Meta presents its first screen-equipped smart glasses

Following a very well-timed video leak earlier this week, Meta announced tonight its new lineup of smart glasses, including the Meta Ray-Ban Display. Here are the details.

Meta seems poised to succeed where Google Glass failed

During the keynote of Meta Connect 2025, one of Meta’s annual conferences, Mark Zuckerberg spent most of the 1-hour presentation showcasing new smart glasses and headsets, chief among them the Meta Ray-Ban Display.

These glasses, which will start at $799, feature a 600×600-pixel, 500-nit waveguide display on their right lens, and work in conjunction with the Meta Neural Band, a wrist-worn device that picks up on hand movements.

The Meta Neural Band has an 18-hour battery, is water resistant, and allows for interactions from button selection to interface control to texting.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display also features an AI assistant that can pick up on audio and video to offer and surface useful information that can be delivered visually or through the glasses embedded speakers.

The glasses will be available in two colors (black and sand), and will be sold in stores starting September 30.

Other tidbits from the keynote

During the presentation at Menlo Park today, Mark Zuckerberg also showcased:

Here is the full keynote:

9to5Mac’s Take

During today’s event, Mark Zuckerberg made no secret of his desire for these devices, particularly the Meta Ray-Ban Display, to replace many of the tasks we currently perform on our phones.

And while the death of the smartphone has been proclaimed multiple times, especially in the last few years, this seems to be the first form factor that may actually have a slight shot at it.

It obviously won’t replace the smartphone completely, just like the Apple Watch didn’t either. But for simple tasks, such as quickly replying to a text message, sorting through notifications, or quickly looking up information, this looks like a compelling product, to say the least.

Of course, coming from Meta, there is a mountain of privacy-related issues that will instantly put many people off. I can’t blame them. But the bottom line is that had Apple announced something like this today, you’d be hard-pressed not to find it at least mildly intriguing.

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