Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 Review. An honest, real-world test for Coleman Opticians

By Lee Blanchflower of Blanc Creative, for Coleman Opticians

Why I’m reviewing these (again)

Last year I lived with the original Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarers for Coleman Opticians and gave them an honest write-up. The verdict was simple: brilliant glasses, genuinely useful tech, let down by one thing — battery life. Four hours just wasn’t enough to trust them as an all-day pair, especially if they’re doubling up as your prescription specs.

So when Meta announced the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2, the one question I cared about was whether they’d fixed the battery. I’ve now had a pair on my face for the last few weeks — on the school run, walking the dog round the village, filming on client jobs, taking calls in noisy Norwich coffee shops, and running with them on a few of my half-marathon training routes. I’ve synced everything to my iPhone (still Apple through and through), lived with the new case, and pushed the camera as a working photographer.

Here’s the honest version: what’s better, what’s the same, where they still fall short, and — the bit a lot of people are actually asking me in the practice — how they stack up against the Oakley Meta glasses I now wear most days myself.

Brand context: still a Ray-Ban first, a gadget second

The thing Ray-Ban has always understood is that nobody wants to wear a computer on their face. They want to wear Ray-Bans. The Gen 2 keeps exactly that philosophy. Look at them next to the originals and you genuinely cannot tell them apart — same Wayfarer, Headliner and Skyler silhouettes, same classic moulds, the same “these are just sunglasses” presence. There’s no heads-up display, no glowing screen, no sci-fi visor. (That’s a different product — the Ray-Ban Display — which sits at a much higher price and is a whole other conversation.)

What’s changed with the Gen 2 is all under the hood. And for once, the upgrades land exactly where they needed to.

What’s actually new in the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2

If you’re upgrading from the Gen 1, or weighing up which to buy, these are the headline changes:

• Roughly double the battery life — up to around 8 hours of typical use, versus the ~4 hours of the original.
• A larger battery cell — about 42% more capacity on the frame than Gen 1.
• Fast charging — roughly 50% in 20 minutes when you drop them in the case.
• A redesigned charging case giving up to 48 hours of top-ups on the go (the Gen 1 case managed nearer 32–36).
• 3K Ultra HD video (up from the Gen 1’s vertical 1080p-class capture), still up to 3 minutes per clip, now with 3x digital zoom and slow-motion.
• “Conversation focus” — the open-ear speakers can amplify the voice of whoever you’re talking to in a noisy room.
• Expanded live translation — now handles English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
• Same 12MP ultra-wide camera, 32GB storage, Wi-Fi 6, and a small bump to Bluetooth 5.3, with the same IPX4splash resistance.

UK pricing starts at £379 for the standard Gen 2 frames, or around £459 with Transitions lenses fitted. The Gen 1 Wayfarer, for context, has been drifting down to the £240–£300 mark as stock clears.

Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 vs Gen 1: the side-by-side

The short version: the Gen 2 is the Gen 1 with the two complaints fixed. Same look, same lovely fit, dramatically better stamina, and a noticeably sharper camera. If you already own and love your Gen 1, you’re not missing a revolution — but if you held off because of battery anxiety, that excuse is gone.

The battery: the upgrade that actually matters

This was the whole ballgame for me, so let me be specific about real-world use rather than just quoting the spec sheet.

With the Gen 1, anything over a 5–6 mile run and I was reaching for the case before I’d finished. Filming back-to-back clips could halve the battery inside an hour. It made me hesitant to rely on them.

The Gen 2 is a different experience. On a normal day — a few photos, some podcast listening on the dog walk, a handful of “Hey Meta” questions, a couple of calls — I comfortably got through a working day without range anxiety. On lighter days they’d still have charge left by the evening. Heavier days, where I was filming a lot or leaving Live AI running (where the camera stays on so the AI can see what you see), drained them faster, as you’d expect — but even then I was getting solid hours rather than panicking by lunchtime.

It’s not magic. Push the camera hard at 3K and you’ll still watch the battery move. But the combination of double the runtime, a 48-hour case, and a genuinely useful 20-minute fast charge changes the relationship. A coffee stop is now enough of a top-up to carry on. For the first time, I’d actually trust these as an all-day pair.

This is the single biggest reason to choose the Gen 2 over the Gen 1.

Camera, video and photos: the working photographer’s view

You all know my day job is shooting stills and video commercially, so I go into this with the professional hat on — and the same caveat as last time: these are not a replacement for a mirrorless camera, and they’re not trying to be.

What’s genuinely improved is the video. The jump to 3K Ultra HD is the most obvious upgrade over the Gen 1. Footage is crisper, holds up far better when you watch it back on a decent screen, and the extra resolution gives you a bit of room to crop for vertical platforms. The 3x digital zoom and slow-motion are nice-to-haves rather than headline features, but the core capture is clearly a step up.

