The Breaker Times

I have two pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses that I wear on the regular. One is well-documented here — the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. They’re still pretty new in the scheme of things, and still a heck of a lot of fun to wear. They’re a great addition to my glasses lineup.

The others are old-school Wayfarer frames. No smarts. I’ve replaced the lenses. And they look like they’ve seen a thing or two, having traveled to multiple continents multiple times. My Amazon order history dates them back almost a decade now — I bought them in January 2015.

And that highlights my biggest concern about the Ray-Ban Meta frames. By all accounts they’ve been great. The speakers are surprisingly good. The camera is a lot of fun. I don’t care about any of the Meta UI stuff, but that’s a user problem, not necessarily a product problem. And they’re getting regular updates.

But when I look down at the two pairs, I can’t help worry that the more technologically advanced of the two isn’t going to be in my gear bag come 2034. And that’s not just true for the glasses but for just about any of the personal tech I use on a daily basis. I’ll probably be two or three more computers deep by then. Certainly a few more phones. Probably new headphones or earbuds. Maybe my trusty Canon mirrorless cameras will still be in the rotation, seeing as how that sort of product tends to have a pretty long life. (Barring breakage and assuming I haven’t upgraded just on principle.)

But the Ray-Ban Meta glasses are different. They’re basically a little computer mounted inside a pair of glasses frames, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform, and that means they do far more than my trusty Wayfarers. Sure, both shield my eyes. But the Ray-Ban Metas (that remains such a clunky name) also serve as better-than-good open-ear headphones. They serve as a pretty interesting point-of-view camera. They allow for all sorts of hands-free fun.

And that’s their Achilles’ Heel. If and when they find themselves outdated — either because Meta has moved on from the AR1 platform, or there simply is something better available — there’s going to be very little reason to lug around glasses that weigh more and aren’t quite as svelte as more standard frames.

I don’t know if there’s an answer to that. (And if you’re about to shout “modular design!” just stop. That’s a dream not based in reality.) I think we just need to keep in mind that these sorts of smart glasses are going to find themselves obsolete at some point. Not entirely — they’ll still serve just fine as sunglasses for as long as any other pair.

But the tech that’s built inside — the parts that truly make the Ray-Ban Meta glasses special — aren’t likely to be as timeless as their analog counterparts.