacts, and glasses-wearers need to expertise good glasses and Android XR, too.
I am hopeful that Google’s method to Android XR glasses is the one to resolve this accessibility subject as soon as and for all. It isn’t making an attempt to make good glasses all by itself, neither is it proscribing the corporate to a single eyewear accomplice. Whereas Meta selected to work with EssilorLuxottica — a legacy eyewear and optical model managing well-liked names like Ray-Ban, Oakley, and LensCrafters — Google picked two new-age companions in Warby Parker and Light Monster.
Each manufacturers are comparatively new within the eyewear area, at the least by comparability to EssilorLuxottica, however they have been abundantly profitable. Warby Parker and Light Monster are extraordinarily well-liked amongst youthful audiences and have new, hip types.
I’ve little question that Google’s upcoming Android XR glasses will likely be better-looking than Ray-Ban Metas, as a result of the latter prohibit Meta’s improvement to the older type of Wayfarer frames. In the meantime, Google has the potential to make good glasses expertise that’s frame-agnostic. In different phrases, it could design good {hardware} that may match into a wide range of frames and types, so there’s one thing for everybody.
I emphasize the phrase potential as a result of there is not any assure that Google does not simply comply with in Meta’s footsteps. It may choose one or two frames from Light Monster and Warby Parker to Google-ify and name it a day. I am 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 completed earlier than within the good glasses area.
It could leverage partnerships with Light Monster and Warby Parker to make good glasses which are trendy, comfy, and help a variety of prescription varieties for the lots, not simply the choose few who occur to have the ability to use Ray-Ban Metas.
