Why Buy 3 Pairs of AI Glasses? Exploring the Buyer’s Perspective
AI glasses need "tap water".
Standing at the end of 2024, when the domestic "hundred-mirror war" has officially started, talking about Ray-Ban Meta seems to be a bit "outdated". Even in the technology circle, few people will feel strange about "wearing Ray-Ban Meta".
But when more than four out of ten people around you are wearing Ray-Ban Meta, you will still feel a strong sense of strangeness. This is what I felt when I was on a business trip in Shenzhen recently.
This scene is more obvious at the launch of consumer electronics products such as mobile phones: there are even a few moments when I clearly feel that the number of Ray-Bans around me is even higher than the frequency of this AI glasses in the Bay Area of the United States.
From observation, although the current users of Ray-Ban Meta are mainly concentrated among practitioners in the technology industry, there are Ray-Ban Meta fans from self-media bloggers to entrepreneurs of Shenzhen hardware companies.
The reason why this phenomenon is "weird" is not only because Ray-Ban Meta is the first smart glasses to appear so frequently, but also because this product has never been officially sold in China. Even Ray-Ban Meta is not sold in Hong Kong, which is close to Shenzhen, which means that buying a pair of Ray-Ban Meta actually has a relatively higher learning cost.
In fact, the author has met some colleagues who carry two sets of AI glasses at a time to meet the needs of all-day use.
Are AI glasses really going to be popular? How do AI glasses represented by Meta AI make consumers pay obediently?
01
"Four Eyes" has a new meaning
First of all, it needs to be made clear that smart glasses headed by Ray-Ban Meta cannot be confused with previous AR glasses with display functions, otherwise it is easy to ignore their core competitiveness-in addition to smart functions, they are first of all a pair of normal glasses with high usability.
In the early days of the release of Ray-Ban Meta II, overseas bloggers generally had a "stereotype" about Ray-Ban's recommendations: you must first be a "sunglass lover" before you can be the target user of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, otherwise it is difficult to use it as a daily wear product every day.
But this stereotype was quickly changed in China, and the reason is very simple. China has a huge myopic population of nearly 700 million. The proportion of myopic people in college students and the Internet industry can exceed 80%.
This "social problem" has become a peculiar "market feature" when it encounters the popularity of smart glasses: for myopic users, wearing a pair of glasses itself is already an indispensable habitual action in daily life. Therefore, the goal of "letting users wear more than four hours a day" that AR glasses have been pursuing in their dreams has instantly become a "basic operation" after encountering Chinese users.
In addition to the attributes given by the glasses as a carrier themselves, the rapid reduction in purchase costs in the second half of 2024 is also boosting the number of Ray-Ban Meta users in mainland China. Since most domestic users still rely on domestic purchasing agents, including Xianyu, to purchase Ray-Ban Meta, the most common model among the crowd is actually the classic black model - the versatile color means that it is suitable for most users, and it also means that it is the most popular in the eyes of purchasing agents who purchase in large quantities, so the price is often the lowest version.
According to a Xianyu seller, Xianyu alone has recently shipped more than 300 pairs per week. He has also introduced support for third-party accessories and eyeglass fitting services to users, allowing more novice users to reduce learning costs and usage barriers.
With such large-scale shipment support, the current second-hand platform sells a brand new Ray-Ban Meta for only about 1,900 yuan - this price is almost the same as the AirPods Pro, which sells for 1,899 yuan - which gives some users a motivation to take the first step to try "replacing headphones with smart glasses".
But this is not the "historical low price" for buying Ray-Ban Meta at present: during Black Friday or Christmas, the actual price can even reach 1,400 yuan with the discount of coupons on e-commerce platforms. This led to many foreign media outlets using the headline "It's better to buy Ray-Ban Meta than AirPods" to promote the product during Black Friday.
After wearing glasses all day became a rigid demand, battery life became an obvious shortcoming. The actual battery life of Ray-Ban Meta is only four hours, so for some enthusiasts, it is normal to buy two pairs of Ray-Ban to use at the same time. When one pair of glasses runs out of power, you can take out another pair from the charging box and switch to it "seamlessly".
For most ordinary users, this combination is enough to meet normal use throughout the day, but there are still very few users who will buy one more pair to achieve a real multi-day battery life, forming a "super combination" of two charging boxes and three pairs of glasses.
When a Shenzhen self-media blogger introduced his combination to the author, he said that the purpose of such an extreme combination is to be able to "always wear a pair of glasses" in the face of heavy video recording and call needs.
For these heavy users, the only factor that currently limits them is software. Currently, Meta limits the pairing of a phone to two pairs of glasses at most, and most users often use a single phone to receive notifications/text messages.
He also admitted that the sound quality of Ray-Ban Meta is not comparable to that of AirPods, but it is enough to meet the needs of daily calls such as conference calls or WeChat voice calls. But when he used AirPods before, he never thought of "wearing AirPods all day."
"After all, wearing glasses will not be strange to others, but wearing headphones will be somewhat inconvenient." Here, he refers to the TWS headphones represented by AirPods, which are often mistaken by others as being in a "do not disturb mode", making it difficult for the other party to judge whether it is convenient to communicate, which greatly affects the communication in daily life.
