Jogging on a treadmill in jeans at Meta’s Menlo Park campus when it’s nearly 80 degrees isn’t my idea of a good time. But I was curious what Meta’s new wraparound smart shades, and a Garmin sports watch, would do for me.
I couldn’t see workout stats floating in front of my eyes, not yet at least, but I could ask for my heart rate on demand. AirPods can do that, too. But AirPods can’t record my POV exercise highlight video with overlaid stats for showing off later.
The new Meta Oakley Vanguard glasses, coming Oct. 21 for $499, are not your everyday specs. They make the bold Oakley Meta HSTN glasses released this summer look tame. In them, I look like a dad with a serious midlife crisis. Xtreme Scott should only wear these glasses while doing something sporty, which is exactly Meta’s target market.
Meta’s smart glasses lineup is growing a lot bigger at Meta Connect this year. In addition to these sporty specs, Facebook’s parent company is going to sell updated Meta Ray-Bans, as well as a futuristic version called Ray-Ban Display Glasses, which include a display in the lenses and a neural wristband.
The Vanguards are the smart sports visor of the group. They’re also a further move by Meta to try to get into the fitness and health space, an area that hasn’t been Meta’s strong suit at all, although I love VR workouts on its Quest headsets. They have onboard audio that gets piped in off-ear, but the single camera is now centered in the middle of the frames above the nose bridge, and has a wider 122-degree field of view. It’s designed to better capture sports clips, and improved audio and microphones promise higher volume levels and better environmental noise reduction.
They also have better battery life than the recent Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses updates. Meta promises nine hours of battery life on a charge and another 36 hours in the charge case, which fast-charges to 50% in 20 minutes (a new feature in Meta’s other recent glasses, too).
Camera tricks, audio help
The wider field of view and centered camera sound like features I’d want on the other Meta glasses too, but those will be exclusive to the Vanguards. However, new slow-mo and hyperlapse time-lapse video recording modes on the Vanguards are also coming to the 2025 Ray-Bans and other Oakley glasses.
The five microphones have wind isolation that should make hearing the glasses better in outdoor situations like biking, skating or skiing, or whatever you’d try doing in these.
They’re IP67 water- and dust-resistant, too, so they should be better suited for some watersports. That being said, IP67 isn’t the same as being swimproof, so I’d still be careful.
Layout changes
The volume controls and a touch panel are still on the right side of the Vanguards’ arms, a tiny bit recessed this time. A camera control button is on the underside of a ridge on the right arm, which could be easier to press on the go. Across from it is a second programmable action button that could be used to activate specific slow-motion recording modes.
Garmin and health connections may be a work in progress
My brief test of using Vanguards with a Garmin watch didn’t feel fantastic. While the Garmin watch tracked my workout, I could ask the glasses for my heart rate and pace. My heart rate took a while for the watch to register properly, and the pace measurement didn’t seem to be working. It turned out that the Garmin watch wasn’t paired with the treadmill for my demo, a Meta team member told me later, but it’s a sign of potentially awkward pairing triangulations with two wearables at once. The Vanguards lean on data from the paired Garmin watch. They don’t have their own onboard fitness tracking. The Vanguards can also work with Strava, however, to track and share fitness stats.
Inside, a new color LED activates on the periphery inside the glasses to indicate heart rate zone targets, something I didn’t notice when I demoed them briefly.
Meta’s also linking to Apple Health and Android Health Connect. The glasses can pull data from those sources and add them to highlight videos, which can overlay moments of your workout that get captured in periodic bursts and edited afterwards. But only Garmin watches can relay live heart rate.
I’m curious how much farther Meta can go, though. Apple and Google already can do far more with their connected products. While Garmin is a great brand, it’s also an isolated one for now. I’d like to see more watches get supported with the Vanguards, but it’s unclear when or if that will happen.
Foot in the door
Vanguards certainly look like a promising wearable for sporty types. Meta’s going after both GoPro and the health and fitness landscape with these, but there’s a lot more ground to cover. I’ll be curious how they perform when CNET does a review next month, but I’m not sure I’m extreme enough to test them. We’ll see.
