Enlarge (credit: Meta )

Even the people who spent money on Meta's Ray-Ban "Stories" smart glasses don't want to use them. That's according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal ( WSJ ), citing internal data and claiming to detail the letdowns that led to hundreds of thousands of Stories gathering dust.

Meta (then called Facebook) released Ray-Ban Stories in 2021. The company's first mass-market smart glasses include a Snapdragon chip, two 5 MP front-facing cameras for snapping pictures or video, and speakers for listening to audio. Ray-Ban branding comes courtesy of the glasses' partnership with Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica (which also makes Oakleys and claims numerous luxury brands, including Burberry, Prada, Swarovski, and Tiffany & Co.).

But according to a February corporate document WSJ says it saw, under 10 percent of Ray-Ban Stories ever purchased are in active use. The publication reported that Meta sold 300,000 Stories, but there are just 27,000 monthly active users of the product.

Enlarge / Nreal depicts someone using the Air glasses to extend their MacBook desktop. (credit: Nreal)

As augmented reality (AR) glasses continue to try carving a place among tech enthusiasts, we're seeing another option hit mass availability in the US. In addition to selling the sunglass-like Nreal Air specs in America, Beijing-based company Nreal also announced today a version of its Nebula AR operating system that will work with Apple M1 and M2-powered MacBooks.

The Mac version of Nebula works with MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops with Apple silicon and is launching as a beta. Attaching the Air glasses to a MacBook won't give you the same Nebula "AR Space" experience available to supported Android phones . AR Space includes a mixed-reality interface and games and other AR apps made for the glasses. Instead, Mac users will see a virtual UI that Nreal's calling AR Desktop and projects up to three virtual displays at a time, an Nreal rep told Ars Technica. An Nreal rep wouldn't specify when AR Space would come to MacBooks or iOS.

In a statement, Nreal co-founder Peng Jin said the company expects AR glasses to initially gain traction among consumers by serving as a display technology, so "the thinking behind Nreal Air is very focused on the aesthetics, display quality, and its connectivity with other hardware devices."

• 

  Lenovo Glasses T1. [credit: Scharon Harding ]

After pushing augmented reality (AR) glasses to businesses for years, Lenovo will finally sell AR glasses for consumers, the company announced today—and I briefly got to demo the lightweight Lenovo Glasses T1. With their Micro OLED displays and required tether to Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices, they bring some notable features to a space that has piqued industry-wide interest but is still likely far from becoming ubiquitous.

The early version of the T1 I tried had limited features; I was mostly only able to view a homepage with basic menu options and a desktop with icons for apps, like web browsing. Although the glasses weren't ready for me to watch a movie or hop around apps, I was impressed at how clear text and menu items were. This was in a sunny room with exceedingly tall windows. Even when facing sunlight, the few colors on display seemed vibrant and the text legible.

Lenovo specs the displays with 10,000:1 contrast and 1920×1080 pixels per eye. The glasses are also TÜV-certified for low blue light and flicker reduction, according to Lenovo. Much more time is needed to explore and challenge the Micro OLED displays before I pass final judgment. But the combination of smaller pixels and, from what I saw thus far, strong colors, should accommodate screens so close to the eyes . More broadly speaking, brightness can be a concern with OLED technologies, but the small demo I saw fared well in a sun-flushed room.

Enlarge / Smart contact lenses don't work quite this easily yet. (credit: Getty )

Since 2015, a California-based company called Mojo Vision has been developing smart contact lenses. Like smart glasses, the idea is to put helpful AR graphics in front of your eyes to help accomplish daily tasks. Now, a functioning prototype brings us closer to seeing a final product.

In a blog post this week, Drew Perkins, the CEO of Mojo Vision, said he was the first to have an "on-eye demonstration of a feature-complete augmented reality smart contact lens." In an interview with CNET , he said he's been wearing only one contact at a time for hour-long durations. Eventually, Mojo Vision would like users to be able to wear two Mojo Lens simultaneously and create 3D visual overlays, the publication said.

According to his blog, the CEO could see a compass through the contact and an on-screen teleprompter with a quote written on it. He also recalled viewing a green, monochromatic image of Albert Einstein to CNET.