Smartphones are identified for being a one-size-fits-all expertise answer. They work for nearly everybody, and if they do not give you the results you want 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 tried at Google I/O 2025 are a future smartphone alternative, that is an issue.
One thing you put on in your face must be rather more private to you than a cellphone you stash away in your pocket or bag. Good glasses must match your private type whereas additionally feeling snug, 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 affordable value.
Thus far, there is not a single pair of smart glasses and even one VR/XR headset that matches the invoice.
Meta appears to have gotten closest with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, providing the expertise in a handful of Ray-Ban kinds. They’re out there in traditional Wayfarer frames or an elegant Skyler look, plus just a few others. Nevertheless, 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 , I wrote that whereas I cherished the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, I’d never wear them again. It wasn’t as a result of they weren’t helpful or too expensive — 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 downside already. Solos’ AirGo 3 good glasses assist an unlimited prescription power vary of -15.00 to +10.00 when utilizing skinny lenses. There is not any excuse for Meta providing such restricted assist for prescription lenses when different firms, like Solos, have figured it out.
That is an accessibility downside, 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 strategy to Android XR glasses is the one to unravel this accessibility difficulty as soon as and for all. It is not making an attempt to make good glasses all by itself, neither is it limiting the corporate to a single eyewear accomplice. Whereas Meta selected to work with EssilorLuxottica — a legacy eyewear and optical model managing common 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 house, not less than by comparability to EssilorLuxottica, however they have been abundantly profitable. Warby Parker and Gentle Monster are extraordinarily common amongst youthful audiences and have new, hip kinds.
I’ve little doubt that Google’s upcoming Android XR glasses can 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 may possibly design good {hardware} that may match into a wide range of frames and kinds, so there’s one thing for everybody.
I emphasize the phrase potential as a result of there is no assure that Google would not simply comply with in Meta’s footsteps. It may decide 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 singular alternative to do one thing that is by no means been carried out earlier than within the good glasses house.
It could possibly leverage partnerships with Light Monster and Warby Parker to make good glasses which can be trendy, snug, and assist a variety of prescription sorts for the plenty, not simply the choose few who occur to have the ability to use Ray-Ban Metas.
