Meta Store (Burlingame)
We headed out to the Meta (Facebook) Store to check out the new space. They opened just a few weeks ago and the sleek new space offers demos of their latest hardware. The store is located on their Meta Reality Labs campus in Burlingame, on the bay side of 101. The place had plenty of foot traffic on the weekend, and luckily we were able to squeeze into a spot for a demo of the Meta Quest 2, but more on that below.
Products
Ray-Ban Stories allows you to listen to music from your phone, record video with small cameras on the frames and uses touch controls/buttons to control them while on your face. When I asked if you can use them with prescriptions, and that was definitely supported as well. What’s a bit creepy is that people can be recording out in public and the only indication is a little white light at the corner of the frame. Maybe this will be useful for vloggers/instagramers? I was hoping for an augmented reality experience, but maybe Apple will be next on that front.
Portal demo included a room where we made a call to another employee with video chat. The highlight was the camera that would zoom/pan and focus on the people in view. The audio quality seemed solid too, and focused on the person in view as well. What felt a bit underwhelming was that this seemed like another tablet/smart tv gadget in a sea of similar devices. It runs on its own OS so it would be a much smaller set of apps compared to Android/iOS. I can’t really find a need for this myself.
Meta Quest 2 doesn’t need a big introduction, this is the current generation of the Oculus VR headset and controller. For anyone visiting, it’s worth booking a time before hand, we just got lucky and was able to do a demo in between some other appointments. Since this is the highlight of the store, they had a nice space to try out some games. The wife enjoyed a few minutes of slashing to the beat! We may get one of these someday, but something tells me a Japanese apartment might not have the necessary space to swing around in a VR frenzy.
Conclusion
If you’re in the neighborhood, it’s worth a visit to the store. The staff are pretty friendly and enthusiastic and do a good job of explaining the products. The demos are well done and provide a lot of opportunities to ask questions, and I imagine the feedback is useful for the Meta team too. The store is probably serving the dual duty of marketing and usability studies. I don’t think anyone was really buying stuff there, but I guess you can just pick up the Quest 2 at Costco or order online.