Don’t miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google.
Eager to try Meta’s new Ray-Ban Display augmented-reality glasses? Better hope you live near the limited number of stores that have them in stock.
Meta started selling these $799 smart glasses on Tuesday, each equipped with a computer, camera, and microphone, plus a tiny display embedded in the right lens. But it’s not following a traditional marketing strategy. The tech giant requires an in-person demo. And that can only happen at a limited selection of Best Buy locations and certain eyewear retailers.
The first attempt of tech analyst Avi Greengart, president of Techsponential, to try out Ray-Ban Display turned into a fruitless retail odyssey across northern New Jersey. “Meta doesn’t really want to sell them to you,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday.
“I went to the Secaucus, NJ location listed on Meta’s site and discovered that it is a shoe warehouse, not an electronics store,” Greengart wrote. “The actual Best Buy two miles away does not have any Displays on display, and although they can order them for you, projected availability isn’t until at least November.”
But even that wouldn’t have worked because Greengart wears prescription glasses, and the Best Buy he visited wasn’t handling that version. That left a tiny subset of the eyewear retail stores owned by Meta’s smartglass partner EssilorLuxottica, with the closest option for him on the East Side of Manhattan.
Greengart calls that a missed opportunity: “Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica should be a cheat code for that: it owns most major eyewear retailer chains, with over 1,000 US locations staffed with people trained in selling things that go on your face that might need prescriptions.”
We did some spot checking on Meta’s demo-scheduler page with ZIP codes in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and did not find much better availability.
Get Our Best Stories!
Your Daily Dose of Our Top Tech News
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
The only demo options near DC were at Best Buy locations on opposite sides of the District, each about 25 miles from the Capitol. San Francisco has one LensCrafters location on Market Street, a Best Buy about 8 miles south in Colma, and then a smattering of eyeglass retailers and Best Buy locations farther south. The choices were not much better around Los Angeles: a Ray-Ban store in Glendale and Best Buy locations in the suburbs of Downey and Canoga Park, with everything else 20-plus miles away from downtown.
Both San Francisco and LA do, however, have “Meta Lab” locations listed as opening in December.
Meta did not answer questions about Greengart’s experience or the total number of demo locations, but the company posted an FAQ on Thursday addressing other queries.
Recommended by Our Editors
That says the in-person demo involves more than sizing your wrist for Display’s Neural Band motion-sensing controller: “That way, you’ve tested the product, made sure you’re comfortable using a monocular display, and confirmed you’ve got the right size and fit.”
The FAQ says every store stocked with glasses has sold out, but doesn’t say how many pairs the company had shipped to them; it does pledge improved availability. “This month, we’ll double the number of locations to boost capacity,” it says. “We’re also evaluating online ordering as an option down the line.”
Greengart emailed on Wednesday to say he was chalking up Meta’s site steering him wrong to “just mismanagement” and that he would keep trying to give Meta his money: “The earlier I can get a unit, the earlier I can provide feedback to my industry clients.”
Meta is the highest-profile company to bring AR eyewear to a market previously occupied by smaller firms, but it will probably have big-name rivals soon enough. Google showed off Android XR eyewear co-developed with Samsung at I/O in May, and on Wednesday, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple is pausing work on an upgrade of its Vision Pro VR headset to accelerate developing its own take on smart glasses.
About Our Expert
Experience
Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
Read Full Bio
