Analyst(s): Olivier Blanchard
Publication Date: June 27, 2025
Meta and Oakley have introduced Oakley Meta HSTN, a new category of Performance AI glasses aimed at athletes and fans. The glasses combine a 3K video camera, built-in Meta AI, open-ear audio, and PRIZM lens technology with up to eight hours of active battery life, all packed in Oakley’s iconic design.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Meta and Oakley introduce Oakley Meta HSTN as the first in a new line of Performance AI glasses.
- The glasses integrate a 3K camera, open-ear speakers, IPX4 water resistance, and Meta AI assistant.
- Product rollout begins July 11, with prices starting at $399 and availability across key global markets.
- The launch is supported by a marketing campaign featuring top athletes and debut events such as Fanatics Fest and UFC International Fight Week.
- Meta and EssilorLuxottica aim to scale connected eyewear offerings with broader lifestyle and performance utility.
The News: Meta and Oakley have launched the Oakley Meta HSTN, a new smart glasses line designed for athletes and fans. The product merges Oakley’s signature style with Meta’s AI tech, featuring a 3K video camera, open-ear audio, and a hands-free Meta AI assistant.
This limited-edition model is priced at $499 and goes up for preorder on July 11, with more versions arriving later this summer starting at $399. Backed by a global, athlete-led campaign and featured at key sports events, the Oakley Meta HSTN will debut in 16 countries, with more to follow in 2025.
Meta and Oakley Launch Performance AI Glasses With 3K Video and Built-in Meta AI
Analyst Take: As a longtime cyclist and triathlete, I have been looking forward to this release for a long time, and especially since Meta and Ray-Ban released their less athlete-forward smart glasses about a year ago. The Oakley Meta HSTN marks Meta’s first push into performance wearables, tapping into Oakley’s 50-year history in sports gear. With Meta already having sold millions of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, moving into athlete-focused eyewear feels like the natural evolution of what has been a fairly successful first run of Meta-powered glasses.
Equipped with a high-resolution camera and integrated AI, these glasses offer everyday practical features, only enhanced for sports and recreational activities. It is a clear step toward Meta’s goal of leading in the AI glasses space, with tools made for sports, entertainment, and real-time info.
On-Device Meta AI Enables Hands-Free Utility
Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses come with Meta’s built-in AI assistant, offering hands-free support for athletes and outdoor users. Users can ask for weather updates or start recording just by speaking. With built-in mics and a front camera, the glasses are made to react quickly and stay aware of your surroundings. This setup is especially useful during training, workouts, or outdoor adventures when keeping your hands free is key.
One question I will be looking to answer is whether or not the glasses will be able to effectively cancel out wind noise when picking up the user’s verbal instructions. Effectiveness here will be key for a number of outdoor activities like cycling, mountain-biking, sailing, snowboarding, and skiing. If wind noise can’t be dampened or controlled, the glasses’ already steep $399 price tag ($499 for pre-order) won’t feel like a win for the brand. After all, what is the point of paying for hands-free utility if the glasses won’t respond to verbal prompts during active use, like a bike ride, a day on the water, or a windy mountain hike?
I am also interested in how these glasses will integrate into popular personal fitness software solutions like Strava, Apple Fitness+, Fitbit, Jetfit, and Nike Training Club.
One thing I will say, however, is that the ability to easily go hands-free with an emergency phone call is something that Oakley may want to highlight to potential customers. These glasses, like a GPS and a satellite-capable phone, could be marketed not just as cool fitness-adjacent smart glasses, but as an additional emergency accessory for hikers, mountain climbers, mountainbikers, sailors and other outdoor enthusiasts who may find themselves unable to use their hands to make the most important emergency phone call of their lives.
Hardware Upgrades Build Practical Credibility
The Oakley Meta HSTN includes major hardware improvements compared to Meta’s earlier Ray-Ban partnership. One of the biggest upgrades I see is that battery life now stretches to 8 hours of active use, which is about the amount of time most endurance athletes likely need them for. This update matters for athletes and active users who need better recording and longer sessions, especially in sports and activities that may keep them away from the convenience of power outlets and battery packs for hours on end. And while 8 hours won’t quite get the average triathlete through the entire land section of an Ironman or an ultra-runner’s entire event, they should be sufficient for most amateur endurance athletes, golfers, hikers, and recreational sailors.
Fast charging is also a great feature for these glasses: A 20-minute charge gets the glasses up to 50% battery power, and the case holds enough charge for 48 hours of use, which is pretty great for trips and multi-day adventures.
The camera has also been upgraded to 3K resolution (up from 1080p in the Ray-Bans), which will allow users to capture much higher-quality footage of their workouts and adventures. Does this compete against higher-quality cameras like Insta360 and GoPro? Yes and no: No, because the most current generations of action cameras can deliver superb footage in 4K and 8K, even in very low light conditions, and 3K is definitely a comparative downgrade. Yes, because the best camera is the one you happen to have with you. And for a lot of fitness and outdoor enthusiasts who don’t necessarily want to carry action cameras on their workouts and adventures, or mount them on their bikes, boats, backpacks, sea kayaks, or persons, the glasses are a pretty great hands-free option for on-the-fly photo and video captures.
Oakley PRIZM Lens Enhances Visual Clarity
Some Oakley Meta HSTN models come with PRIZM Lens tech, which filters light to boost contrast and bring out detail in different lighting. By shifting light at a molecular level, the lenses help athletes catch visual cues faster and react with more precision.
