Meta Officially Unveiled Its Rumored Display-Style Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

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At the company's Meta Connect 2025 event yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially unveiled its long-rumored and recently leaked display-focused smart glasses. Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses will cost $799 and go on sale on Sept. 30.

The next generation of Meta smart glasses will feature a full-color, monocular, 600 × 600 pixel HUD in one of the lenses that will only be visible to the user. Display smart glasses will also include improved versions of the audio, video, and AI capabilities of non-display Meta glasses.

Credit: Meta

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses will be controlled through a wearable device dubbed the "Meta Neural Band," which allows users to "type" on any surface to send messages as well as control other aspects of the display and smart glasses through small muscle movements.

According to Zuckerberg, users will be able to “silently control their glasses with barely perceptible movements.” An example from the keynote: turning up the volume on music by mimicking the motion of turning a dial. The wristband will have 18 hours of battery life and is IPX7, so it can be fully immersed in water up to one meter.

At the keynote, Zuckerberg showed off texting on the Display glasses, and touted that video calls through WhatsApp would be available on the new glasses (although, notably, the demo didn't actually work at the event).

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses will feature a 12MP camera with 3X zoom, and the addition of a display screen gives users a viewfinder and the ability to see pictures and videos you take before you send them or save them.

Why I'm excited to try these glasses

I'm not the "looking-forward-to-things" type, but I'm really looking forward to trying out Displays. I'm not the type that fans out over giant tech companies either, but I can't deny it: Overall, the best new hardware of any type I've used in last 10 years was made by Meta. Meta's Quest VR headsets are excellent and inexpensive (even if I'm not entirely sold on VR as anything but a cool gimmick), and I have nothing but praise for Meta Ray-Bans, and this after wearing second generation Metas as my everyday eyewear for around a year.

I have questions, though: I'm not sure if texting and otherwise computing from my glasses with a wristband is something I need in my life; despite keynote assurances from Mark Zuckerberg, I wonder how intuitive the neural control will actually be; and Meta's vision of "personal superintelligence" creeps me out. But overall, if the Display works as well and as easily as other recent Meta gear in my house, these glasses will be amazing. They could be life-changing for people with hearing problems—Display glasses will be able to add "subtitles" to conversations in real time. They could genuinely make living with ADHD a little easier, too: If I lose my car keys it will (presumably) be able to tell me where I left them.

I'm old enough to remember when being technology ready-for-anything meant carrying around a digital camera, a flip phone, a calculator, a GPS unit, a watch, and more, all of which I'd lose along the way. All that gear has now collapsed into a smart phone. If Display works the way Meta promises, this could be the next collapse, where you don't even need the phone, just the glasses you were going to wear anyway.

And that's a big "if." Neural wristbands, heads-up displays, and AI “seeing what you see” all sound incredible, but hype from a keynote touting amazing features that turn out to be half-baked crap that no one wants is a tech-industry cliche at this point. But I'm still excited. By the end of the month, I might get to see the future; who wouldn't be excited?

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