Ray-Ban Stories

5owners with an opinion

60%of verdicts positive

0/1positive/negative since 2024

2 yrslongest happy owner

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for sound and ease of use; criticized for reliability and software.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 2 yearsStill going

I have the first gen Ray-Ban Stories (they look very similar), and almost nobody noticed (~3 people in 2 years). I have clear lenses and wear them like normal glasses every day. I mainly use them for the speakers for notifications. When the new Meta smart glasses were announced, I suddenly had >6 people comment on my old glasses. All the comments were positive, but it did make me more aware that I might get a negative reaction in the future.

Doesn’t like it

> Do you use Instagram much? Yes. Shops, doesn't work, really high friction way to buy stuff. Reels, great, but how long did it take to get it to work? especailly is it was(or should) have been a modified instagram TV > "Meta can't innovate" is a take I've been reading online since 2014 Meta has one product, which is advertising. It has singularly fucked up the blue app to the point where its basically unusable for anyone younger than 30. Its trying to get there with instagram, but thats a separate story. Instagram has been dented by Tiktok. the only saving grace is that the vast majority of impressions on tiktok are for people who are not yet old enough to have a credit card, or if they are, not enough spare cash to be worth targeting. However that is changing. Meta hardware is great. It's software stack sucks hard. Oculus: come and play games with us, just don't expect to be able to join your friends. Oh, and before you can play you need to do an update, oh and charge the device, because we wake it up every hour to check to see if we need an update. You want to join your friends? just start a party! oh wait that game doesn't support it. Ok. have you tried just phoning them? The amount of research that they are doing is phenomenal. Its just a shame there is no attention to customer experience so that all of that research can be applied to a product that is easy to use and does what it promises. Rayban stories: Headphones in your glasses! oh wait you want to listen to more t…

Likes it

I got a pair of the original Stories and they are my most favorite device released in the past decade except for the AirPods. Countless times I've wanted to capture something with my kids, or on a drive, or on a bike ride. I can just tap the button on my glasses and that's it. I'm not taken out of the moment at all. It's great. as for the other stuff, Bluetooth speaker included, I wish they would rip it all out.

Likes it

I have a set of original rayban stories. They are excellent hardware hampered by shite, shortsighted software, both on the glasses and on the app. 1) The killer feature is not the camera, but the sound. Having bluetooth audio with you, without stuff in/over your ears is really really great. 2) The physical button action is swapped. single press is video, long press picture. 3) the touch pad is hard to find and there is no texture difference. Not only that but its really easy to trigger music playing by holding them in your hand. Over all the hardware is great. Firmware, however, is utterly shite. For the first year, the maximum time you could get them to play music was about 15 minutes. They'd just stop, disconnect from Bluetooth and need a power cycle to get back again. They would randomly disconnect for shits and giggles. worse than cheap bluetooth headphones. Whom everlet them out the door in such a poor state, then compounding it by not actually fixing the problems, just shitting out half backed features, should be told off (I'm looking at you Boz). Then there is the assistant. Functionally limited, I don't use them because you have to say "hey facebook" as the wake word. I'm not saying that in fucking public. who though that was a good idea clearly has been with the company too long. The app is called "view" its now only just been integrated into the ios photoroll. for the longest while it had its own photo gallery, and you needed to manually sync the photos you wanted.…

Likes it

I see a lot of people complaining about display. These are not meant for that use case. Maybe someday the tech will be available to have a display. That said, I have v1 Rayban Stories and use them as my daily driver sunglasses. I use them mainly for answering calls or listening to music but take occasional photos.

Doesn’t like it

I had the original version of these (Ray-Ban stories), and I had to return them three times because they kept dropping the Bluetooth connection. I more or less only wore them while running, so my best guess is moisture from my sweating got into them. Given that they were advertised heavily for sports stuff, that was disappointing. The return process was also complicated and annoying. Overall, I'd recommend against buying the first generation of these new glasses.

Likes itDoesn’t say they own it

It seems to me like there's sufficient value even if the assistant can't complete any actions fully (e.g., can compose but not send an email; or maybe not even compose). There's so much potential simply aiding with executive function: what to do, when to do it, acquiring any dependencies, handling partial work, helping break down tasks, and a great deal of potential with perception if the assistant is highly available and perceives what the human perceives. (Rayban Stories could be pretty awesome for this, if they were hackable enough to actually prototype things on: https://hachyderm.io/@ianbicking/110833737363686936 ) Imagine a personal assistant that was always ready to respond to the question "what should I do now?" – and of course enter dialog, not just dictate an action. That you could tell about all your tasks, but not just the tasks but also the _why_ of the tasks, giving it the chance to set or change something like a deadline on its own, or even simply discuss those deadlines. Imagine you could co-develop a process with that assistant. Maybe there's times you like to do certain kinds of work... what are those? What features distinguish different kinds of work? If you have to do a certain kind of work, what do you need (time/place/mindset) to be successful? It doesn't need to be some magic algorithm, it can be a deliberative process that you engage in with your assistant, something conscious and explicit. Maybe it helps both move through and construct to-do lists. Y…