Oakley Meta HSTN review: smarter than the average glasses – a whole lot smarter!

I feel pretty well qualified to write this review. I’m a technology writer and photographer by trade, a motorcycle nut by choice, and a spectacles wearer by necessity, all of which stand me in good stead for the job in hand. I’ve long been an Oakley fan and here’s why, by way of a brief potted history. Jim Jannard started the company with a $300 investment back in 1975, naming it after his dog ‘Oakley Anne’, working out of his garage, making handlebar grips for motocross bikes, then selling them out on the road.

The first Oakley ‘O-Frame’ goggles surfaced in 1980, followed by skiing goggles in 1983 and ‘Factory Pilot’ sunglasses in 1984. The company has become massive on a global scale, making everything from glasses and goggles to shoes, watches, backpacks, and all sorts of sporting and fitness apparel and paraphernalia. Renowned for their quality, Oakley products feature on the approved lists of the US military, government, law enforcement, fire and EMS departments.

The Oakley Meta HSTN camera glasses that I’m reviewing here are typical, trademark Oakley. They’re designed and built with performance and sportiness in mind, but are simply so fine-looking, functional, and fashionable that they’re equally well suited to daily life, whether you’re commuting to and from the office or enjoying the great outdoors on your time off. All in all, they’re vying for a place in the hall of fame of the best camera glasses you can buy.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Specifications

Oakley Meta HSTN: Price

Oakley branded kit doesn’t come cheap but the quality is generally more than good enough to make it good value at the price. These Oakley Meta HSTN camera glasses start at $399 / £399 / AU$629 for the base mode, which have black frames and clear or tinted lenses. Pricier options include fancy frames in various colors, patterns and special editions, as well as transition and polarized lenses, with prices rising to as much as $499 / £499 / AU$719. You can also have the glasses fitted with prescription lenses.

As another alternative, there are the more sports-focused Oakley Meta Vanguard wraparound shades, which are pricier to buy, but the Meta HSTN look and feel the more everyday, everywhere glasses. They’re also similarly priced to the likes of Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 Wayfarer and Headliner glasses, which have virtually the same specifications.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Design & Handling

Fitness fans will be well aware of Oakley’s sporty heritage. These camera glasses run true to form, designed with those of an athletic nature in mind. While they come with all the Meta AI trappings for hands-free phone operation, listening to music and podcasts, and for capturing POV video and photo stills, there’s also a physical performance element. Oakley is keen to point out that you can use the glasses for help in attaining fitness goals, ‘tracking every step of your progress through seamless integration with Garmin and Strava’.

I reckon that these Oakley glasses look and feel fabulous. The O-Matter frame has timeless character, with the comfort and practicality of Unobtainium nose pads. It all sounds very retro sci-fi but when you get right down to it, these glasses are designed with a sturdy rim and circular shape that’s well suited to cycling, golf and other sports, as well as hiking across rugged terrain or just negotiating city streets on your way to the day job.

I picked a pair of these Oakley glasses with gloss/matte black frames and tinted lenses. Just putting them on gives an instant feelgood factor, from the comfort of the fit and the style and elegance, to the effectiveness of the light filtering with 100 per cent UV protection. So yes, as sunglasses they work just fine. But that’s just the start of the attraction.

There’s a lot of smart tech packed into the frames and side arms, and a good place to start is with the array of no less than five microphones. These are useful for giving commands and asking requests of the AI software that powers the glasses, as well as for hands-free operation of your phone. Not just for talking, the glasses are equally on song for a listening experience, with high-quality sound courtesy of open-ear speakers built into the side arms. Whether you’re tuning into music or podcasts over Bluetooth, the glasses simply sound superb.

Let’s cut to the chase and talk about the actual camera that’s built into these camera glasses. Although it has a physically small sensor, it can capture video at 3K UHD at 30fps, or at 1080p at either 30fps or 60fps, with further options for standard, slow-motion and hyperlapse capture. Stills are shot at 12 megapixels. One factor of both stills and video capture that you might find a little frustrating is that you’re limited to portrait (upright) orientation shooting. There’s no landscape orientation option in the settings so if that’s how you want to shoot, the only practical solution is to take off the glasses and hold them in your hand, rotating them through 90 degrees. That said, you could also just tilt your head over on one side – not ideal.

Pretty much any high-tech gadget is only as smart as the software system that empowers it. In this case, the glasses’ smart functions are driven by Meta AI, the app for which is available as a free download. Simply pair the glasses with your phone and you can give voice commands and requests for pretty much anything you can think of, and mostly get relevant replies and agreeable outcomes. Compatible with iPhone (iOS 15.2 and above) and Android devices (Version 10 and above), the system also supports hands-free calling and messaging, plus interaction and special features for those with impaired vision, hearing or mobility.

