Meta Unveils Premium Smart Glasses, Targeting High-End AR Market
Company launches $799 Ray-Ban Display and $499 Oakley Vanguard models in a strategic push beyond social media into wearable AI hardware.
Meta Platforms is escalating its push into wearable technology, unveiling two new high-end smart glasses at its annual Connect 2025 conference. The social media giant announced the $799 Ray-Ban Display, its first consumer smart glasses with a built-in augmented reality display, and the $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard, a model designed for athletes, signaling a significant strategic bet on the future of AR hardware.
The market’s initial reaction was muted, with Meta's shares seeing a slight dip of 0.42% following the announcement. However, the move is being viewed by some analysts as a crucial long-term play to build an ecosystem beyond smartphones and social media.
The Ray-Ban Display glasses represent a major technological step forward, featuring a full-color display in the right lens capable of showing notifications, directions, and responses from Meta AI. They will be bundled with a new Meta Neural Band, a wrist-worn device that allows for control via subtle hand gestures. The Oakley Vanguard model focuses on performance, offering a wider field-of-view camera and enhanced durability for sports applications, to display real-time stats.
This push into the premium market comes with risks. Ahead of the event, , with some predicting the devices would capture only a 'negligible share of the market' in the short term due to the cost and bulky design. Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at IDC, noted that the $800 price tag would likely lead to low sales volumes initially.
Despite the pricing concerns, the strategy aligns with Meta's broader vision for ambient computing. The company also announced it would open its smart glasses operating system to third-party developers, a move designed to spur innovation and create a robust app ecosystem. Tech analyst Gene Munster praised the launch, calling the new devices the in the emerging smart glasses market. As Meta attempts to transition from a software giant to a hardware player, the success of these new glasses will be a critical test of its ability to compete with Apple and other tech titans in the next generation of personal computing.