Meta Goes Even Harder Into Smart Glasses With 3 New Models

During a keynote address at Meta’s Connect event today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg further laid out his vision for what he sees as the future of his company’s hardware efforts: smart glasses.

The new models include a set of frames made for action sports, an update to Meta’s original design, and a more capable model with display technology built into the lenses that lets the wearer see text, images, and video overlaid onto their field of vision.

Face computing is a vein Meta has successfully mined for a couple of years. The company has fast become the leader of the smart glasses race, having sold millions of units since launching its partnership with Ray-Ban in 2023. In July of this year, Meta further solidified its priorities by investing an estimated $3.5 billion to secure a minority stake in the eyewear company EssilorLuxottica, which owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, and numerous other eyeglass brands.

Meta sees its wearable tech as a natural conduit for its AI efforts, including its voice-controlled chatbot. During an earnings call earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he believes that in the future, people who don’t wear smart glasses will find themselves at a “significant cognitive disadvantage” compared with people who do wear them.

The new smart glasses were officially revealed at Meta Connect despite the fact that Meta had scooped itself by accidentally leaking the news of its new glasses two days earlier.

We had a chance to try on all the new spectacles, both at Meta Connect in Menlo Park, California, and at an exclusive preview event in London. Here are the details on all the glasses Meta showed off.

Meta Ray-Ban Display

The new flagship product in the Meta glasses lineup is the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a wearable computing system for augmented reality. It feels like the first commercial step towards realizing the Orion glasses Meta teased at Connect last year.

As the name implies, this is the first pair of Meta glasses you can buy that displays text, images, and video directly on the lens, allowing users to see WhatsApp messages, Instagram Reels, and video calls all completely within the glasses. The display window pops up in the right eye lens. The resolution is 42 ppd (pixels per degree). If you close your left eye and just look through the eye in front of the screen, the display view looks great. Trying to read the display while looking through the glasses with both eyes feels like crossing your eyes and takes quite a bit of getting used to.

Interacting with the Display requires the use of Meta’s Neural Band, a wristband that can detect a range of subtle hand gestures. The gestures it can recognize include a tap of the index and middle fingers to select, go back, or to wake and sleep the display; a swipe of the thumb across the index finger to navigate menus; and pinch and twist movements for controlling music volume or camera zooms. There’s also a double thumb tap for manually waking up the Meta AI chatbot instead of using a wake word.

It takes time to realize you don’t have to hold your hand out in front of you for these gestures to be recognized, but a surprisingly short amount of time to find yourself using them with very little second thought.

Of course talking to Meta AI remains a key way of interacting with the glasses, but Meta hopes that adding the visual elements will enhance the chatbot experience. For example, live speech captioning and language translation is still switched on by voice—but with Meta Ray-Ban Display, you can see the translations and captions appearing in real time on the glasses rather than on your phone’s screen. This is the same with commands like “Hey Meta, what am I looking at?” which can now offer more visually rich information about whatever the front-facing cameras are pointing at. Asking Meta to navigate to a local attraction results in the glasses displaying turn-by-turn directions directly on top of the real world as you walk.

For times when talking might be difficult, Meta also showed off a feature that tracks handwriting input as an alternative to voice commands. Aimed at quick messages, the user can “draw” letters with an outstretched finger on a flat service (or your leg), and the Neural Band will turn it into text. Though the feature was part of the demo we received, Meta says it won’t be available to users at launch, but will arrive soon. Who knows, maybe this will be the thing that helps save handwriting.

Meta has acknowledged some limitations with features at launch. For example, the built-in Spotify integration is only able to show what’s playing on your phone and give you basic playback controls, and Instagram is currently limited to just Reels and messages. Meta intends to broaden out the capabilities soon.

Also notable: The Orion prototype we saw last year required an external puck to power its most computing-intensive capabilities. But that prototype design provides a full range of augmented-reality features. The AR feature set of this new Display model is more limited, so the puck isn’t needed. Also, this means the Display’s frames are slimmer. Meta does eventually plan to offer a full slate of wearable options to consumers: smart glasses, display glasses, and full AR glasses.

The Ray-Ban Displays will be available in either black or sand colors starting on September 30 for $799 and will initially only be available as in-store purchases in the US. Meta says you need to buy them in person because the wristband has to be fitted correctly to the wrist of your dominant hand. Also, the folks selling you the system will show you the hand gestures that control the glasses—though there will be a tutorial walk-through when you first power on the glasses too.

Be ready to move quickly if you want them, though. Meta says there are limited quantities available, and other countries won’t get them until early 2026.

Oakley Meta Vanguard

Following on from the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses announced earlier this year, Meta’s newest Oakley collaboration evokes the timeless look of a pair of wrap-around Oakley Sphaera glasses—but with a twist. That twist of course is a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 122-degree field of view that’s positioned smack in the middle of the lens, right on the bridge of your nose. This is the optimum placement for recording POV action-sports videos at up to 3K, as well as for capturing scenes in the glasses’ new slow-mo and hyperlapse modes.

The Vanguards are very much being marketed to sports enthusiasts—those who might be inclined to choose the Meta glasses over a GoPro, for instance. To that end, the Vanguards have an IP67 waterproof rating, the best waterproofing on any pair of Meta glasses. The speakers built into the arms of the frames are 6 decibels louder to make up for any loss of clarity caused by wind noise, and a new five-mic array lets your commands be clearly heard even when an arctic gale is blasting you in the face while you careen down the slopes.

They get nine hours of battery life on a single charge, which is the longest battery life of any Meta glasses. And a fun detail: The controls, which include a new customizable Action button, are mounted along the bottom of the arms instead of the top, so they are easily accessible when you’re wearing a helmet. There are three interchangeable nosepads in the box, so you can find the best fit.

Sporty types will also be pleased to hear the glasses support Strava and Garmin integrations, which allow you to ask Meta AI for performance metrics and have your stats spoken back to you in real time.

This integration also allows the Vanguards to understand your output and progress, so the glasses can (if you choose) automatically capture pictures and video at key milestones along your ride, hike, or run. Depending on the historical data collected by the glasses, the videos and photos that are auto-captured could be of you hitting a certain speed, altitude, or distance in your activity. The glasses will just decide what feels worth capturing.

Once you’re done, you can then overlay your Garmin or Strava stats onto your footage and post it for bragging rights.

The Oakley Meta Vanguard shades will be available on October 29 and will come in a choice of four totally radical colors. They will cost $499, with swappable Prizm lenses available separately if you’d like to customize them further.

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2)

The smart glasses that started it all, the Ray-Ban Meta, are entering their official second generation. The Gen 2 frames adopt an “if it ain’t broke” mentality; they look identical to their predecessor, but pull in a few new features that you’d find in Meta’s Oakley models.

This includes a 2x better camera for capturing up to 3K footage, and the addition of the new slow-mo and hyperlapse video modes. Meta has also doubled the glasses’ four-hour battery life, promising eight hours of mixed use from a single charge on the Gen 2. There are no new designs (yet), but each of the three frame styles gets a new “seasonal” color: the Wayfarer gets Cosmic Blue, the Headliner gets Shiny Asteroid Grey, while the Skyler gets Mystic Violet.

The Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) cost $379 and are available starting today.