Stills are still from a 12MP ultra-wide sensor, and that hasn’t changed. In good natural light — and Norfolk gave me a few of those this autumn — they produce vibrant, very usable shots for social and casual documentation. The magic, exactly as before, is the hands-free, eye-level POV. Filming a walk-and-talk on a job, capturing a cooking demo, grabbing a moment on the school run — you do it without breaking flow or pulling out a phone. That’s the bit a phone genuinely can’t match.

The limitations are also the same honest ones:

• Low light is still unforgiving. Indoors or at dusk, noise creeps in fast. A modern phone wins comfortably here.
• You still need to mind your framing. Tilt your head a touch or you’ll clip the bottom of a shot. Taller wearers, take note.
• Transfers can be slow for long 3K clips over the Meta app. Fine for one or two, less fun if you’re pulling ten across at once.
• It’s a social-and-memories camera, not a deliverable camera. I’d never hand a client footage shot on these as the main edit — but as a B-roll grab or a behind-the-scenes angle, they earn their place.

As a creative tool, I stand by what I said last year: a brilliant secondary camera that catches moments you’d otherwise miss.

Audio: still a quiet highlight, now a bit smarter

The open-ear speakers were always better than they had any right to be, and the Gen 2 keeps that up — warm, clear enough for podcasts and calls, and you stay aware of traffic and your surroundings, which matters when you’re running or cycling near roads.

The new trick is Conversation focus, which leans on the speakers and mics to lift the voice of whoever you’re talking to above background noise. In a busy café it’s a subtle but real help, and it nods at where this tech is heading for anyone with mild hearing difficulties — something the team at Coleman, who do hearing as well as eyes, will find interesting.

Controls are unchanged and still intuitive: single tap to play/pause or answer, slide along the arm for volume, double-tap to skip, triple-tap to go back. Within a day it’s muscle memory.

Meta AI and features

Day to day, Meta AI is the same broadly capable, occasionally vague assistant it’s always been. Ask it what you’re looking at and it’ll have a decent go — it identified plants and produce well enough on a walk, and it’s handy for quick questions without a screen. Ask it something genuinely specific and it can still give you a generic answer. Live translation now covering six languages is a real plus for travel, though it’s still a long way behind what a dedicated translation app offers in sheer language count.

Worth being clear: the standard Gen 2 has no display and no turn-by-turn navigation in your eyeline — that’s reserved for the pricier Ray-Ban Display. These are camera-and-audio-and-AI glasses, not AR glasses.

Privacy and public perception: still the elephant in the room

I’ll repeat what I said last time because it hasn’t changed, and it matters more as these get more common. The recording LED is subtle and easy to miss, especially in daylight. Unlike lifting a phone, glasses are discreet by nature — which is lovely for natural capture and uncomfortable for the person across the café who isn’t sure whether they’re being filmed.

In the UK, filming in public is generally lawful (I’ve written a full piece on UK photography law over on the Blanc Creative blog). The issue is rarely what you’re legally doing — it’s how others feel about it. My rule hasn’t changed: if I’m recording, I say so, and in sensitive settings I take them off. Wear them with manners and the vast majority of the awkwardness disappears.

A quick word on the five styles and sizes

One thing worth knowing before you buy is that the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 isn’t a single frame — it’s now a family of five, and the right shape makes all the difference to fit and how “techy” they read on your face. The Wayfarer is the one most people picture: that classic, versatile shape that suits the widest range of faces, and the only one offered in two sizes — Regular and Large — so there’s a proper fit whether you’ve got a smaller or a broader face. The Headliner is the slightly more retro, rounded alternative, and its party trick is coming in high and low bridge options, which is a genuinely useful bit of fitting flexibility if standard bridges tend to sit too high or slide down your nose. The Skyler is the smallest and most delicate of the lot — an oval, almost cat-eye shape with by far the widest choice of colours, and the one I’d point smaller faces towards, where a full Wayfarer can look a bit oversized.

Then there are the two newer Optics frames, built from the ground up for everyday prescription wear. The Blayzer is a slimmer, lighter rectangular shape, again offered in Standard and Large sizes, while the Scriber is rounder and softer — closer to a “normal” pair of glasses you’d wear all day. Both add the proper fitting hardware: overextension hinges, interchangeable nose pads and optician-adjustable temple tips, which is exactly the sort of thing that turns smart glasses from a gadget you tolerate into specs you genuinely forget you’re wearing. It’s also where popping into the practice pays off — the team at Coleman can match the shape to your face and dial in the fit properly, rather than you guessing a size online and hoping.

The big one: Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 vs the Oakley Meta glasses

This is the comparison I get asked about most in the practice now, partly because I’ve ended up wearing Oakley Metaglasses most days myself. There are two in the family and they’re aimed at different people, so let me cover both properly.

Oakley Meta HSTN — my everyday Oakley pair

The HSTN is the lifestyle Oakley: a bolder, more rounded look with Oakley’s Prizm lens tech and polarised options. Internally it’s very close to the Ray-Ban Gen 2 — same Meta AI, same 3K video — but with a couple of meaningful differences. The camera does a noticeably better job with image stabilisation, which you feel on the move, and there’s a neat touch where the volume adapts to ambient noise, lifting near traffic and dropping when it’s quiet.

