Unexpected insights from owning AR glasses for a year

This essay is slightly off-topic for Remio, but we’re big believers in Augmented Reality (AR) and the Rayban Stories have taught me a valuable lesson about the success of AR.

About a year ago, after we raised our seed round, I started testing the Rayban Stories to determine the utility of smart glasses. Given that we want to be AR compatible in the future it felt like a good R&D experiment (on personal expenses I should add) to try state-of-the-art smart glasses and see what new ideas come to mind. Or perhaps I took Paul Graham’s advice of living in the future too seriously. :p

Deciding on the style

Deciding what Rayban model to get wasn’t easy because I needed transition lenses in order to use the smart features indoors and outdoors. Besides, when I’m listening to podcasts on the subway in New York, I don’t want to be one of those people wearing sunglasses inside the train. But the transition lenses are only available with an olive-colored frame. Black frame Rayban seems to be the most popular and safe bet in terms of style. I mean, how often do you see someone with olive-colored Raybans?

On the third visit to a Sunglass Hut, I dragged my partner along to check whether I should go with the trusted black frame or the eccentric olive frame. That’s when something crazy happened. Quick background; my partner has had a long track record of picking stylish clothes and accessories for me that have generated many compliments from others. Usually, I would try on something and the right choice is not immediately apparent, but she always seems to pick the right one in the end. This time, however, as soon as I tried on the olive frames, it looked like she melted in front of me (probably for the first time since our first date). “You look like Clark Kent!” she yelled embarrassingly in front of the sales person helping us. I personally think the more of my face I hide, the better, but I’m not a looks expert.

This made the purchase pretty obvious, and sure enough, after one year of owning them, it’s the piece of apparel that yields the highest number of compliments. Roughly 4 times more than the runner-up, my favorite leather jacket. What I didn’t know back then was that this was the first breadcrumb of a key lesson in wearable tech. Note, I don’t have a control test to verify whether glasses are more prone to compliments than clothes.

Motivation

Now, in context of my original motivation, I’ll explain what I found to be good and bad about the Rayban Stories. My original motivation can be laid out as follows:

I wanted to try new AR tech.
I wanted to try wearing see-through glasses for style (probably from spending too much time in Williamsburg).
I’ve never owned a GoPro and I do a decent amount of adventures and extreme sports which I’d like to record in the moment (see the video of my brother learning to snowboard).
I listen to so many podcasts that I dream in podcasts, so I wanted something that enables easy podcast listening on the move.
I sometimes walk and do calls, and these glasses do it.
I’ve never bought sunglasses, and felt like it’s about time to slow down crow’s feet wrinkles. :)
And probably the biggest reason originated in my first few days in San Francisco when I walked into a Best Buy and tried the Bose glasses which completely blew my mind for reasons explained below.

(Recording my brother learning to snowboard at Big Sky Resort, Montana)

When I donned the music-playing Bose glasses for the first time, it felt like my life turned into a movie with a soundtrack playing in the background. One of my fantasies has been to have a soundtrack running to my life and this was the first tangible taste of it. There is something beautiful about having stereo sound enter your ears separately, combined by the feeling of nothing in your ears and having clear audibility of what’s happening around you. Like VR, the effect of this is something you have to experience firsthand to really grasp the profundity - no explanation, photo, or video will do it justice.

The good and the bad

So how did the Rayban Stories fair in terms of my expectations over the past year? First, the AR on this device is a misnomer. It’s basically a combination device, much like smartphones combining telephones, maps, browsers, and cameras, the Rayban Stories combine glasses, cameras, and earphones. In the USA, people aren’t impressed much by the glasses, but in South Africa, where I’m from, everyone is blown away by it.

The transition lenses do their job, but they never become perfectly transparent. Thus, when I’m indoors, people can’t clearly see my eyes and I feel like they think I’m some jerk who doesn’t want to make human eye contact. But this could be solved by getting the best transition lenses on the market.

Videos and photos

Footage of my adventures has been a huge bonus with some unexpected surprises and let downs. The videos are great because the brightness automatically adjusts, producing high-quality content.

The video stabilization is also mind-blowing, with most videos I’m moving much more than what the camera is, and as we’ve learned at Remio raw first-person videos can be nauseating. I wish Meta would apply the same stabilization filter to all their native Quest videos…

Photos aren’t the best; they are crisp in good lighting conditions, but quickly become grainy if you're taking low-lit photos.

One unexpected bonus was that you can capture unforgettable moments while still being in the moment. I’ve been to a few concerts where everyone whips out their phone to record the moment instead of being in the moment. Finally, we have a piece of technology that might make us more human. These glasses allow you to hit record, forget about the tech, and fully embrace the moment – sometimes a bit too much, like me signing along to this song.

