These are my favorite workout headphones right now, because I only have to grab one accessory instead of two when I head out the door. My poor ears are the hooks of my head; Now instead of trying to thread my headphones around my hat, hair and sunglasses, I can put them on. As we noted in our review of the Meta smart glasses, the small over-ear speakers have surprisingly good audio quality. They are loud enough to hear while running outside in a medium-sized city; The mandolin strums on the band’s “Atlantic City” sound clear and bright.
It’s also incredibly convenient to be able to receive and make calls and listen to text messages while running without having to take out my phone. I understand that many people want to be able to distract themselves while running, but I will stop what I’m doing if I get a call or text from my spouse, my kids, my kids’ school, or my parents. It’s not hard to imagine how much fun it would be if I could make video calls while walking. Personally, it’s not very likely for me, since my family doesn’t use whatsapp or messengerbut it’s not out of the question.
Quick shot
Unlike most smart glasses I’ve tested for WIRED, these are very easy to interact with. The controls are easy to remember and calibrated to perfection. Pressing the button to take a photo feels natural. Tapping the glasses to pause or restart the audio or adjust the volume always works. My hair or my hat never accidentally starts or stops a song.
The camera is also good and I love being able to quickly take a photo of whatever I’m looking at. When I don’t use Metas, I miss them. I’ve outsourced about 80 percent of my brain to my phone’s camera roll, and when I can’t capture a special moment, I really feel like I’m missing out, like that time I rushed to attend the New Year’s Eve party. of my daughter. musical performance of the school year and was the only parent who did not record it. But wearing smart glasses with a built-in camera alleviates that anxiety. It’s also much faster and less obvious to record with Metas than it is to pull out a phone and hold it in the air. This ability to discreetly record the world around me has also made my husband nervous. “Shouldn’t you ask them?” he says every time someone accidentally walks in front of me while I’m surreptitiously taking a photo. (Ought?)
Intelligence quotient
But the real breakthrough here is the inclusion of Meta’s voice-activated AI assistant. It’s silly but it’s true: what finally made AI seem useful to me was shrinking it down and installing it on my face.
As we watch the rise of AI devices and quasi-intelligent chatbots, I’m not clear on what exactly I’m supposed to do with all of them. I like to use ChatGPT to figure out what to do with leftovers, but most of the time I don’t have questions that a quick Google search on my phone can’t answer. That all changed when I started using Metas. Once I put on a pair of voice-activated glasses, the world was filled with questions and I wanted answers.
How much did that house across the street cost? The AI couldn’t tell me, but it did tell me that I needed to repave the road in front of my house. I asked him to identify plants and cars, and he did a good job on both. (It might help that my neighborhood has mostly distinctive vehicles of the Subaru Forester and Dodge Challenger variety.)
