Meta x Oakley smart glasses confirmed with official announcement coming this week

After a pretty successful partnership with Ray Ban, Meta is officially set to partner with Oakley to expand its smart glasses offerings for a sportier crowd. A new co-branded Instagram account @oakleymeta has just posted a video showing the Meta and Oakley logos, along with the caption, "The next evolution is coming on June 20."

Rumours of the collaboration were first heard in January. At the time, Bloomberg reported that the first model would be based on the Oakley Sphaera glasses, and was code-named "Supernova 2" (the Ray Ban Meta lineup was internally called Supernova).

While the Ray Ban smart glasses (curr. discounted by 20% on Amazon) are designed with style in mind, the Oakley ones will naturally be aimed at athletes. The previous report had also mentioned that unlike Ray Ban's models, the new glasses will shift the camera to a centred position. Both Ray Ban and Oakley are owned by eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.

Meta is also said to be working on a Ray Ban pair of glasses with a built-in display, which would bring it a step closer to true augmented reality, but that will naturally be a pricier model. While it seems unlikely that the first Oakley smart glasses will have any significant new features over the existing Ray Bans, they should broaden the market by appealing to a sports-oriented audience.

The Ray Ban Meta partnership was announced a full year before the first product was launched, but that was back in 2020-21. With the platform now quite mature, and in light of the prior report, we're hopeful that Friday's announcement will be a new product reveal, rather than just an official announcement of the partnership.