Meta launches new smart glasses with built-in screen: Check price, specifications and other details here

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta Platforms released its latest smart glass, the Meta Ray-Ban Display on September 17. This is the company's first version with a built-in screen and according to chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, “the first serious product” in the segment, according to report by Bloomberg.

The aim he said is to offload some functionality from what people expect on their phones into their eye wear or AI glasses. “This feels like the kind of thing where you can start to keep your phone in your pocket more and more throughout the day,” Bosworth said, adding that while phones won't disappear, glasses offer a more convenient way to access its most popular features.

What are the features on the Meta Ray-Ban Display?

• The wearable has a screen in the right lens that can show text messages, video calls turn-by-turn directions in maps, visual results from queries to Meta’s AI service, photos, music controls and a digital viewfinder for the camera.
• The glasses introduce a new control system. Users can still swipe along the frame like previous models, but this one has hand gestures as the primary interface. The gestures are detected by a neural wristband strapped around the wearer’s dominant hand.
• The user can select items by pinching their thumb and index finger, swipe through items by sliding a thumb across their gripped hand, double tap their thumb to invoke Meta’s AI voice assistant, or twist their hand mid-air to adjust music volume and other controls.
• In addition to app interactions and the ability to handle AI queries, the glasses include a live caption feature that displays spoken words in real time — including translations — similar to closed captions on a TV. The video calling function lets wearers see the person they’re speaking with while sharing their own point of view.
• Users can reply to texts by sending an audio recording or dictating a response. Later this year, the wristband will add another option: writing words in the air with their hand. A future update will also let the glasses focus on the person a wearer is speaking with while filtering out background noise.
• At launch, they’ll support apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and a music app powered by Spotify Technology SA. The Instagram app will initially only support direct messages, but Meta plans to add Reels viewing later this year.

What are the specs of the Meta Ray-Ban Display?

• The Meta Ray-Ban Display's glasses offers a limited 20-degree field of view with a resolution of 600 x 600 pixels.
• Its brightness ranges from 30 to 5,000 nits, providing decent visibility in most outdoor conditions, though it can struggle in the brightest sunlight. Some prescriptions are supported, but only as a built-to-order option.
• The external camera matches past Ray-Ban glasses with a 12-megapixel sensor but falls short of new non-display models, also introduced on September 17, in video resolution and battery life.
• The glasses record 1080p video and last six hours per charge, with the external case providing an additional 30 hours — roughly four full recharges.
• The wristband, called the Meta Neural Band, comes in three sizes and offers 18 hours of battery life.

What is the price on Meta Ray-Ban Display? When will it go on sale?

Priced at $799 (about ₹70,402), the new glasses will go on sale September 30 and will include the wristband. At launch, Meta is steering buyers to retail stores for proper fitting and onboarding before eventually selling the glasses online.

Meta is offering two sizes and two color options: black and a brown shade called sand.

They will be sold by Ray-Ban, Lenscrafters International Inc., Best Buy Co. and a limited number of Verizon Communications Inc. locations.

The report noted that this launch is a key part of Meta’s effort to build its own consumer technology ecosystem, similar to Apple and Alphabet.

Bosworth told the publication that Meta expects to sell over 1,00,000 units of the display glasses by the end of next year and expects the company to sell every unit it makes.

“We really feel like we’ve captured something, a zeitgeist, at the right time with the AI boom coming. We really wanted to bias these in favour of the people who are going to actually put them on and use them, rather than technology enthusiasts who may buy them just to have and not really use them,” Bosworth added.

Alex Himel, who leads the glasses work under Bosworth, said in a separate interview that he believes AI glasses will gain “mainstream traction” by the end of the decade.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)