Meta’s $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses add screens to smart eyewear

Meta has unveiled its Ray-Ban Display glasses, featuring a tiny screen inside the lens that allows users to read messages, view photos, and get directions without looking at their phones. Priced at $799 and launching September 30 in limited US stores, the glasses represent Meta’s latest push into AI-powered wearables and a significant step toward mainstream augmented reality adoption.

What you should know: The Display glasses build on Meta’s existing smart glasses line by adding visual feedback through a small display in the right lens corner.

• Unlike previous audio-only versions, users can now see text messages, Instagram Reels, maps, and other visual content projected several feet in front of them.
• The glasses include a “neural” wristband that enables navigation through subtle hand gestures, eliminating the need to touch the frames or say voice commands.
• Only the wearer can see the display, making interactions potentially invisible to others nearby.

Key features: The glasses offer smartphone-like functionality in a wearable format that keeps users’ heads up.

• Users can take photos, respond to messages, scroll social media, and even take video calls directly through the display.
• Real-time mapping shows users their location and provides navigation, a significant upgrade from earlier models that only provided addresses.
• Live captioning and translation display conversation partners’ words on screen in real-time.
• Meta AI integration provides both audio responses and written information cards for questions.

The big picture: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg positioned smart glasses as the ideal form factor for AI integration, saying they allow “AI to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you throughout the day.”

• Zuckerberg noted that consumers are adopting smart glasses at rates similar to “some of the most popular consumer electronics of all time.”
• The technology realizes Google’s original Glass vision from over a decade ago, but with improved functionality and more intuitive controls.

What they’re saying: Meta executives frame the glasses as a solution to screen addiction rather than adding to it.

• “We built this product to help protect presence,” said Ankit Brahmbhatt, Meta’s director of AI glasses. “This idea of being more heads up and not having our heads buried in our phones, I think, is a really a big part of the kind of experience that we’re trying to unlock here.”

Potential concerns: Privacy and social acceptance remain significant hurdles for widespread adoption.

• The glasses’ ability to record video and audio in any environment raises questions about consent and surveillance, especially given Meta’s troubled history with personal data.
• Some worry about the social implications of wearing devices with cameras and microphones around others, recalling the “glasshole” nickname given to Google Glass users in 2013.
• Technical issues persist, with demonstration glitches including Zuckerberg struggling to answer a video call when the accept button didn’t appear.

What’s next: The glasses launch September 30 in select US retail stores before a global rollout in 2025, providing the first real test of consumer appetite for AR-enabled smart glasses at the $799 price point.