At Meta Join 2025, the corporate’s largest occasion of the yr, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled three new good glasses: the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta, the Meta Ray-Ban Show and wristband controller, and the Oakley Meta Vanguard.
Meta says it has offered two million of the first-generation Ray-Ban Meta good glasses, and earlier this yr, Meta unveiled its newest AI-powered good glasses with Oakley, which have been designed for athletes. Silicon Valley is leaning closely into AI wearables, and Meta appears to be one of many firms main the cost.
With Meta trying to regain its footing within the AI race and promote extra {hardware}, the corporate had loads at stake throughout Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Join 2025 keynote. General, Meta showcased some fairly spectacular know-how — the Meta Neural Band, the wristband controller that comes with the Meta Ray-Ban Show, is a specific spotlight.
And but, in a twist that felt harking back to HBO’s Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg’s demo of the AI capabilities on the Ray-Ban Metas failed. Whoops!
Whereas sharing a dwell video feed of the cooking content material creator Jack Mancuso at Meta HQ, Zuckerberg requested the chef to exhibit how his Ray-Ban Meta glasses might assist him whip up a Korean-inspired steak sauce.
“I love the set-up you have here, with soy sauce and other ingredients. How can I help?” requested the chipper Meta AI voice.
Mancuso requested for a recipe for a Korean-inspired steak sauce, and the AI voice started to record the components that he would wish — however Mancuso is aware of he must preserve the demo succinct, so he interrupts and asks, “What do I do first?”
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After a second of silence that dragged a bit too lengthy, Mancuso repeated, “What do I do first?”
“You’ve already combined the base ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce,” the AI mentioned. However he had not but mixed the bottom components, as a result of he had not began making the recipe, therefore the query of what to do first.
Mancuso requested the identical query once more, and the AI gave the identical response. The viewers laughed.
“I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up — back to you Mark!” Mancuso mentioned.
“You know what? It’s all good. The irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making the technology, and then the Wi-Fi of the day kind of… catches you,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “Anyway, we’ll go check out what he made later.”
The entire interplay was a bit awkward, particularly for the reason that situation didn’t appear to be with the Wi-Fi. However even when issues are going based on plan, these shows can really feel a bit hokey… like the tip of the keynote, when Zuckerberg and Diplo fairly actually bumped into the sundown collectively, sporting their Meta Oakley Vanguards. It needed to be a busy day for Mark, so perhaps he simply wanted an excuse to construct some cardio into his schedule.
Meta unveiled the second technology of its Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which first debuted in 2023. This spruced-up mannequin options double the battery lifetime of its predecessor, now lasting as much as eight hours of blended use on one cost. The second-generation glasses additionally help extremely HD 3K video recording, which the corporate says is twice as sharp because the final mannequin.
Meta’s good glasses are additionally getting some new options with the discharge of the second-generation Ray-Ban Metas, like dialog focus, which shall be out there on the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN glasses.
“If you’re eating at a hot new restaurant, commuting on the train, or catching your favorite DJ’s latest set, conversation focus uses your AI glasses’ open-ear speakers to amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to,” Meta mentioned in its press launch.
Dialog focus isn’t out simply but, so we will’t say for certain if it’ll be any assist to your subsequent evening out.
The Dwell AI characteristic — which Meta didn’t correctly demo on stage — can be on its method. Nevertheless it’s so energy-intensive that you would be able to solely use it for about an hour or two.
“As we make battery and energy efficiency optimizations, Meta AI will transition from something you prompt with a wake word to an always-available assistant,” the corporate mentioned.
The second-generation Ray-Ban Meta are priced at $379.
The Meta Ray-Ban Show smartglasses are essentially the most spectacular glasses that Meta has unveiled to this point, that includes a built-in show for apps, alerts, and instructions on the precise lens. However what units this pair of good glasses aside is its accompanying wristband controller, the Meta Neural Band.
This wristband lets Meta exhibit a little bit of what it’s been spending a lot time (and cash) on in its Actuality Labs division, which is infamous for shedding billions of {dollars} 1 / 4.
Visually, the Meta Neural Band appears like a Fitbit and not using a display screen. It’s powered by floor electromyography (sEMG), which might choose up on minute hand gestures and small actions. That is way more refined than a wrist gesture on an Apple Watch. Customers can write out textual content messages by holding their fingers collectively as in the event that they have been gripping a pen and “writing” out the textual content. This implies that you would be able to see a WhatsApp message are available in in your proper glasses lens, then reply it by “writing” your response.
For now, the glasses help Meta apps, however the firm must help all kinds of apps sooner or later to get the form of adoption they’re searching for. Like Apple and Google, Meta is betting that good glasses might minimize into the market share of the smartphone sooner or later — however it will likely be a giant problem to pressure such a large cultural shift.
The Meta Ray-Ban Show, which comes with the Meta Neural Band, will price $799 and launch on September 30.
For the bearish amongst us, it appears exhausting to think about sporting good glasses and sending textual content messages by handwriting within the air. However the Oakley Meta Vanguard good glasses, that are designed for athletes, provide essentially the most coherent use case but for this sort of know-how.
Bikers, path runners, and skiiers can {photograph} their adventures with out pulling out their telephones; the glasses’ open-air audio system can play music throughout your exercise, and even hyperlink with apps like Strava and Garmin to relay your stats. Like the opposite new glasses, the Vanguard mannequin can be AI-enabled.
Not like different fashions of Meta good glasses, the Oakley Meta Vanguards have only one unified entrance lens with a digicam within the center, slightly than two lenses with cameras on both facet — it’s a design that makes extra technical sense, and it’s a vogue assertion that you would be able to pull off in athletic eyewear, however not in eyeglasses (show me flawed). The brand new glasses can seize video in as much as 3K decision and have a 12-megapixel digicam with a 122-degree wide-angle lens.
The glasses have an IP67 mud and water resistance score to be used throughout intense exercises. Meta says the wraparound design of the glasses options Oakley PRIZMTM Lens know-how, which is designed to dam out solar, wind, and dirt.
Until you’re an ultramarathon runner, these glasses will simply final all through your exercise. The glasses can keep on for 9 hours, or six hours with steady music playback. However the charging case that the glasses include can present an extra 36 hours of cost on the go. Meta claims that the charging case can shortly get the glasses to a 50% cost in 20 minutes.
The Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses retail for $499 and go on sale on October 21.
On the VR entrance, Meta didn’t launch any new Quest headsets as a part of this yr’s Join. Despite the fact that the convention and firm are named after the Metaverse, we realized about only a small variety of updates to its VR, akin to Hyperscape, which is able to permit builders and creators to construct photorealistic areas in digital actuality.
Meta is reportedly creating an ultralight VR headset for launch by the tip of 2026, so perhaps we’ll see that come to fruition on the subsequent Meta Join occasion.
