At Meta Connect 2025 on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a new pair of smart glasses that put apps, alerts, and directions directly onto a built-in display in the right lens.
The glasses are controlled by the Meta Neural Band, a wristband that picks up on subtle hand gestures using electromyography (EMG), signals sent between your brain and hand. The Neural Band looks like a slim Fitbit, lasts up to 18 hours on a charge, and is water-resistant.
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The Ray-Ban Display glasses will cost $799 and launch on September 30. Unlike last year’s Orion prototype, these are real products available to consumers, though they’re less advanced than Orion’s full AR lenses and eye-tracking system.
Meta says the display lets users run apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, check directions, and even view live translations. Like earlier Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the new model also includes an AI assistant, cameras, speakers, and microphones for cloud access, internet browsing, and social media.
This release builds on the success of the original Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which Meta has sold millions of pairs of in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. While they aren’t as futuristic as Orion, the new Display glasses show Meta’s strategy of getting to market first, even as competitors like Google and Apple prepare their own smart glasses that could eventually tie deeper into their operating systems.
For Meta, Ray-Ban Display is about more than hardware, it’s about finally owning the platform where users interact with its apps, instead of relying on Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS.
