Meta's camera-free Ray-Ban Audio Glasses are now shipping, and they cost $349.
The frames come in two shapes, Clubmaster and Burbank, and are available on Amazon starting today. Dropping the camera let Meta trim the hardware down to its slimmest, lightest AI glasses yet, while doubling battery life over earlier camera-equipped models. Open-ear speakers with spatial audio pipe in music and calls without blocking out street noise, and a 6-microphone array cancels over 90 percent of background noise on calls. A temple touchpad and action button trigger Meta AI for calendar checks, walking directions, and real-time translation across 20 languages.
Battery life is the real upgrade: up to 12 hours of mixed use or 6 hours of continuous audio, plus 48 more hours from the charging case, with a 22-minute charge restoring half a charge. That matters because battery anxiety, not camera ethics, is usually what kills a smart-glasses habit after the first week.
The bigger story here is Meta hedging its bet. The original Ray-Ban Meta glasses sold cameras as the main feature, cameras that also made strangers uncomfortable. This version strips that out entirely, betting that voice AI and audio alone are enough to justify $349 for a product you still have to charge nightly and tether to Meta's ecosystem for every feature past basic music playback.