Today, Oakley has unveiled a new set of smart glasses, the Oakley Meta Vanguard, with built-in Meta AI, and integration with both Strava and Garmin out of the box, plus an onboard camera, bone conduction headphones, and a visual package that, unlike other smart glasses, doesn’t look awful and clunky.
This is far from the first time that additional tech has been shoehorned into the best cycling glasses. Those with long memories will recall the Oakley Thump, which lasted long enough to see a second version spawn (the Thump 2), both of which had an inbuilt MP3 player (remember those?) and in-ear headphones that hinged down from the temples.
I never tested those, but I did test some smart glasses from Engo that had a built-in head-up display that paired with my bike computer, and they were quite terrible, really. Bulky, difficult to use, the sunglasses aspect wasn’t brilliant, and the user interface was baffling to the point of madness.
Why, then, am I somewhat confident the Oakley Meta Vanguard will be any different, when smart glasses have come and gone in the athletic space countless times before? Well, there are several reasons.
They don’t look horrendous
Much as cycling glasses are about performance, for most of us they are just as much about style. The Meta Vanguard actually look decent, and for a lot of people the fact they have an ‘O’ on the temples is going to be as big of a selling point as anything else. Like it or not, Oakley is the biggest name in sports eyewear, and the fact that these have such a brand name behind them will do wonders for initial cut through compared to the slew of small start-ups aiming to ‘disrupt the industry’.
Prizm lenses
First and foremost, these are a set of sunglasses, and being available with Prizm lenses, specifically the incredible Prizm Road option, will be a boon for those who value optical performance.
Surprisingly, given how many of Oakley’s top models don’t have swappable lenses now, the Meta Vanguards do, so if they take off the initial suite of four lens options, they could well blossom into a wider selection to take in low light, fishing, golf, and the myriad other options in the Oakley…
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