Ray-Ban Meta vs. GoPro: I took my smart glasses fly fishing and it was surprisingly relaxing

I recently wrote about my experiences with the Limited Edition Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and shared some surprising ways they made my life easier and plans I had for them — one of which was to take them fishing. Last weekend, I traveled over Snoqualmie Pass to enjoy the brilliant colors of the fall leaves and wade into the crystal-clear waters of the Yakima River.

Also: I’ve tested a lot of tech in the past 6 months – the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were the biggest surprise

The weather was absolutely stunning, the river was running low enough to wade in and walk it for miles, and I brought along a couple of family members to teach them how to fly fish and embrace the peacefulness of a flowing river. Everything was perfect, and even though I only landed one small rainbow trout, thanks to my Ray-Ban Metas, I could capture the experience in video and still image form in a manner that matched the low-stress, seven-hour day on the river.

No one else in my immediate family participates in fly fishing, but they all want to know about my adventures and see photos and videos of my catches and misses. In the past, I have mounted GoPro and Insta360 cameras to my chest, head, and baseball cap. 

Also: I tested Meta’s limited edition Ray-Ban smart glasses, and they’re a near-perfect wearable for me

These cameras capture high-resolution content, and I’ve tried using remotes and watches to control the cameras mounted on my body. I’ve missed a lot of content because these cameras have limited battery life, are not easily accessible to check while I am fishing with two hands, they have shifted and been aimed away from the action, and a couple of times they have fallen off my head.

Fly fishing is an activity that actually could use three hands as you cast, strip in the line, hold the rod, and try to net the fish. Then add on trying to keep the fish in the water and capture images or video of it and maybe even four hands are best. I’ve also used my smartphone to try to capture content with my rod tucked under my arm and net thrown down in the water with one hand holding the fish in the water (for survivability in a catch-and-release river). Sounds stressful, doesn’t it?

With the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, I could fully relax and focus on casting and stripping while simply using reliable voice commands to capture still images and video content. I never once worried about the glasses recording since the glasses confirmed the content was being captured, and I’ve used them long enough to have faith that content was being captured. 

The ability to get a strike on my fly and immediately start recording the experience was awesome. And I didn’t have the camera recording hours of me simply casting without getting a strike.

Glasses, typically polarized sunglasses, are a requirement for fly fishing since they protect your eyes from flies that you are looping gracefully through the air across the river. The AI-powered Ray-Bans served the dual purpose of transitioning the lenses to sunglass mode with UVA/UVB protection. I would love to see a version with embedded readers to help me tie on the flies and a version using the Transitions XTRActive polarization to see even better down into the river bottom.

Also: My favorite Garmin sports watch ever just got a new version, and it’s $200 cheaper

Lastly, I was able to carry out a couple of calls with my wife while I was fishing, and if I had thought about it, I could even have live-streamed periods of the day to my followers. I’ll try to remember that on future trips because the sights are something to behold.

We were on the river for seven hours, and the glasses’ battery life made it through the day with me capturing about 20 images and a dozen video clips. I was surprised the glasses lasted that long, with an advertised battery life of four hours, but I wasn’t actively recording or capturing content for the entire period of time. With the portrait orientation of the content, I have a stunning new wallpaper for my phone that was captured by the Ray-Ban glasses. 

I’ve cropped the images in this post to fit the ZDNET content, but the images and video give you an idea of the stunning beauty of the October day on the river, and the Ray-Ban Metas‘ ability to capture it.