Meta unveils new smart glasses with a display and wristband controller (techcrunch.com)

Meta unveiled the Ray-Ban Meta Display smart glasses at Meta Connect 2025: a consumer-ready Ray-Ban-branded pair with a right-lens display for apps, alerts, directions and live translations, shipping Sept. 30 for $799. The glasses include cameras, speakers, microphones and an on-board AI assistant and connect to the cloud to run Meta apps like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. Meta is positioning this as a pragmatic step from its Orion research demos toward a mass-market wearable, building on millions of units sold with partner EssilorLuxottica. Crucially, the glasses are controlled by the Meta Neural Band — a Fitbit-like, screenless wristband that uses electromyography (EMG) to sense subtle signals between brain and hand, enabling gesture navigation; it’s water resistant with about 18 hours of battery life. Technically this is a simpler product than last year’s Orion prototype (no AR waveguide lenses or eye tracking), but it’s a tangible first-to-market play to get Meta onto user hardware. The move matters to the AI/ML community because it advances real-world multimodal interaction (vision, audio, EMG) and on-device/cloud assistant workflows, while raising questions about platform lock-in: Google and Apple’s future glasses could leverage deeper OS integration to challenge Meta’s reach.