Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses arrive Sept. 30 for $799

Menlo Park, CA — At Connect 2025, Mark Zuckerberg walked on stage with a pair of Ray-Bans that do more than record video. The new Ray-Ban Display smart glasses add a discreet, full-color screen you can glance at to read messages, check a map, or frame a shot—without feeling like a gadget has been strapped to your face. U.S. sales begin September 30 for $799, with rollouts planned for Canada, France, Italy, and the UK in early 2026.

The display sits slightly off-center in a single lens, pops in for short interactions, and fades out after a few seconds. Resolution is 600-by-600 with a 20-degree field of view, and brightness peaks at 5,000 nits so text remains legible outdoors at noon. Only about 2% of the light escapes, making it hard for people across the table to notice you’re looking at something. Microphones, speakers, and cameras are built in. Transition lenses come standard and adjust with ambient UV so you can move from indoors to sunlight without swapping frames.

Control is where these glasses feel different from past attempts. Alongside voice, there’s a Neural Band—a lightweight wrist device that reads tiny electrical signals in your forearm using electromyography and turns them into commands. Subtle pinches and micro-gestures let you scroll, select, and even “type” silently. Zuckerberg said he’s at roughly 30 words per minute already. The band is water-resistant, lasts up to 18 hours, and is meant to blend in like any fitness strap.

The keynote wasn’t flawless. A live WhatsApp video call repeatedly failed to connect, and a cooking demo using live AI assistance stalled when the Wi-Fi froze. The tone on stage stayed loose—“You spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi trips you up on the big day,” Zuckerberg joked—but those hiccups also underscored how much of this experience depends on reliable connectivity. Even so, the direction felt clear: quick, glanceable computing you wear all day.

Meta also refreshed its existing Ray-Ban Meta line. Battery life is now roughly doubled, video capture jumps to 3K for sharper and smoother clips, and the onboard assistant keeps expanding. Real-time translation remains a head-turner, but the practical upgrade is Conversation Focus, which isolates a friend’s voice in a loud place and feeds it back through the open-ear speakers—handy at crowded restaurants where you’d otherwise miss half a sentence. The company says “always-on” assistance remains a work in progress; today’s glasses can run continuous live AI for about one to two hours before battery and thermals become a concern.

For athletes, there’s a new Oakley Meta Vanguard at $499. It’s built like performance eyewear first: centered camera alignment, a wider 122-degree field of view, video stabilization, IP67 water resistance (surf sessions included), and louder open-ear speakers with beefed-up wind-noise reduction. Slow-motion and hyperlapse modes are available across the new lineup. If you wear a Garmin watch, the glasses can auto-capture segments based on speed or distance and stitch the clips together with stats overlaid; Strava integration brings similar sharing and telemetry. Pre-orders open now, with shipping slated for October 21.

Meta’s pitch for the Ray-Ban Display is intentionally modest: don’t replace the phone, reduce how often you need it. The company describes the approach this way: the display is off to the side so it doesn’t block your view, it’s not meant to be on constantly, and the goal is to help you do quick tasks without breaking your flow. In other words, less time staring down at a slab of glass, more time keeping your eyes up while still getting the key bits of information.

Specs tell only part of the story, but they matter here. Color monocular display at 600×600. 20-degree FOV. Up to 5,000 nits. About 2% light leakage. Gesture control through an EMG wristband that translates muscle activity into inputs. Standard transition lenses with auto-brightness tied to UV. On-frame mics, speakers, and cameras. And crucially, the display is monocular by design to keep weight and complexity down while preserving normal depth perception.

The product lands in a market that’s been full of false starts. What’s different this time is restraint. Rather than asking people to learn a new operating system floating in front of both eyes, Meta is trying to make regular glasses that quietly do a few things very well. Glance at a notification, see a live translation subtitle, confirm a route turn, line up a shot with a proper viewfinder, take a quick call—then let the display disappear.

There’s plenty left to prove. Battery life under real-world conditions, comfort over a full day, how well the Neural Band works for different bodies, and whether social norms have shifted enough that cameras and displays on faces feel welcome everywhere. But the direction is unmistakable. This isn’t a headset for special occasions; it’s eyewear you could wear every day that happens to be smart.

If Meta can deliver the reliability that eluded the on-stage demos, the Ray-Ban Display could be the most convincing case yet for everyday smart glasses: stylish frames, subtle screen, and a new kind of control you don’t have to announce out loud. For $799 starting September 30 in the U.S., we’re about to find out.