As for the unexpected drawbacks; the glasses are expensive $400 and I’m too protective to take them on some adventures like downhill mountain biking, skateboarding, some water sports, and trail running. Also, since you cannot see what exactly you’re capturing, you still need to use your phone to get the best shot and highest quality. I was hoping the glasses would let me capture the spontaneous fun moments in life, but most of the time I hit record just too late.

Although, some in-the-moment surprises do happen like this one at a friend’s wedding. This was not staged in any way! Just me hearing good music and hitting record.

Another annoyance is that you cannot listen to music and record video at the same time. Sometimes the current song and scene are in harmony and you want to capture both.

My hope is that in a few years, I’ll look back and be able to relive a bunch of memories, much like I do now with Google Photos, but with fewer gaps in history. I’m recording much more footage with these glasses on my head and you make friends feel good because you’re always taking videos and photos of them. However, with all this footage, it takes way more effort and time to find the good parts. The same is true for videos in VR and some solution like the GoPro video highlight tagger is sorely needed.

(I took the glasses with on our Mount Kenya hike and they lasted all day every day!)

One use case where actual AR features would help a lot is for sharing the content you’ve captured. Whenever I spot something that I want to share with others, it’s really easy to capture, but I still have to take out my phone to share it with them. It would be ideal to be able to share directly by using the glasses, but this would need a huge amount of tech development.

Sound

For podcasts, these glasses are a no-go. At max volume you cannot hear much if you’re in a noisy environment like a New York street (yes, New York streets are probably the noisiest place in the world). In dead quiet areas they are fine, but not so much anywhere else. I listen to podcasts at double the speed, but have to switch to normal speed to hear content on the glasses. Podcast players that allow you to boost the volume would be great. I’ve tried bone conducting headphones before but if I had to choose, the speaker experience will always win. Combining speakers and bone conduction would be ideal in my opinion.

The glasses are convenient for calls, but not great if you’re seeking high quality. The Quest VR headset has the best microphone noise cancellation I’ve ever experienced. E.g., we’ve done multiple large in-person events at Remio with people

talking and laughing right next to each other in real life but with zero background noise in VR. Thus my expectations for the Meta Ray-Bans was really high, but microphone noise cancellation on the glasses is similar to standard headphones. Speaker volume isn’t as much of an issue as with podcasts and you can cup your ear to hear more clearly.

The music use case probably had the most surprising outcome. Even though my initial experience was mind blowing, I didn’t find it to be a frequent need. I would play music sometimes while hiking with friends, but it felt like I was cheating by having the fun only to myself. Also, a key part of a hike is the sound of nature and you don’t want to be listening to Kanye West when on a peaceful hike, at least I don’t. It seems obvious now, but I found that I only listen to music while driving, flying, working, socializing, or randomly dancing in the kitchen. And, in each case, I have a quality speaker to play the music, so there is no need for music in my glasses.

Lastly, as sun glasses these glasses do the job. I’m addicted to the transient lenses and the thick frame also blocks peripheral sunlight.

Unexpected observations

Voice commands through the glasses are painful because the Facebook assistant cannot do much. I wish Meta would enable direct access to Google assistant through the glasses. This would make the glasses much more useful for setting quick timers, checking the time, navigating, and checking quick facts. Definitely an area that opposes Meta’s openness mantra.

Many readers probably wonder whether I’ve run into any privacy or creepiness issues similar to the Google glasshole issue. First, I should say that 95% of people never even realize that the glasses have cameras, or that they are smart glasses (maybe some wonder but are too shy to ask me - more data should be collected here). For the people who ask me or who I voluntarily inform, about half would react with “whoa that’s creepy, have you been recording all this time” and the other half simply find it really cool. I quickly react by demonstrating that when you record there’s a very obvious white light indicator.

Retrospectively, I use the smart features in the glasses roughly every second time I wear them. Here’s the distribution of features I use:

The surprising lesson for AR and wearable tech

At the start of this essay, I mentioned how surprised we were at the stylishness of the Rayban Stories. It’s become such an essential item in my wardrobe that I rarely leave the house without it because it makes me feel more confident. On the contrary, I’ve often wondered why the Apple Watch never appealed to me, even though all my Bay Area friends wear one. I wear my Tissot watch quite often, which also gets quite a few compliments.

Then it dawned on me; if an Apple Watch could look exactly like my Tissot watch, I would wear it all the time, because apart from being smart, it makes me feel smart. Thus wearable tech can be a super sticky product if it solves the core problem for users first. And in this case, the core problem is feeling as confident as possible by means of outward appearance. For wearable tech, style and design is a much more important factor than most think. The corollary is that products that are stylish will be very sticky for their customer base.