The Oakley Meta Vanguard are new displayless AI glasses designed for running, cycling and action sports with deep Garmin and Strava integration, which may make them the first smart glasses for sport that actually work.
They are a replacement for running glasses, open-ear headphones and a head-mounted action cam all in one, and are the latest product of Meta’s partnership with the sunglasses conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and many other top brands.
But where the popular Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer camera-equipped AI smart glasses are designed for general leisure, the Vanguard are unashamedly sports glasses designed to go fast and capture your efforts as you do it.
That makes them some of the most expensive screenless AI glasses you can get, starting at a not insignificant £499 (€549/$499/A$789), sitting above the £399 Oakley Meta HSTN and £379 Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer.
The Vanguard don’t look like your standard smart glasses. It is clear Meta brought the technology but Oakley brought the design, fit and finish. The huge wraparound visor, arms and three-point fit system mimic the excellent Oakley Sephara sport glasses, which keeps their 66g frame glued to your head no matter how hard you shake them or how sweaty you get, and they fit under helmets.
There are two frame colours and four contrast-enhancing lenses to choose from, but no option for prescription lenses. A small button on the left arm near the hinge allows you to turn the glasses on and off so you can use them just as sunglasses.
A speaker is hidden in each arm that points towards your ear for listening to music, calls or Meta’s AI chatbot. They are some of the best-sounding open-ear speakers you can get and are more than loud enough to be heard over road or wind noise. They can’t match a set of earbuds for bass but for music while running or just out walking they are great. The five beamforming mics also do a very good job of cutting out background noise, even on busy roads, for calls or talking to AI.
The right arm has a touch panel for controlling playback and volume manually. The music pauses when you take the glasses off, and the volume automatically adjusts to the level of background noise, which works really well while running around roads.
Specifications
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Dimensions: 136 x 120 x 59mm
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Weight: 66g (258g case)
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Water resistance: IP67
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Camera: 12MP/3K ultrawide
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Speakers: stereo open ear
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Mics: 5-mic array
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Battery life: 6h music playback (30h with case)
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Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, wifi 6
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Storage: 32GB
The central camera shoots 12-megapixel photos of reasonable quality and really good stabilised video up to 3K resolution for up to five minutes at a time. It can also shoot hyperlapses, which are a series of action shots stitched together into one sped-up clip, or slo-mo videos at up to 120 frames a second at 720p.
The camera can’t match a high-end phone but is very good for capturing the action as it happens, similar to the typical mid-range action cameras people strap to themselves. Press the camera button for photos or press and hold for videos, or you can ask Meta AI to take a photo or capture a video hands-free.
All these features, including music, auto volume and basic voice controls for volume, playback and the camera, work when connected to any Bluetooth device, such as a running watch. But for more advanced AI features the glasses need to be connected to an Android or iPhone running the Meta AI app.
You can ask Meta AI questions like any other chatbot, including what you are looking at using the camera. It can identify plants, translate text and generally interrogate the world around you. It is extremely handy for converting distances and paces between metric and imperial mid-run but isn’t quite as capable as Google’s Gemini on a phone.
You can also message, send photos and call friends hands-free from the glasses via your phone or with one of Meta’s apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram.
Vanguard’s killer feature is excellent integration with modern Garmin running watches and bike computers. A free Meta AI app on your Garmin links to the Meta AI app on your phone so you can interrogate your stats in real time mid-activity simply by asking.
The AI can tell you any of your individual metrics, such as pace, distance, heart rate, cadence and others, or the lot by asking for “my stats”, all pulled directly from your Garmin at that moment. It will also read out the pace or other metrics for each lap, mile or kilometre and can use the little LED to the right of your eye to show if you are on target during a pace or heart rate zone workout, turning red when you are outside your zone.
The Garmin integration also enables the camera to automatically capture your walking, hiking, running or riding workouts. It shoots five-second videos for every kilometre or mile, or when you hit certain milestones such as a burst of pace for a sprint finish or when your heart rate ramps up on a steep incline. Once you have finished, the Meta AI app then stitches the videos together with any you took manually into a highlights reel when you get back. You can then overlay stats from the workout, such as distance, pace, elevation, time, heart rate and power, and send it to Meta’s apps or Strava to automatically add to your existing workout post.
The whole thing works fantastically, and while you’re not going to want to create videos for every run, automatically capturing highlights from a race without you having to do anything is a great bonus.
Capturing all this video dents the battery life. On an hour-long run listening to music and talking to Meta AI lots of times, with 14 five-second videos auto-captured and 13 minutes of 1080p/30fps video and 14 photos taken manually, the glasses ended the run with 25% battery left.
They should last for a full marathon with auto-capture turned on, but you may have to be careful with extended shooting to make the full 42km distance.
For those who don’t use a Garmin, the Meta AI app can integrate with Apple Health, Google Health Connect or Strava to pull data from other watches or bike computers after the fact, including the Apple Watch and Coros devices. But the metrics overlaid on videos are more limited, and you get none of the auto-capture or mid-run stats.
Sustainability
The battery in the glasses will maintain at least 80% of its original capacity for 500 full-charge cycles. Replacement lenses (£69), charging cases (£139) and nose pads (£10) will be available but the glasses are not repairable and the batteries not replaceable, ultimately making them disposable. The glasses do not contain recycled material and Meta does not operate trade-in schemes or publish environmental impact reports for the glasses.
Price
The Oakley Meta Vanguard cost £499 (€549/$499/A$789).
For comparison, the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer (gen 2) cost from £379, the Oakley Meta HSTN cost from £399, the Oakley Sphaera cost £191 and the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 cost £169.
Verdict
The Oakley Meta Vanguard are the best smart glasses for sport I’ve ever tested. They are extremely expensive but it’s very clear they are designed for runners and sports by people who actually run.
By concentrating on things runners, cyclists and adventure sports people want, such as a fit that won’t quit, lenses that actually block the wind from your eyes, proper water resistance, loud open-ear audio, long battery life and good controls, they would be great without more of the fancy features.
The nose-mounted camera is very good and could easily replace an action cam for many. The mics continue to work at pace and Meta’s built-in AI is useful for answering those mid-run questions that always pop into your head.
But the killer feature it is the integration with Garmin, for stats mid-run and for automatic highlights reels of your routes from the camera. It’s just so easy but requires carrying your phone on a run, which is a bit of a drag. Strava and other fitness app links offer something for non-Garmin users.
If you ditch the phone and use them directly with a running watch for music, the auto-volume and basic voice commands for volume, playback and the camera still work.
The very high price is hard to swallow but the biggest issue is the irreplaceable battery: you can swap the lenses and nose pads but like most earbuds and other smart glasses they are unrepairable, losing them a star.
Pros: big and great lenses, secure fit, well balanced, loud open-ear speakers, noise-mounted camera, IP67 water resistance, long battery life, good case, excellent Garmin integration, good Strava and other fitness app links, swappable lenses and nose pads.
Cons: very expensive, unrepairable, needs phone for most advanced features, overkill for just audio on runs.