Getting more hands-on, there’s a physical button on the top of the right-hand arm at the front. It’s literally a handy addition that you can tap with a short-press to take a snapshot, or hold down for a long-press to start recording video.

More of a hidden attraction, there’s an invisible touch-plate built into the right-hand arm of the glasses. You can simply slide a finger forwards or backwards along the plate to increase or decrease the volume of the built-in speakers, as well as tapping it for other functions.

‘Intelligent’ software and the variety of hardware from the camera to the microphones and speakers, all require some serious battery power for their operation. The glasses themselves have a built-in rechargeable battery with sufficient stamina for up to 8 hours of operation on a single charge. There’s also 32GB of flash storage packed in, sufficient for 1,000 or more stills photos and 100 or more 30-second videos.

It’s not just the glasses that are ‘smart’. The carrying case isn’t just for show, or for keeping your glasses safe when you’re not wearing them. The case has a USB-C port for charging the glasses, and also features its own built-in battery so you can charge up the case itself. The case then gives back-up power to recharge the glasses when they’re stowed, boosting the overall stamina of the battery from 8 hours to 48 hours in total. The case can be fully recharged in 3.5 hours.

As with other Meta AI glasses on the market, the Oakley specs can only be paired with one phone at a time. Moreover, if you want to start using them with a different phone, you’ll need to carry out a factory reset. It’s not hard to do – just turn them on and then fold the arms across (as in the photo below). Now tap the operating button on the top of the right-hand arm five times, then long-press the button to apply the reset. The internal memory is completely wiped and the glasses restart before automatically going into pairing mode, ready for connection to a new phone.

Unlike even a basic digital camera, the sunglasses naturally don’t have a built-in screen, so you can’t review any photos or videos that you capture. However, you can configure them to automatically save media on your phone, as well as optionally storing media in the cloud-based service of your choice, for review on other devices. The gallery below contains a few example screenshots from the Meta AI phone app.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Performance

These are premium camera glasses with a price tag to match, so I was expecting very good performance. I wasn’t disappointed. There’s virtually nothing to choose between the Oakley offering and the similarly high-performance Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 Headliner that I’ve also tested. The look and feel of the glasses as well as the quality of stills photos, video capture and sound is streets ahead of what I’ve experienced from relatively cheap options, like the OHO Sunshine Camera Glasses.

The Oakley glasses feel like a marriage of artificial intelligence and augmented reality, serving up a treat for all the senses. Performance in terms of audio quality is very pleasing, ideal for listening to music as the soundtrack of your day, or for catching up on the latest podcasts. And if it really is better to give than to receive, the microphones deliver excellent audio quality to recipients that you’re talking to via your phone.

12 megapixels might not sound like much in this day and age but photo quality for stills looks sharp with plenty of attention to fine detail and texture. There’s also natural color rendition and good brightness, contrast and dynamic range. Video looks very impressive, showing that high-end performance is attainable even when using a tiny little lens like the one shoehorned into this glasses frame, with very pleasing results whether you’re shooting 3K UHD or 1080p.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Sample Images

The gallery of example shots below were taken in variable weather conditions around the Floating Harbour in the English city of Bristol.

Image 1 of 17

Oakley Meta HSTN: Video

The sample video shown above is a joined-up selection of clips, captured in the Somerset village of Pensford and at Bristol Docks, both in the south west of England.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Verdict

Put on a pair of these Oakley Meta HSTN glasses and you feel like you’re ‘putting on the Ritz’. They’re the embodiment of everything that’s so great (and stylish) about the Oakley brand, and has made it such an enduring success over the last few decades. And while there’s a lot of history behind these camera glasses, they’re bang up to date in terms of clever Meta AI technology and high-performance tech. That counts not just for the camera but also for the 5-microphone array and built-in speakers.

The Oakley glasses are also high achievers from a quality standpoint, for talking, listening and shooting video and stills. To be picky, I feel it’s missing a trick that you can’t shoot in landscape orientation, but that’s par for the Meta AI smart glasses course. If you’re an Ethan Hunt wannabe or an international man of mystery, you might also feel aggrieved that you can’t shoot stills or video without the privacy lamp lighting up, but at least everyone knows where they stand, and what’s going on. Either way, these Oakleys are seriously smart glasses.

Alternatives

The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 Headliner continues the heavyweight sunglasses contest of Ray-Ban vs Oakley. Running on the same Meta AI platform and seemingly having the same built-in tech, they’re incredibly similar in terms of all-round performance and are also similarly priced.

The OHO Sunshine Camera Glasses is part of a fairly wide range of smart glasses from the same Chinese manufacturer. This pair is one of the least expensive in the line-up but still musters 1080p FHD video recording and 24MP stills with a bargain basement price tag.