The trade-offs are real, though. There’s essentially one frame style, the fit is a snug one-size performance shape that won’t suit every face, and at launch the prescription options were limited — that’s been opening up since, but it’s still less flexible than Ray-Ban’s huge range of frames and lens combinations. UK pricing starts around £399 and climbs to ~£499 for the fancier lenses and limited editions.

Why do I wear them daily? The Prizm lenses are gorgeous outdoors, the stabilised video suits how I shoot, and the styling fits my world. But I’m not relying on them as prescription glasses — and that’s the crucial distinction for a lot of Coleman’s customers.

Oakley Meta Vanguard — the one for runs and rides

The Vanguard is the proper sports pair, and it’s the one I reach for on a training run or a weekend ride. It’s a wraparound shield, and it leans all the way into performance:

• Up to ~9 hours typical battery, or ~6 hours of continuous audio — the best stamina of any of these.
• A centred camera above the nose with a wide 122° field of view, which gives genuine GoPro-style POV framing, plus slow-mo and hyperlapse.
• IP67 dust and water resistance — the first Meta glasses rated this high — and impact-rated lenses. The others are only IPX4.
• The loudest speakers of the bunch, which actually matters with wind noise at speed.
• Garmin and Strava integration, so for runners and cyclists they slot into the kit you already use.

The catch is that they’re £499, they’re heavier at ~67g, and they unapologetically look like sports glasses — you’re not wearing these to a client meeting. And in heavy-use sport scenarios (lots of 3K clips, auto-capture on) the real-world battery comes down a lot, so the headline 9 hours is a best case, not a training-day guarantee.

Full comparison table

So which should you actually buy?

After living with all three, here’s how I’d steer people:

• Buy the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 if you want one pair to wear all day, every day — and especially if you need a prescription. The styling is the most “everyday”, the frame and lens choice is by far the widest, and the fixed battery finally makes them dependable. For most Coleman customers, this is the right pick.
• Buy the Oakley Meta HSTN if you love the Oakley look, spend a lot of time outdoors, and want the better-stabilised camera and Prizm lenses — and you’re comfortable that prescription support is still catching up.
• Buy the Oakley Meta Vanguard if you’re a runner or cyclist who wants POV footage, the toughest build, the longest battery and Garmin/Strava integration — and you accept they’re a sports tool, not a daily frame.

The prescription angle (this is the bit that matters for Coleman)

Here’s where the practice earns its keep. Smart glasses only work if they fit and you can see through them properly. The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 supports a broad prescription range and the widest choice of frames and lenses of the three — single vision, varifocals and Transitions included. The Oakley pairs are sharper for sport but more restrictive on prescriptions.

Buying blind online means guessing on fit, lens type and prescription compatibility — and these are not cheap things to get wrong. Getting them fitted and glazed properly by an optician is the difference between a pair you wear every day and a £400 pair that lives in a drawer.

Final verdict

Last year I said the Ray-Ban Meta were great glasses held back by battery life, and that I was holding my breath to see whether the next generation would crack the all-day problem.

They have. The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 is the version I wanted the first one to be: same beautiful Wayfarer styling, a genuinely sharper 3K camera, smarter audio, and — finally — a battery you can trust through a full day. It’s an iterative update on paper, but it fixes the exact two things that mattered, and that makes it the easiest pair in this lineup to recommend to the most people.

The Oakley Meta glasses are superb in their lanes — the HSTN as a stylish outdoor daily, the Vanguard as a serious sports tool — and I’ll keep wearing mine. But if someone walked into the practice tomorrow wanting one pair of smart glasses to live in, prescription included, I’d point them at the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 without hesitation.

Pros &  Cons — Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2

Pros

• Battery life finally fit for all-day wear (~8 hrs + a 48-hr case)
• Sharper 3K Ultra HD video over the Gen 1
• Fast charge — ~50% in 20 minutes
• Classic Ray-Ban styling that doesn’t shout “gadget”
• The widest frame, lens and prescription choice of any Meta glasses
• Smarter audio with Conversation focus

Cons

• Still struggles in low light versus a phone camera
• Long 3K clips are slow to transfer in the app
• Recording LED is still easy for bystanders to miss
• No display or in-eye navigation (that’s the pricier Ray-Ban Display)
• Heavy 3K filming still drains the battery quicker than the headline figure

Ready to try them for yourself?

If you’re curious how the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 — or the Oakley Meta range — feels on your face, the only real way to know is to try them. As a long-time customer, I can say with confidence that Coleman Opticians are the place to do it: they stock the smart glasses range, they know their eyewear inside out, and crucially they can sort the prescription lensesproperly so you get a pair you’ll actually wear every day.

Coleman Opticians 7–11 St Augustine’s St, Norwich NR3 3DH | 01603 624564 | www.colemanopticians.co.uk

Drop into the practice, book an appointment, or give them a call — and see for yourself how smart eyewear fits into your world.

Review by Lee Blanchflower of Blanc Creative, for Coleman Opticians. Tested over several weeks in Norwich and across Norfolk.