Meta prices its camera-free glasses below the Ray-Bans that can see

Zuckerberg built his case for glasses on sight. "We think that glasses are going to be the biggest category because, first of all, they already are, and second, they are the only form factor that lets your Muse see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you throughout the day, and display information right in your vision, eventually," he said during the keynote ^[3]. He also said 2 billion people already wear glasses ^[4]. The camera is the first item on that list. The pair Meta put on sale first does not have one ^[5].

What the wearer gets back for giving up image capture is modest and measurable. Wired reports 12 hours of battery on the Audio pair and up to 48 hours using the charging case ^[8]; the Gen 3 gets up to nine hours, two more than the generation before it ^[14]. Dropping the camera buys three more hours per charge ^[22]. Meta's own store listing for the Audio glasses reads: "Built without a camera and more powerful than headphones, ask your glasses to play music or answer questions on the go." ^[11]

On Wired's numbers, going camera-free takes $100 off the price ^[21]. Mashable reported the Audio glasses at $249, a hundred dollars below Wired's figure, which would double that discount ^[7][23]. Mashable also lists an entry-level Gen 3 Adventurer style at $249 and says it could not find those frames for sale ^[15]. The special edition aviator version of the Gen 3 is $579 ^[13].

For the person who has to get these past whoever writes the camera policy, the work is straightforward. List the tasks you want Muse for, then mark each one as something it can do by listening and something that needs it to look. Music, questions and calls sit on the listening side, and Meta says the Audio pair does all of that minus image and video capture ^[10]. Anything that depends on what is in front of the wearer needs the 12-MP camera in the Gen 3 ^[14].

The VR Glasses are a different purchase on a different calendar. Wired says they run the same software as Meta's Quest headsets, with the computing and the battery moved to an attached puck ^[17][18]. The Mashable and Wired accounts are silent on whether Muse runs on them ^[25]. So a pilot this quarter chooses between an assistant that only hears and one that also looks. The Audio pair is the cheaper one, and it is the one already shipping ^[6].