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PCMag steers Ray-Ban Display buyers toward the cheaper, green-only Even G2
Meta's $799 glasses have what PCMag calls the best display of its class, a full-color 600-by-600 window 20 degrees wide, and the review's buying advice still goes to Even Realities' $599 G2 or to waiting for Android XR.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- PCMag tested Meta's $799 Ray-Ban Display, whose full-color waveguide display shows walking directions, live captions and translations, text messages and photos through the lens.
- At 2.47 ounces the frames outweigh the non-Display Wayfarers at 1.87, the Rokid Glasses at 1.73 and the cameraless Even G2 at 1.27.
- PCMag calls the hardware excellent but blames Meta's first-party ecosystem focus, and points buyers who want broader functionality to the $599 Even Realities G2 or to waiting for Android XR.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision The buying choice PCMag leaves is between the better screen and more functions, and it costs $200 less to take the functions.
- constraint If the limit is whose apps run on the glasses, a buyer's own developers have nothing to build against, so the gap does not close with internal effort.
- contradiction PCMag's recommendation rests on the ecosystem, yet the same review names field of view as the biggest weakness, so the optics-are-solved reading is not what the measurements say.
- precedent Telling buyers to wait for Android XR sets the bar for the next pair at app availability, not at grams or degrees.
Waveguide optics are the reason the screen is good and the reason the window is small. PCMag sets out the trade-off against the bulkier prism systems used in other AR glasses: a narrow field of view, relatively low resolution, and usually a monochrome green image [8].
Meta cleared two of those three. The 600-by-600 panel sits in the right lens and is full color, ahead of the green-only Even G1, G2 and Rokid Glasses [7]. Field of view is the exception: the Display's is 20 degrees, against 27.5 for the Even G2, 30 for the Rokid, 46 for the RayNeo Air 3s Pro and 57 for the XReal One Pro [6].
Count the pixels and the narrow window looks less like a penalty. 600 by 600 is 360,000 pixels [11]. The XReal One Pro spreads 224,000 across its 57 degrees [12], and the Air 3s Pro 307,200 across 46 [13]. PCMag wrote that the Display "might take up less real estate in front of your eye, but it can show more information" [10], and the same review calls field of view its biggest weakness [20].
The projectors make the frames heavier. At 2.47 ounces they are 0.60 ounces heavier than the non-Display Wayfarers, about 32 percent more [14], and roughly double the 1.27-ounce cameraless Even G2 [15]. PCMag says the heft "isn't unwieldy" and that the glasses "feel very natural and comfortable" on their spring hinges and rubber nose pads [18]. A friend of the reviewer described the design as "a choice" [17].
The temple touch strip handles play, pause and track skip, plus a long press for Meta AI [19]; everything else goes through the Neural Band, a fabric wristband with eight sensors that reads gestures from muscle movement in the forearm, worn a few inches below where a watch sits [2]. The reviewer wore it alongside a Pixel Watch 3 on the same arm [21].
The verdict turns elsewhere. PCMag's conclusion is that the hardware is excellent but "limited by Meta's first-party ecosystem focus, preventing it from being truly groundbreaking" [3], and the advice that follows is the $599 Even Realities G2 for broader functionality, or waiting to see how Android XR shapes the market [4]. That makes the recommended pair the cheaper one by $200 [16]. The review measures optics, weight and controls; it does not list which functions a third-party app cannot reach [3].
For a buyer, the line runs between the shift tasks Meta's own software covers and everything else. Walking directions, live captions and translations, text messages and photos sit on Meta's side of it [1]. For a team whose work mostly sits on the other side, the ecosystem limit PCMag names is what decides the purchase [3], and the $599 G2 does more of what they already use, in a green-only display [4][7].
What to watch
- Any move by Meta to open the Ray-Ban Display to third-party apps would remove the limit PCMag's verdict rests on.
- Android XR hardware arriving with comparable waveguide optics and an open app store, the outcome PCMag tells buyers to wait for.
- A color successor to the green-only Even G2 at or near $599 would take away the review's fallback recommendation.