AI glasses can take prescription lenses, but daily wear brings trade-offs

People who wear glasses every day can now order AI smart glasses fitted with prescription lenses, according to Engadget. The publication reports that the answer to whether smart glasses can replace regular prescription eyewear is yes, but it lists several factors buyers should weigh first.

Most of these devices are ordinary-looking frames with electronics inside, Engadget notes. Ray-Ban accepts a customer's prescription and ships Meta's smart glasses with the lenses already installed. From a distance, the report says, a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses is hard to tell apart from standard eyewear.

The first drawback is weight. Regular glasses typically weigh 20 to 30 grams (0.7 to 1.1 ounces), while smart glasses can reach 80 grams (2.7 ounces), according to Engadget. A few hours of wear is manageable, but the extra mass becomes noticeable over a full day.

Battery life is the second issue. AI glasses run for roughly 3 to 5 hours on a charge, Engadget reports. Someone who wears them from morning to night would need to recharge repeatedly. Once the battery is empty, the frames still correct vision, but the AI features stop working.

Privacy may matter more than either of those limits. Wearing AI glasses in public is not illegal, yet the number of places that bar them keeps rising. Courts in England and Wales have prohibited Meta glasses from courtrooms, and New York adopted a similar ban in July, according to Engadget. Schools in many countries have also blocked students from wearing them in class. For someone who depends on the glasses to see, being told to remove them creates a real problem.

Corporate bans have been reported as well. The camera draws most of the concern, but audio can also be an issue, since a live translation feature could send private conversations to an outside server, Engadget notes. Meta has drawn criticism after outsourced workers were able to view intimate images and videos captured by its smart glasses. The company says human review sometimes happens to improve the product.

Social pressure is another factor. Negative coverage has led some owners to leave their AI glasses at home, Engadget reports, because they worry about being seen as stalkers or odd. A German nonprofit has already filed a criminal complaint over Meta smart glasses privacy.