L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses review: Solid Ray-Ban Meta rival, but with some teething troubles

It seemed a pivotal moment when Ray-Ban and Meta combined for their first pair of smart glasses almost half a decade ago, but apart from their own generational upgrades, few rivals have emerged since.

Indeed, the only significant alternative is from the owner of Ray-Ban itself, EssilorLuxottica. It introduced the Oakley Meta HSTN last year as a more sports focused option.

We've also seen the Oakley Meta Vanguard eyewear – although those are designed more for performance than style.

Most other smart glasses brands are seemingly moving in a different direction, with heads-up displays in one or both lenses, and so there's a great opportunity for a different manufacturer to take on the Ray-Bans at their own game. That's where L'Atitude 52°N steps in.

The all-new eyewear firm raised a considerable amount of funding on Kickstarter last year, and has boldly entered the fray with its first pair of smart specs – sans display but packed with AI, cameras and voice activated wizardry. Its Berlin model is fashion focused and yet also bridges the gap between Ray-Ban styles and the Oakley Vanguards. But can it compete where it matters?

Price & availability

The first pair of L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses comes in a frame the brand calls "Berlin". They'll be available to pre-order from 19 May 2026, with sales opening fully on 26 May in the UK, US and Europe.

Prices start at £349 / $399 / €399 (~AU$652) for all models and colours on the dedicated website. You can also add photochromic lenses (which darken in sunlight), raising the cost to £389 / $449 / €449 (~AU$734) per pair.

There are two colours of frame available – Obsidian and Dune – and different coloured lenses – photochromic, orange, and gradated grey (the ones on test) or brown.

All purchases include a 12-month free subscription to the extended AI features, but you will need to subscribe to continue using those tools after the first year. The price of the subscription is yet to be revealed.

Design & build quality

Durable and extremely light – around 52g, thanks to using TR90 thermoplastic – the Berlin frame is well-designed. It looks more street than sports, but I could see skiers wearing a pair on the piste too.

The shiny texture is a little cheap-feeling compared with a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Headliners I own, which have a matte finish, but the look is great, and many would happily swap the feel for the super-lightweight construction.

The glasses measure 149mm widthwise with 53mm lenses and a 19mm gap across the nose. These are big in comparison with some others, so those with smaller heads might need to wait for other designs. However, they fitted me perfectly, and I favour the larger lens.

I tested the Obsidian version with gradient-grey lenses, although all of the styles seem well considered. I think the Obsidian pair with orange lenses look the best, but there are several choices. The Dune Berlin model has a sandy hue, for example, so it looks softer on the face.

You can also spec your specs with photochromic lenses, which turn from clear to dark depending on the sunlight. There's no word yet on prescription lenses, though, so this is more of a lifestyle option.

The arms host the tech gubbins – including the Bestechnic BES2800 6nm chipset. You also get a 200mAh battery, claimed to last up to six hours outside the charging case, and a speaker in each arm.

This enables you to listen to music, podcasts and voice calls, or receive communications from the AI assistant, although be aware that others might be able to snoop if turned up high, and they are no real substitute for a decent pair of earbuds.

A five-mic array is also on board for voice calls and assistant interaction. They have noise reduction tech, so your speech is easily picked up.

Finally, the L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses are IP65 rated for weather and dust resistance, while the lenses are treated to prevent scratches. There is a 1080p/12-megapixel camera on the left-hand side of the frame, with a dummy on the right to balance the design.

Features

Like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses currently available, the most fun features of the L'Atitude 52°N pair revolve around the built-in camera. The AI assistant can prove handy too, but I found it to be hit-and-miss prior to the full launch – thanks to using the preview rather than the final build of the software.

The camera uses a Sony IMX681 12-megapixel sensor with a 107-degree field of view. It is capable of recording first-person video in 1080p. A single tap of the camera button takes a snap, and a longer press records a video.

You can adjust the camera aspect between vertical and horizontal, to take portrait or landscape shots, and the images are sent to the dedicated L'Atitude 52°N app. Video length can be adjusted from 30 seconds to three minutes.

This app is currently available only on iPhone, although an Android version is coming in June. Considering the glasses won't ship until the end of May anyway, that's not too long to wait.

Again, it must be stressed that I tested the smart glasses with preview firmware and an early version of the app. Multiple updates were pushed during my time with both, but I expect plenty of other bug fixes and tweaks will come ahead of launch.

Indeed, while two of the standout features should be available by the time of release, I couldn't test the AI Tour Guide or Live Translation personally.

