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Meta showcased a slew of smart glasses aimed at different consumers on Wednesday, betting on new wearable devices amid an industry-wide push to develop distinct types of AI-powered consumer electronics.
The Menlo Park, California–headquartered company used its Connect conference to announce three new smart glasses, including Meta’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display. These new devices represent a deeper push by Meta into the niche but rapidly emerging segment of AI-powered wearable gadgets, opening the door to the next major computing platform shift after smartphones.
The Ray-Ban Meta Display, priced at $799 and set to launch on September 30 in the US, features a small display on the right lens that projects helpful contextual information, including translations, navigation paths, and more. The glasses work in tandem with an sEMG wristband, which utilises neural technology and can be controlled via hand gestures.
“Every new computing platform has a new wait to improve it. For the glasses, we are replacing the keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, buttons, and dials with the ability to send signals from your hand. With subtle muscle movements, you can silently control your glasses,” Meta CEO Zuckerberg said, addressing a packed audience at the Connect conference in Menlo Park, California.
Internally codenamed Hypernova, the glasses include cameras, speakers, and microphones, allowing users to command the Meta AI voice assistant to perform a variety of tasks, such as taking photos, recording videos, or playing music. Thanks to the built-in display, users receive glanceable information ranging from smartphone notifications to turn-by-turn directions, live translations, real-time recipes, and more. The app launcher can display up to six icons on the screen.
“Glasses are the ideal form factor for personal super intelligence because they let you stay present in the moment while getting access to all of these AI capabilities to make you smarter, help you communicate better, improve your memory, improve your senses,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta is also launching a new pair of wraparound Meta Oakley Vanguard glasses. The $499 smart glasses feature a centrally positioned camera on the frame, offering a first-person perspective when capturing content such as slow motion, hyperlapse, and videos with adjustable stabilization. The wraparound, shield-style design is an homage to classic Oakley aesthetics, and the Vanguard glasses are specifically targeted at cyclists, skiers, and runners. The glasses also offer deep integration with Garmin smartwatches.
An update to Meta’s second-generation Ray-Ban glasses was also unveiled, featuring improved battery life and 3K Ultra HD video capture. They are priced at $379.
Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, augmented reality, and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and was rebranded to Connect after Facebook changed its parent company’s name to Meta in 2021.
The Connect conference also saw Meta focusing on its metaverse ambitions, which have existed within the company since 2014, when Facebook acquired virtual reality headset developer Oculus and launched Reality Labs. At the two-day event, Meta announced Horizon Engine, a foundational infrastructure built from scratch to deliver better graphics and faster performance. Developers and creators will be able to use it to easily generate nearly infinite connected spaces with realistic physics and interactions.
Meta also unveiled Horizon Studio, a new editor and hub for creator tools. It includes the generative AI capabilities introduced over the past year, allowing creators to generate meshes, textures, TypeScript, audio, skyboxes, and more using simple text prompts.
Meta has spent billions of dollars on virtual reality technology, which has struggled to gain widespread adoption among consumers. Over the years, the company has shifted its focus to smart glasses as the next computing platform, believing that the glasses form factor could appeal to the mass market, much like smartphones did in their early days.
Its Reality Labs division, which oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets and the Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta smart glasses (jointly developed with French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica), continues to bleed money. In fact, Reality Labs has logged nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020.
Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become the hit Meta was hoping for, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success. Meta is one of the few major tech companies to have achieved some level of success in the smart glasses market, selling about 2 million units of its popular Ray-Ban AI glasses since 2023. Competitors like Google have failed to crack the market in the past, while Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Apple, have yet to launch a pair of smart glasses and continue to rely heavily on the iPhone.
“Meta can maintain its lead if it keeps broadening the appeal of the glasses with better app integrations, opens up its APIs, and courts third-party developers,” said Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “I also think it needs to appeal to more types of users by leveraging other brands Luxottica has rights to, like Prada. Fashion matters a lot when it comes to glasses.”
Developing hardware for AR, VR, and other immersive technologies is not only expensive but also requires a strong belief in the long-term potential of bringing these products to market. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has backed the vision behind smart glasses, and he believes that AI-powered glasses will become “the main way we integrate superintelligence.”
In July, Zuckerberg posted a note detailing his views on “personal superintelligence” that he believes will “help humanity accelerate our pace of progress.” While he said that developing superintelligence is now “in sight,” he did not detail how this will be achieved or exactly what “superintelligence” means.
Investors and analysts are closely watching Meta’s move into the smart glasses segment, and, more importantly, how the company’s investments in artificial intelligence can support its hardware ambitions. Many believe that the AI use cases tech companies have been showcasing for years can be best experienced through smart glasses.
Looking ahead, analysts say that while Meta may have a strong partner in EssilorLuxottica, the company also needs an ecosystem of developers to build compelling apps and software for its smart glasses.
Meta’s first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display demonstrate both ambition and the company’s confidence in the smart glasses segment. However, at $799, significantly higher than the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which start at $299, they are unlikely to set the market on fire. This suggests Meta may have modest internal expectations for sales.
Smartphones aren’t going anywhere just yet, but there are growing signs of how quickly the smart glasses space is evolving. As more players enter the market, it could look very different within the next two years. Meta could benefit from this shift and continue to lead the market.
“A big part of Apple’s success was the app ecosystem and catering to developers and making it easy to build apps for. Meta needs to do the same here otherwise Google or Apple will do it for them,” Sag said.
The writer is in Menlo Park, California attending Meta’s Connect conference.
