What do you get when Oakley teams up with Meta? A $500 pair of smartglasses that can record 3K video, call on AI, and look right at home on a sunny boardwalk. What you don’t get is an easy way to swap out a dying battery. We cracked them open to find out just how hard that job really is.
Once You Crack the Shell, Good Luck Getting It Back Together
The glasses greet you with Torx screws at the hinges, which might trick you into thinking you’re in for a straightforward repair. Unfortunately, the hinge is laced with delicate ribbon cables tied to the cameras. Getting inside requires heat, patience, and the stomach to watch plastic warp before the glue underneath even begins to budge.
After some careful prying, we discovered that going through the camera side of the hinge gets you nowhere fast. It does let you remove the 12MP camera, but you’ll risk cosmetic damage that’s tough to undo. The better route is through the arms. Even then, splitting the plastic shells feels like a one-way trip. They may technically go back together, but you’ll have to be very precise with your adhesive application and clamping to keep them from looking a little crooked.
Inside the processor arm lives a compact PCB with Qualcomm’s AR1 Gen 1 chipset, a familiar face from Ray-Ban’s Meta glasses. There’s also 32GB of flash memory and a speaker, same again as in the Ray-Bans, soldered in with just two contact points. Curiously, despite sharing almost identical hardware with the Ray-Bans, these Oakleys shoot higher-resolution 3K video, compared to the Ray-Bans’ 1440p. Hardware magic, or a simple software lockout? Who knows. (Seriously, who knows? If you know, drop us a comment.)
Some Battery Wins but Lots of Glue on the Way
The battery arm is the real prize. If this isn’t your first iFixit teardown, you know how much we care about battery replacements: Batteries are consumables. They’ll wear out over time. Nearly every electronic product, if it lasts long enough, will eventually need a battery replacement.
Oakley x Meta’s official support page says, “No, it’s not possible to replace the embedded battery inside the glasses or charging case.” But they should know better than to tell us that a repair is impossible. We’re up for the challenge.
If you’re up for a challenge, too, with enough heat and finesse, you can open up the battery arm without frying the internals. The lithium cell disconnects easily via a press connector, and unlike the Ray-Bans, this 852 mWh pouch battery comes wrapped in a protective metal shell. That makes removal a little safer, and it’s a rare sign of repair-friendly thinking. But don’t get too comfortable. Opening the arm means waving goodbye to the IPX4 splash resistance rating.
Getting to the rest of the electronics is just as fiddly. A single screw secures a tiny button board, and several MEMS microphones hide in the frame. If anything fails inside the main glasses body, you’re looking at destructive disassembly with no realistic path to recovery.
At least the charging case offers some good news. Power comes from a standard 18650 cell, one of the most common rechargeable batteries on the planet. That’s the kind of part we love to see. But Oakley sealed it inside a shell that can’t be opened without wrecking it, making a simple battery swap nearly impossible.
Verdict: Not as Bad as AirPods (That’s Not a Compliment)
These aren’t quite AirPods-level nightmares, but they’re closer than we’d like. The part most likely to fail (the battery) is replaceable with the right tools, nerves, and sacrificial aesthetics. Replacement parts, however, are nowhere to be found.
We don’t have an official repairability scorecard for smartglasses (yet), so no score to cap this teardown. But despite the small win of a hard-shell battery, these glasses will be tricky to repair.
While the Oakley x Meta Smartglasses are stylish, surprisingly powerful, and even a bit safer to work on than their Ray-Ban cousins, they aren’t built for a long life.
So enjoy your futuristic shades while they last. If the battery gives out, you’d better hope fashion cycles back around to warped plastic.
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