At Meta Connect 2025, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage with yet another “this changes everything” moment — except this time, it wasn’t about VR headsets. Instead, Meta dropped its newest wearable: the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a fresh pair of smart glasses with a built-in display right on the right lens. Price tag? $799. Launch date? September 30.
Now, unlike last year’s Orion demo (which was basically an R&D flex we couldn’t buy), this one’s actually hitting shelves. And the big twist is how you control them: not with taps or swipes, but with the Meta Neural Band, a wristband that looks like a screenless Fitbit but reads your hand gestures using electromyography (EMG). Translation: the band literally listens to the electrical signals between your brain and your hand, so a small finger twitch could open an app or scroll through Instagram. Wild, right?
The new Ray-Ban Display is Meta’s boldest push yet to cut out the middlemen (ahem, Google and Apple) and finally get us using its hardware as much as its apps. The glasses are designed to handle tasks you’d normally whip out your phone for: navigating maps, reading notifications, translating conversations live, or checking WhatsApp DMs — all without pulling out a device.
Hardware-wise, they borrow a lot from Meta’s earlier Ray-Ban collabs: AI assistant, cameras, microphones, open-ear speakers — but now, the display makes them feel closer to that sci-fi dream of “glasses that double as a smartphone.” Battery life lands at a solid 18 hours for the Neural Band, and the glasses themselves keep you cloud-connected for apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Of course, these aren’t the full-blown Orion AR glasses Meta teased last year — no eye tracking or immersive holograms here. But Meta’s strategy seems simple: be the first actually to ship something real while Apple and Google play catch-up. Because whoever wins the “everyday smart glasses” race could end up owning the next big tech platform.
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