Meta Launches Ray-Ban Display Smart Glasses with Neural Band

Meta unveils Meta Ray-Ban Display at Connect 2025

Meta announced a new consumer wearable at its Connect developer conference: the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a pair of Ray-Ban–branded smart glasses with a right-lens display for apps, alerts, directions, and live translations.

Unlike the advanced Orion prototype shown last year, these glasses use a simpler HUD rather than full AR lenses. They include cameras, speakers, microphones and an on-board AI assistant, connect to cloud services for social apps and mapping, and will be available starting September 30 for $799.

The glasses are controlled by the Meta Neural Band, a wrist-worn device that reads subtle hand movements using electromyography (EMG) — the same band shown in last year’s Orion demo. Meta says the band is water resistant and delivers about 18 hours of battery life.

Onstage, Mark Zuckerberg framed the device as a bridge from smartphones to wearable computing: users can view Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook interfaces, follow step-by-step directions, and receive live translations through the right-lens display. The gesture band aims to replace touch and voice for quick, glanceable interactions.

Meta positions the Ray-Ban Display as a real product shipping soon, while Orion — with full AR lenses and eye tracking — remains a multi-year prospect. Being first to market matters, but Google and Apple are likely to enter the smart-glass race with devices tightly integrated into their OS ecosystems, creating stiff competition.

• Field service and logistics: hands-free directions and overlays can speed repairs and deliveries.
• Retail and customer engagement: glanceable offers and cashierless workflows in stores.
• Healthcare and accessibility: live translations and hands-free prompts can assist clinicians and patients.
• Security and privacy risks: always-on cameras and EMG controls raise data governance and consent challenges.
• Developer considerations: new UX paradigms, SDKs, and low-latency cloud or edge services will be critical for smooth experiences.

For enterprises and product teams, the immediate work is practical: run focused pilots to test gesture control, battery and connectivity limits, and the real-world value of glanceable content. Measure task completion time, error rates for EMG gestures, and user comfort during extended wear.

Privacy and regulatory planning can’t be an afterthought. Organizations should map data flows from device to cloud, apply privacy-by-design patterns, and prepare clear opt-in/opt-out UX. For public sector and regulated industries, document retention and access controls will determine whether smart glasses are viable.

Meta’s move underscores a broader shift: wearable displays are moving from demos to purchasable products. That creates both opportunity and responsibility for developers, operators and policy makers. QuarkyByte’s approach blends technical benchmarks with adoption modelling to help organizations prioritize pilots, quantify costs, and set governance guardrails before scaling.