I really wanted to like the Oakley Meta AI sunglasses, but they left me feeling like a creep

I recently penned an opinion piece where I suggested that Oakley’s latest AI-enabled sunglasses, the Meta Vanguard, might actually catch on. Having tested them over the past few weeks, I’m still of that opinion, but far from being filled with excitement at the new frontiers this will open for AI-enabled cyclists up and down the land, wearing the things made me feel a bit uneasy.

They are, from a technical standpoint, quite magnificent and offer things that the best cycling glasses cannot. The audio is great, the AI is responsive and actually useful if you’re into that sort of thing, and the camera is pretty decent considering you wouldn’t know it was there unless it was pointed out to you, all while being actually good at being a pair of sunglasses, something that the likes of the Engo 2 HUD glasses fell short of.

Being able to film people without them knowing, whichever way you square it, is creepy, and that’s something I just can’t get over, no matter how novel it is to ask my glasses to send a picture of the view to my partner.

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Design and aesthetics

The Oakley Meta Vanguards look, to all intents and purposes, like any other pair of Oakleys (in the broadest sense). Unless you knew there was a load of smart gubbins going on, then you could be forgiven for thinking they were just a slightly more bulky pair of wraparound shades.

In my gold version, with the Prizm 24k lenses, they’re certainly going to stand out. The lens isn’t crazy large like the likes of the Oakley Sutro, but it does wrap heavily and seamlessly continues over the temples where the touch-sensitive buttons live.

Inside the lens on the upper right of your vision is a little, white LED status light to indicate when the Vanguards are filming. It’s not the most clear, though, but luckily, there are also audio signals. Over the right-hand temple are two of the physical buttons. The larger of the two takes care of capturing; single press to take a photo, press and hold to begin recording video, with a single press again to stop recording. There’s a smaller button too, which can be customised to perform various functions.

Over the left temple is the power button, though just opening the arms and placing them on your face turns them on with a satisfying sound through the temple speakers, which I’ll get to shortly.

Music functionality is a big sell, and playback can be controlled by tapping (play/pause) and swiping (volume control) the touch-sensitive area on the outside of the right temple. They aren’t using bone conduction, just a pair of pretty punchy speakers that project the sound towards the vicinity of your ears.

Battery life is claimed to be 9 hours of ‘typical usage’ (it isn’t) and 6 hours of continuous playback. The case, which acts as the charging port, can also hold an additional 36 hours of battery like a powerbank if you find yourself somehow away from a charging port for that long, but still in possession of a bulky glasses case.

The fit is classic Oakley, with straight arms that wrap around the skull and grip the back of your head, combined with lightly rubberised arms and a grippy nose piece. They’re obviously going to be heavier than a standard pair of cycling glasses, at 67.1g (2.36oz), but the grip and retention are sufficient that they didn’t shake loose at all, even when riding off-road.

Unlike many cycling glasses, you cannot swap the lenses or replace them if they wear out, so it will pay to be a little more careful with them and pick the right lens. The 24k is cool to behold, but my advice would be to go for the Prizm Road lens; it’s far more versatile and won’t leave you squinting in lower light.

Naturally, I need to address the AI aspect. In order to set these glasses up, you need to download the Meta AI app, which is by far and away the worst thing I’ve ever had to download to my phone, including the work expenses app.

Instagram and YouTube are becoming increasingly awash with AI-generated slop, but the Meta app has a dedicated feed just for AI clips. Maybe if you’ve had a lobotomy recently, this might appeal to you, but any sane person should turn their nose up at such horrors as ‘man doing yoga spawns from a pepperoni pizza’, ‘creepy owl man with red eyes rides a motorbike’, and nine examples of ‘oversexualised woman',

Each of which cost many litres of water to ‘create’ - Yes, these are actual examples from my feed, and yes, we should all push back at the rising tide of utterly pointless AI-generated crap.

Once you’ve dodged the epicentre of brainrot and found the glasses tab, pairing the glasses with your phone is relatively easy. I ended up pairing them outside the case in the end, which isn’t the recommended way, but once they’re all set up, they just connect instantly with your phone when you put them on, and away you go. You can ask them to do all sorts of things now that will free your hands.

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Performance

Technically, the Oakley Meta Vanguards are quite an astounding bit of kit. Let’s get the actual sunglasses bit out of the way, as let's be real, that’s probably not why you’re considering buying these.

In true Oakley fashion, the optics are exemplary. I do think this is what sets these apart from other smart sports glasses, insofar as they’re not rubbish at being sunglasses, but actually very good. The Prizm Road lens is the way to go in my opinion, but in full sun, the 24k option is great. The field of view is decent, and while they aren’t vented in any meaningful sense and so do suffer occasional fogging, they sit further from your face than many other Oakleys and so don’t fog all that easily.

Considering how much they weigh, they are quite comfortable and very secure. I have quite a small head, though, and I do wonder if they might be a bit tight on those with large heads. I also found the arms interfered with the helmet cradle on some of my helmets, but this is often a problem we smaller-headed folk suffer with.

Given the shape of the arms and the weight, they aren’t a pair to slot into helmet vents, and obviously, once you take them off, you lose any of the additional functionality. I tended to slip an arm down the nape of my neck if I wanted to store them, but given the wrap of them, they sit quite proudly.

