Meta is finally building Ray-Ban smart glasses designed for prescription lenses

Meta is already miles ahead of the competition when it comes to the best smart glasses, but now the company's reportedly gearing up to debut a pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses aimed at users who actually wear glasses everyday. Codenamed Scriber and Blazer, the prescription-focused versions could launch as soon as next week, Bloomberg reports.

Meta and its AI glasses hardware partner EssilorLuxottica are working on two pairs of AI smart glasses designed for people who require prescription lenses. Granted, you can already get prescription lenses fitted into existing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, but these new models are being built specifically with that in mind.

Exactly how they’ll differ isn’t immediately clear, though I'd guess factors like battery life, design, and weight would be comparable to Meta's existing line. For now, though, that’s just speculation.

The Verge first spotted evidence of these new products in a series of FCC filings published by the agency earlier this month. The filings note Scriber and Blazer as production models, which suggests we'll see them on store shelves sooner rather than later. Since the filings are heavily redacted per usual, there's precious few details about the design or features we can expect. One interesting tidbit to note: The new models will use the Wi-Fi 6 UNII-4 band, a handy feature for reliable high-speed data transfers used for livestreaming and AI features that use live video transmission. Sources that spoke with Bloomberg on condition of anonymity said the models will come in "rectangular and rounded styles" and will be sold through "traditional prescription eyewear channels."

Meta's emerging new focus

All of this marks part of a broader push toward prescription users that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased in an earnings call earlier this year. “Billions of people wear glasses or contacts for vision correction. And I think that we’re at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones," he said. “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.”

For those of us who have spent years navigating the world through prescription lenses, smart glasses have always felt like a gadget designed for someone else. But Meta’s upcoming launch of the ‘Scriber’ and ‘Blazer’ Ray-Ban AI glasses feels like the first time the tech giant is actually speaking our language. Unlike previous models that felt like tech first and eyewear second, these new frames seem built from the ground up with four-eyes like me in mind. With sleek new rectangular and rounded styles—and rumored Wi-Fi 6 support for faster Meta AI response times—this might finally be the moment I trade my traditional frames for a pair that can actually talk back.

Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds.

More from Tom's Guide

• I’ve been wearing the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses for a week — they’re great, but they could be so much more
• I wore Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses while shopping at Target — 7 things that were surprisingly useful
• I've reviewed all of Meta's smart glasses, and this is the pair I'd actually buy