There are six frame and lens combos available, with Transitions and prescription-ready options too. Merging Oakley’s advanced lenses with Meta’s digital features results in a product that balances function with style.
Campaign and Rollout Tied to Athletic Visibility
The Oakley Meta HSTN launch includes a global campaign featuring Team Oakley stars like Kylian Mbappé and Patrick Mahomes, with appearances at major events like Fanatics Fest and UFC International Fight Week. The campaign highlights real-world uses like surfing, golf, and skating to show how the product fits into active lifestyles. With a launch across 16 countries and more planned for next year, this phased rollout aims to carve out space in the competitive wearables market by building strong visibility in the sports world.
The absence of sports-specific styling options may create a roadblock to athlete adoption
Despite the glasses’ features, I feel that the overall design aesthetic may be a friction point for most athletes, and here is why: Every sport has its own set of preferred designs, with golf, cycling, running, sailing, sports shooting, hiking, fishing all leaning towards specific design aesthetics, performance geometry, and other ultra-specific adaptations and design languages. Add to that personal preferences about color, weight, style, and other details, and what you have is a complex matrix of options and choices that requires a lot of variety and choice. Scrolling through Oakley’s product catalog suggests that Oakley product managers already understand this better than anyone.
And that is the crux of the problem here: These glasses, at least currently, only come in one style. While that style draws from Oakley’s distinct design language to create an instantly recognizable – one might call it iconic – product, what decades of marketing and product development tells us about athletic eyewear is that a one-design-fits-all approach to bringing technology into athletic glasses won’t effectively serve the needs of large swaths of the company’s primary customer base (committed everyday athletes ages 25-45 who engage in sports and other physical activities for over 10 hours per week). This is particularly true of the recreational and competitive amateur athlete with a flexible discretionary budget for accessories and gadgets that will either improve their performance or enhance their athletic experience.
Don’t get me wrong: These glasses will look fantastic at the pool, at the beach, and at the park. They also look like a top contender for every “essential hot tech gadget for summer travel” list. Bring on the POV videos of long summer drives and skateboard rides to the coffee shop. In other words, this design comes across to me more as a slightly sporty outdoor consumer product than as a true set of athletic smart glasses. And while that is a great retail expansion strategy for the brand, it brings little to no value to Oakley’s core customer base: the everyday athletes who might really enjoy smart glasses actually designed with their sports of choice in mind.
From where I am sitting, this specific design is absolutely not well adapted to the types of sports (outside of motorsports) that traditionally drive the most spend from enthusiasts: Cyclists and triathletes, for instance, who are known to spend significant amounts of money on technology and gear, probably won’t be excited by this design, which neither matches their preferred aesthetic nor effectively protects their eyes from headwinds and dust. Most runners may also shun the glasses because of the added weight, which won’t just be uncomfortable after an hour of use, but makes them more likely to slip down their noses during their runs. (Something I intend to test as well.) Golfers might bite, but even a half day on a sunny course might cost them tan lines that their friends and coworkers might not soon let them forget. As for winter sports, as amazing as I expect these glasses to look in ads featuring snowboarders and skiers, they also aren’t going to effectively replace Oakley goggles on the slopes.
Before we get to any other sports with large followings from athletes who like to spend money on technology and accessories, leaving out these critical customer segments won’t help Oakley move product at scale. I hope that Oakley will expand their form factors and designs from this original release in order to reach more athletes, the way they have with their extensive lineup of non-smart glasses. (Something more aerodynamic and with greater eye coverage would be a good option here.) I wish Oakley’s product teams had started with the athletic use cases first, rather than choosing to lead with the one-size-fits-all technology integration strategy that this design suggests. This includes discussions about sports-specific functionality as well, by the way.
The question I have to ask at this point is, unfortunately, fairly fundamental: Who does Oakley think they are making these glasses for? If Oakley wants to push its smart glasses into specific athletic segments, this may not be the best way to go about it. But if Oakley’s strategy is to expand its reach to consumers who just want a sportier looking set of smart glasses than what Ray-Ban has to offer, this could be a win for them: the glasses’ uniquely Oakley design will surely turn heads and start conversations, which may be the most important objective of this initial release: Competing against Ray-Ban for smart glasses retail dollars, expanding Oakley’s reach into aspirational, athletic-adjacent consumer segments, and giving more visibility and momentum to the brand.
For Meta, though, this release further reinforces its technology leadership in the smart glasses segment, increases its retail footprint through a critical partnership with a major eyewear brand, introduces its IP to a broader swath of users, and may additionally help feed more content to its social platforms.
What to Watch:
- Oakley Meta HSTN glasses must meet performance expectations to sustain consumer adoption beyond initial novelty.
- Meta’s AI assistant integration needs to remain responsive and accurate across diverse use environments.
- Expansion into new countries like India, Mexico, and the UAE will test both logistical readiness and regional demand.
- Future smart glasses from competitors may push Meta to continue enhancing camera, audio, and AI capabilities.
- Oakley and Meta must balance lifestyle design and high-performance utility to appeal to both casual and athletic users.
See the complete announcement introducing Oakley Meta HSTN on the Meta website.
Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.
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Image Credit: Meta
Author Information
Olivier Blanchard is Research Director, Intelligent Devices. He covers edge semiconductors and intelligent AI-capable devices for Futurum. In addition to having co-authored several books about digital transformation and AI with Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman, Blanchard brings considerable experience demystifying new and emerging technologies, advising clients on how best to future-proof their organizations, and helping maximize the positive impacts of technology disruption while mitigating their potentially negative effects. Follow his extended analysis on X and LinkedIn.
