Meta Platforms and partners are deploying a crazy diversity of sensors in new Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, revealed Wednesday. They include a 12MP camera, open-ear speakers, five wind-optimized microphones and a touchpad sensor on the frame for control.
What a wearer gets with the next-gen smart glasses: Hands-free messaging, video calls and navigation, among other benefits. A built-in display lens in the right-side pane overlays information on a user’s view in full color and high resolution.
The smart glasses integrate with Meta Neural Band, which uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to read muscle signals from a wearer’s wrist to provide gesture control with subtle hand movements. Some models feature a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for heart rate and an ambient light sensor and inertial measurement units (IMUs) for motion tracking. Meta said Neural Bank is the product of years of EMG research with nearly 200,000 research subjects, which enables the band to work out of the box for nearly anyone.
The new Display glasses start at $799 (including Neural Band) and will be available on Sept. 30. Also, Oakley-branded Glasses for athletes to connect to Garmin and Strava (among others) for displaying real-time training stats will be pricved at $499, going on sale Oct. 21.
While the sensors in Display should speak for themselves, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday described its smart glasses as a way for human to reach AI “superintelligence.”
Again, he focused on Glasses as an ideal form factor for insights and intelligence “because you stay present in the moment while getting access to all these AI capabilities that make you smarter, help you communicate better, improve your memory, improve your senses and more.” He spoke at Meta’s Connect event to a supportive crowd.
Meta has been at the forefront of new smart glasses, analysts agree, but has fallen behind OpenAI and Google in rolling out advanced AI models.
Meta also updated its previous Ray-Ban models which do not have a built-in display but have double the battery life of the previous generation and an improved camera for $379, up from the prior $299 price.
Meta is expected to introduce Orient glasses in 2027, which Zuckerberg described last year, calling the prototype, a “time machine to the future.”
Forrester analyst Mike Prouix said Glasses will be a form factor that is not cumbersome but added that Meta will still need to convince buyers they are worth the cost.
Jitesh Ubrani at IDC called Display glasses a “great value for the tech you’re getting,” but suggested the software needs to catch up. IDC has forecast worldwide shipments of AR/VR reality headsets and smart glasses without displays to reach 14.3 million units in 2025, up nearly 40% over a year ago.