Both have great promise, with the latter offering eight languages for translation, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. The AI Tour Guide will give you commentary on famous landmarks, which you just need to look at and press the capture button.

However, I didn't manage to visit any that were compatible at the time of review.

I did get to test the AI functionality, though, with the wake phrase of "Hey Goya" allowing me to find out the latest sports scores, have my surroundings described, learn the weather and time, and just about everything else you could expect.

It's similar to the features on the Ray-Ban Meta equivalents, although it must be said that the Meta assistant is more capably mature at present. Goya also seems to switch voices regularly, from female to male, to robotic, depending on the answer.

There's currently nowhere in the app to change the voice style, only the language.

Besides all that, the app is well-designed and laid out, with handy guides to help you learn the features and functionality of your glasses. Pairing the review pair was a doddle too.

Performance

As mentioned, AI functionality was hit-and-miss for me, mainly due to connectivity issues. While the glasses support Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6, I had the odd "network issue" that meant some of the features were tricky to get working 100% of the time.

Asking "Hey Goya" to take a picture would sometimes trigger a photo capture noise, but nothing would appear in the app's gallery. Or, it'd appear eventually, but would be of a different view, not the original subject.

And sometimes, photos and video wouldn't appear at all – even when the requisite noises had been played to confirm capture.

The same was true with the capture button. The L'Atitude 52°N glasses made a noise as if something had happened, but the image never transferred.

There is 32GB of internal storage, but no matter how many times I reconnected, certain pictures seemed to be lost into the ether.

In all fairness, I put this down to teething troubles and the preview software, and it only happened on occasion. When working, images taken using the camera came out clear, colourful and very decent – arguably better than through my Gen 1 Ray-Bans. Video, too, looked great, with accurate colours and crisp visuals.

Image 1 of 4

AI is utilised to help smooth out your pictures and add HDR, and I was very happy with the results. When they arrived in the app, of course.

If the company can get the connectivity and transfer bugs ironed out, I would happily use these as my go-to smart glasses – especially on a bright sunny day. Even indoors, in low light, my successful photos looked detailed.

I was impressed by the audio quality of the speakers, too. They gave a full, rounded sound experience with good clarity. I'd still prefer to use my AirPods Pro, especially for privacy reasons, but the built-in option would be welcome when they're not at hand.

The touch panel on the side of the right-hand arm also worked well – starting and stopping music tracks on my iPhone 17 Pro Max and letting me turn the volume up and down.

And when the connectivity was at its best, the AI responses to my voice queries were accurate and helpful (albeit in random voices). There just needs to be a bit of fine-tuning, which is to be expected given I was testing a prelaunch pair and early software.

Battery life & charging

The L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses come with a dedicated charging case that is extremely robust. It's IP67 water and dust-resistant and has an LED light that glows as your glasses charge.

You get up to 10 full charges in the case, which totals around 66 hours of total charge, considering the glasses will last up to six hours per wearing session. And it will fast-charge your pair to about 70% in just 20 minutes, so you shouldn't have to worry when out and about.

Naturally, if you use the AI functionality a lot and are constantly transferring images and video to your phone, battery life might expire faster, but you should be fine with general, everyday use.

Verdict

It's hard to have a final verdict on the L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses, as these are very early days for the brand. It has created a very good-looking, arguably more fashionable rival to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses on the market, but the tech side needs a few more updates before launch.

The image quality for photos and video is great, but transfer difficulties meant I lost some of those I took – seemingly forever. This is surely something that can be addressed with a patch, though, and I'm confident one will arrive soon.

I'm not entirely sure what AI model the Goya assistant uses, but it's helpful and accurate with its responses. I can also see it improving over time, with additional capabilities to match Meta and Gemini. But bar the teething troubles, it's already very usable.

The only thing I worry about most is price – over £ 300 / $300 is a lot to ask for potential. And I'm not entirely sure whether the AI features will be worth a monthly subscription fee once the free 12-month trial expires. Still, I'm happy to revisit after the full launch to reconsider.

As things stand, I genuinely like the style and promise of the L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses, I'm just waiting for more substance.

Also consider

Rivalling the L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses are the ever-expanding family of Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Coming in multiple different styles and a whole array of lens options (including Transition lenses), the Ray-Bans are currently on their second generation and are therefore confident in their feature set and abilities.

They are generally priced around the same as the L'Atitude 52°N pair.

Those with a sportier outlook should also consider the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses. They have a more action-oriented design, different colour options (in both frame and lens) and up to eight hours of battery life.

There is the Oakley Meta Vanguard sports visor too. That places the camera in a more central position and is better suited to cycling and action sports.