These smart glasses beat the Meta Ray-Bans for me with useful features and a cheaper price

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Rokid AI Glasses are lighter and more comfortable than Meta Ray-Ban.
• AI features are solid, but speakers and responses lag behind Meta.
• At $299, Rokid undercuts Meta, despite a clunky charging system.

I have been using the Meta Ray-Ban (gen 1) smart glasses for two years now, and while I love them for the most part, I’ve consistently found myself wishing they were lighter. They tend to get uncomfortable when I’m using them for long durations. And that’s where the new Rokid smart glasses come in.

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At CES 2026, Rokid unveiled the Meta Ray-Ban glasses rival that many have been waiting for. The name, Rokid AI Glasses Style, might be a mouthful, but they deliver exactly where the Meta glasses fail. I’ve been using them for a couple of days, and here’s how they differ from the Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

Lighter profile is a welcome change

As a long-time Meta Ray-Ban user, it was refreshing to move to the Rokid AI Glasses Style. At 38.5 grams, they are lighter than their Meta counterpart (around 50 grams, depending on the variant you go for). Even if you opt for polarized lenses, you get a 45.5-gram pair of smart glasses. The lightweight design is apparent as soon as you unbox them.

They look good and wear slightly raised but comfortably, thanks to the added nose pads. I’m a sweaty person, and my Ray-Bans get slippery after a while. So the air-cushioned liquid-silicone nose pads are a good addition — they keep my glasses in place. Like the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, you get touch controls and a button on the right stem, and a camera with LED light (for privacy) on the front.

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As for the lens itself, I have the Jet Black sunglasses variant. They are decent lenses that block sunlight comfortably. You can replace them or opt for Rokid’s global online prescription service if you want a corrective lens. I prefer the polarized lenses of my Ray-Bans because of the green tint, but these function well, too.

The Rokid AI Glasses Style are powered by the Qualcomm AR1 chipset for AI and imaging workloads. 

They offer multiple AI engines, including ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Qwen — the system chooses which one to opt for based on your queries. However, I only had the option to choose ChatGPT in my testing process. You can trigger the AI assistant using the “Hi Rokid” wake word. In my moderate internet coverage zone, the responses were slow, but it worked similarly to the Meta AI.

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They also feature Microsoft AI Translation in 89 languages, where the glasses support 12 languages for the wearer. Plus, you get Google Maps integration for navigation. It works fine through the open-ear audio, which isn’t as immersive as the Meta Ray-Bans. I found the speakers to be inferior in my initial impressions, but I’ll use them more before I come to a conclusion.

Pairing the Style glasses with my iPhone was an easy process. I just had to install the Hi Rokid app and follow its on-screen instructions. The app has four menus at the bottom: AI Assistant (a place to see your queries), Home (to adjust settings for volume, recording, translation, and more features), Gallery (to view photos and videos), and Me (for account management).

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You can further customize the settings for video recording resolution, choose the aspect ratio for your photos, and opt for AI models. Overall, it is a clean and user-friendly interface.

Rokid’s AI Glasses Style have a 12MP Sony sensor, which supports 4K capture in 3:4, 4:3, and 9:16 aspect ratios. The output looks good and is definitely social media share-worthy. 

You can record for up to 10 minutes, but I’ve yet to test the battery life when going up to that mark. These smart glasses are rated to deliver up to 12 hours of typical daily use and 24 hours of standby time on a single charge.

I don’t mind the drawbacks at this price

The battery life brings me to the most annoying aspect of the Rokid AI Glasses Style — their charging mechanism. 

Unlike the Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley HSTN glasses, they use a proprietary pogo-pin attachment (located on the right stem) to charge. This means I have to carry an extra small wire (pogo-pin to Type-C connector) to charge my smart glasses. As a frequent traveler, I like to keep the wires to a minimum, and I’m not fond of this approach.

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Smart glasses are meant to be lifestyle-first products. So comfortable wear, a charging case, and the way they charge are as important as how good they look to me. Meta nailed almost all of these aspects, while Rokid manages to be great at one (comfortable to wear), decent at another (carry case), and annoys me on the third (charging mechanism). 

The company bundles a decent-looking carry case and a pouch with its new glasses.

The Rokid AI Glasses Style are priced at $299, which is cheaper than the latest $379 Meta Ray-Bans. While you can buy the gen 1 Meta Ray-Ban glasses for $224 now, their battery life won’t hold up if you record multiple three-minute videos. You can get a $20 discount on the Rokid smart glasses by placing a $1 deposit as an early-bird offer.

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Rokid is also offering a “Golden Bundle,” which includes 1.60 index prescription lenses with photochromic functionality for $398. The same can cost over $500 if you opt for the Meta AI Glasses.

They will go on sale starting January 19 on the company’s global website and “selected online and offline retail channels worldwide.” At launch, you can only buy them in the Jet Black color option, whereas the Translucent Gray version is scheduled to launch in March.