Cycling sunglasses have been taken to the next tech level with the launch of the Oakley Meta Vanguards this week, smart glasses for riding.
The 'Performance AI' specs, a collaboration between Oakley and Facebook owner Meta, come with fitness app integration, a hands-free POV camera, and windproof headphones.
It's a long way from just using glasses to protect from the sun's glare or keep bugs and dust from your eyes, although they do that too.
The Oakleys were launched at Meta Connect 2025, where other smart glasses were launched from Ray-Ban, owned by the same parent company as Oakley, EssilorLuxottica.
Priced at $499 / £499 / €549, and available for preorder today, the glasses combine Oakley PRIZM lenses with a 12MP ultra-wide camera (122° field of view), high-decibel open-ear speakers, and advanced wind noise reduction. According to the press release, they are "perfect" while cycling through 30mph winds, and are comfortable for long rides.
There is also the option of integrating the smart glasses with Garmin or Strava, which apparently will allow riders to "access real-time personalised performance insights".
The Oakley press release says: "With seamless integrations into health apps, just ask 'Hey Meta, what’s my heart rate?' or 'How am I doing?' for real-time insights via LED notifications. Garmin auto-capture automatically records milestones so you can push performance further, hands-free."
A separate press release from Strava instead trumpeted the fact that athletes using the Vanguards "will be able to overlay their Strava performance metrics – from distance and average pace, to elevation gain and much more – onto videos and photos captured with the Vanguard Performance AI glasses".
The glasses have up to nine hours of battery life, so it is another gadget to charge up before a long ride, although there are 36 hours more to be gained with the charging case. There are four frame and lenses colour combinations, and lenses can be replaced too.
"Our Goal at Oakley is always to create for the future and deliver to the present," Caio Amato, Oakley Global President, said. "Oakley invented the sports performance category, now with Oakley Meta Vanguard we’re setting another new baseline for what is possible. We wanted to redefine what an eyewear could be by delivering Performance AI glasses, technological advancements that truly amplify human potential. And it’s a leap toward a new era of human possibilities."