Open-design bone conduction headphones can avoid this problem, but such products are often prone to interference when paired with glasses, which is not particularly friendly to glasses users. Therefore, smart glasses that integrate the properties of headphones can meet the above needs while also making users feel that "wearing them all day is a very natural thing."
This product logic is actually very similar to the "audio glasses" launched by Huawei and Xiaomi in the past two years - these audio glasses do not emphasize AI or photo-related functions too much, but they have also quickly gained a group of users and become the best-selling category in the smart glasses market.
But before Ray-Ban Meta, few products showed such an explosive growth trend in the market: these products often find it difficult to get rid of the label of niche, and even if they have become the champion of shipments in the segmented track, we still rarely see users wearing these glasses in daily life.
For Ray-Ban Meta, another important factor in solving this dilemma is its unprecedented "fashion" attribute.
02
Everyone loves fashion
Obviously, just "replacing AirPods" is not enough to make Ray-Ban Meta a smart glasses loved by many users.
Most Chinese users do not have the habit of using Instagram or WhatsApp, which means that the various Meta software enhancements supported by the glasses are not actually the primary needs of these Chinese users. Among the several Ray-Ban Meta heavy users I have come into contact with, there are even a few who do not use Meta AI's related conversation assistance functions at all in daily life.
For many ordinary users, whether they like the appearance of the glasses is obviously a higher priority than "whether the smart functions are complete" - this is often a point that many smart glasses brands have overlooked before.
Meta has shown a forward-looking vision far beyond hardware manufacturers in this regard. It has been cooperating with the top eyewear accessories brands in the industry and expanding more user groups by strengthening the fashion attributes of Ray-Ban Meta.
After the release of Ray-Ban Meta II, Meta did not focus on software updates like traditional hardware, but continued to invest resources to expand the design of glasses. This year alone, it released three new frame styles and provided more than 200 style combinations on the official website, making Ray-Ban Meta more fashionable than Apple Watch. Ordinary users are also more willing to wear it as EDC (Everyday Carry) when going out, without the heavy "electronic product" label that comes with electronic products.
"This is the first time I bought a digital product that she liked it very much, except for the iPhone," a Shenzhen Ray-Ban Meta user, who is also an employee of a hardware startup company, introduced to the author the new Skyler frame version he bought for his recent girlfriend - this is the frame version that Meta just launched in October this year. Compared with the classic Wayfarer pilot version and Headliner version that men prefer, this one has been loved by many female users after it was launched with its more fashionable appearance.
In addition to the styles of glasses frames, Meta has been exploring the fashion attributes of Ray-Ban Meta as glasses. For example, the limited edition fully transparent model with a more technological feel is now also popular among Chinese users, and the actual sales price has even been hyped up to more than 8,000 yuan; there are also lens customization options that can quickly change color according to the degree of external ultraviolet rays and switch between ordinary lenses and sunglasses.
These are completely different from the "new routines" of previous smart glasses. With the great success of Ray-Ban Meta in various parts of the world, even in markets where it has never been truly launched, it has been proved that this is a feasible path.
03
The "Hundred Mirrors War" has already begun
From the experience of these actual users, it is not difficult to see that the high frequency of Ray-Ban Meta in Shenzhen is not only due to the rapid growth of users, but also inseparable from the fact that users are willing to wear it all day, which greatly increases its "appearance rate".
After solving the two key needs of "all-day wear" and "fashion" at the same time, Ray-Ban Meta quickly gained spontaneous recognition among users and replaced the original ecological niche of AirPods - "After all, glasses are worn on the face most of the time, so it is not easy to throw them away like AirPods."
There is no doubt that in Shenzhen, which has many Ray-Ban Meta fanatic users and "outstanding people and beautiful scenery", many Ray-Ban Meta competitors are also being nurtured: according to incomplete statistics, in the second half of 2024 alone, hardware manufacturers from all walks of life have already entered this track, hoping to get a piece of the pie.
Among them are not only traditional AR glasses manufacturers such as Thunderbird and Meizu, but also many startups such as Gudong Technology and Yingmu Technology, and even hardware brands like Shanji that have no experience in manufacturing AI glasses before.
The success of Ray-Ban Meta is contrary to the current voice in the AR glasses industry that "AR glasses will replace mobile phones". An important factor that Ray-Ban Meta can quickly gain a large number of ordinary users is precisely because it cannot replace smartphones at all, and whether it is used with mobile phones or watches, it can provide a good experience. The most important thing may be: it is a smart hardware that can truly free your hands.
At present, Ray-Ban Meta's exploration between practicality and fashion just shows that smart glasses are in the stage of moving from niche "geek toys" to mass consumer goods. In the early days, Apple Watch also used fashion attributes as its main selling point in publicity, but later, with the rapid miniaturization and improvement of health monitoring sensors, it quickly found a new positioning of "health/professional fitness monitoring tool" and its annual sales in 2022 have exceeded 50 million.
Compared with the grand launch of new products, perhaps this spontaneous "Amway" among users can better enhance the popularity of products among ordinary users, which also means that smart glasses have truly found a shortcut to capture users under the combination of "practical" + "fashion".