

Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses design, inner optics, and image quality Still, the best technology always takes a little time to trickle down to the masses, and if these smart glasses are any indication of future AR tech on the consumer side of things, I’d say we’re headed in the right direction, at least in terms of hardware. Heck, the original Wayfarer sunglasses (opens in new tab) start at $163, which isn’t an impulse purchase. Ray-Ban Stories (Image credit: TJ Fink/Ray-Ban)īut hey, a status symbol is a status symbol, and I think it’s safe to say Ray-Ban and Meta know exactly who their target demographic isn’t. Holy cannoli with ravioli! For roughly the same price, you could pick up a few Oculus headsets and recruit actual flesh-and-bone friends to join you in the metaverse, for goodness sakes. Had I purchased the smart glasses through Ray-Ban’s website, I could have swapped those lenses out for my own prescription (a $320 upsell) and splurged for the extra-thin lenses (another $328), bumping the final price all the way up to $947. Nevertheless, this is right in line with the $380 Snapchat Spectacles 3 glasses, which add their own 3D effects to the mix - not to mention a faster shooting rate of 60 frames per second.įor this review, I tested out the olive-colored Wayfarer frames ($379), which included clear/green G-15 transition lenses by default. The Ray-Ban brand has always been for the well-heeled. Discount aside, this is obviously a premium piece of optics, and an extraneous one at that. While New Zealand once boasted one of the lowest death tolls globally, the country’s isolation decimated industries such as tourism and left thousands of New Zealanders stranded overseas.As of this writing, the Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses are 20% off via the company’s website, which is slightly easier to swallow than the original MSRP.

New Zealand used tough border controls to stay largely COVID-free throughout the pandemic until the arrival of the highly infectious Omicron variant in December led to mass infection in the country.

“Our rehiring efforts and training capability have been excellent, as has work to get our Boeing 777-300ER aircraft back flying again, but the experience for some of our customers and the impact on our front-line staff this winter has been unacceptable, so we’ve adapted yet again.” But we’re operating in a very tight labour market with high fuel prices, tough economic conditions and the highest levels of employee sickness in more than a decade,” Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Greg Foran said. “As we’ve been seeing overseas, travel demand is much stronger than anyone anticipated. In March, the carrier raised $2.2 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.37bn) to shore up its pandemic-hit balance sheet and repay a government-liquidity package of $2 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.24bn). The airline did not provide an earnings forecast for 2023, pointing to uncertainties around inflationary cost pressures and volatility in jet fuel prices. However, high rates of illness among staff during the southern winter season led the airline to limit capacity.Īir New Zealand said earlier this month it would operate its domestic and international schedule at 90 percent of pre-pandemic capacity for the next six months. New Zealand earlier this month lifted its last pandemic border restrictions after welcoming the return of tourists from more than 50 countries, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, in May.ĭomestic air travel has also rebounded strongly after the lifting of COVID-19 curbs in the country.

The airline suffered a 725 million New Zealand dollar ($450m) loss for fiscal 2022, compared with a 444 million New Zealand dollar ($276m) loss a year earlier. Air New Zealand has posted its third straight annual loss after months of lockdowns and border closures earlier in the year pummelled travel.īut New Zealand’s flagship carrier signalled the worst of the losses are over, anticipating flying capacity to reach 75-80 percent of pre-pandemic levels for the 2023 financial year following the reopening of the country’s borders.