Onto the additional functions, then. Music is excellent. I listen to music all the time when I ride, but I cannot stand the insipid sound that bone conduction headphones like Shokz offer. These use actual speakers that deliver pretty decent audio while keeping your ears open to the elements to hear traffic. They also have a neat trick of auto-adjusting the volume depending on the wind noise, which was something I’ve not come across with any headphones before; it’s great! Given that the LED status light is very hard to see, the audio signals informing you of when you’re recording and taking a photo are very welcome and very clear.

The AI-assistant type of features are quite handy too. Asking my sunglasses to tell my partner I’ll be out riding for another hour or so, and even sending a picture of the view without having to stop or even take my hands off the bars is neat, though it can also be achieved in much the same way by stopping for a few seconds and getting one’s phone out. I tend to mute message notifications, as when I’m riding, I like to be able to switch off and having ‘NEW MESSAGE FROM JACK LUKE’ interrupting my sixth consecutive play of Pink Pony Club is annoying.

I must admit I tried and failed to pair the Vanguards with my Garmin. It is possible, I’m told, but the added functionality it brings is being able to ask my glasses ‘How am I doing?’, whereupon it will use several litres of water to tell me in my ears what I could glean by simply glancing down at my bike computer. This is one of those things that exists just to show off to your mates at the café and not something I consider an actual selling point. This may be more of a useful feature for runners, but I write for Cyclingnews, not Runner's World.

The camera, considering it’s installed in a set of sunglasses, is surprisingly good. The field of view is wide, and it’s natively portrait-oriented, giving you a big clue that the footage and images it captures are designed for social media rather than cinematography. The voice commands were relatively good at picking up what I wanted to do, but at speed or in windy conditions, I tended to use the buttons. The clips, as long as everything is all paired up properly, will be waiting for you in the app when you get home from your ride, ready to spam your Instagram stories with. A warning, though, they will have a wee AI glasses logo stamped on them, marking you out, whether you want to remain anonymous or not.

Unlike the music playback, which doesn’t appear to affect battery life that much, the camera does seem to drain the battery quite a lot. I managed to use about 75% of the battery in an hour and a half just by spamming the camera loads, so you need to treat it as snapshots and selective highlights rather than the ‘film everything and work it out in the edit’ approach that modern action cameras and giant memory cards allow.

So, all told, a technically marvellous bit of kit, but I’m afraid the Vanguards left me feeling like a creep. Unless you know these are AI glasses, you would just assume they’re a regular set of garish shades.

The camera, set right between your eyes, is so subtle that, even with the recording halo around it, I am certain many people wouldn’t know they are being recorded. It’s a sad fact that creepy men exist in all walks of life, and cycling is no exception. And I can’t help but feel that arming such men with a way of secretly filming women on rides from behind can only be a bad thing. You may suggest that the wearer has to loudly say ‘Hey Meta, start recording’, which would alert anyone to their intentions, but you can also just film by pressing the button silently, so that won’t cut it.

Meta’s other glasses have already been hacked by those wishing to keep their recording activities private with a mod to disable the recording light, so it’s no stretch to assume the same could be done here to achieve similar ends while riding or running, or just out and about. I think the Ray-Ban options have somewhat entered the public consciousness as a recording device now to some degree, but these may fly more under the radar.

I also feel that what they offer isn’t worth the emotional cost of having to say ‘Hey Meta’ to your glasses like a dweeb, or tie your sunglasses choice to a billionaire tech bro for all of your followers to see. While the functionality that is on offer is incredible for a pair of sunglasses, it’s also less good than what it is trying to replace. If you want really good ride footage, then buy a decent action camera and a pair of normal sunglasses. If you want great audio, then buy a good pair of headphones and a normal pair of sunglasses, and if you want to let your partner know you’re going to be home a little later, then stop and text them.

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Value

A set of these Oakley Meta Vanguard sunglasses will set you back a cool £499, or $499 in the USA. That’s quite alarmingly expensive for a pair of sunglasses, but with all they pack in in terms of added functionality, and with them being the first properly good pair of smart glasses for sports use, I don’t actually think they’re overpriced.

Good value? Well, that depends on your need. I’ve scored them somewhat decently for value because they’re groundbreaking more than they are useful. If you are an obsessive sharer of clips and pics from your ride to Instagram and Strava, then they will no doubt prove a welcome addition to your face, and likewise if you’re a tech-head who likes to show off the latest gizmo, then they will scratch that itch with aplomb, but in terms of being truly useful, I’m not so sure.

Verdict

I really am torn on the Meta Vanguards. Technically, I think they’re an incredibly impressive bit of kit. They somehow knit together decent audio, decent footage, and decent sunglasses into one package. For social media clips, they’re excellent at capturing true POV footage that’s instantly shareable, but I have been left wondering what they truly add to my ride.

I’m afraid I loathe having to say ‘Hey Meta’ aloud to a pair of sunglasses. It’s cringe in a way that somehow ‘Hey Alexa’, 'Hey Siri', or ‘Hey Google’ isn’t, though not by much. I’m far from a Luddite, but for me, riding a bike is as much about disconnecting from devices as it is about riding itself.

I hate the fact that I have to interact with the worst kind of AI slop just to use the sunglasses, and I hate the fact that somehow my sunglasses are part of Mark Zuckerberg's extensive ecosystem.

Most of all, I dislike the fact that there’s a camera between my eyes that can film people without them realising, even though I never use it for that. They made me feel uncomfortable just by connotation. At least with a phone or a camera, while you may risk crashing, your intentions are laid bare for the world to see. I don't really have a metric to mark them down for this, though...