Armed with cutting-edge holographic waveguides in the Ray‑Ban Display smart glasses, the sport-centric Oakley Vanguard, and an AI-powered wristband capable of providing nuanced, finger-level control over any Meta head-worn hardware, the company has evolved its nascent wearables from mere novelty or gimmickry to necessity.
Early reactions trended toward bullish on capability, cautious on comfort and social acceptability, and just generally fascinated by how “agentic” AI responds when it’s actually in your line of sight.
- Ray‑Ban Display: A colorful leap, with reservations
- Oakley Vanguard: Made for athletes, not just influencers
- Ray‑Ban 2: The practical upgrades for everyday wear
- Neural Band: sEMG control inches closer to the mainstream
- Horizon Engine, Studio & Meta TV expand the stack
- What to watch next for Meta wearables and services
Ray‑Ban Display: A colorful leap, with reservations
The headliner is a product called the Ray‑Ban Display, a single-eye waveguide that displays context — think translations, turn-by-turn cues or quick replies — over your right eyeball at a claimed 5,000 nits. That brightness is important outdoors, where most existing consumer waveguides wash out. Among the reactions from attendees: it’s clear and immediate; you don’t waste time having to fish a phone out.
But monocular overlays bring trade-offs. Since the visuals don’t map to real-world objects such as with a full AR headset, the UI floats—excellent for notifications but not quite right for complex spatial tasks. Vision science has long observed that monocular cues can enhance strain for prolonged use, when the focus in both a virtual and real world differ. Anticipate Meta to emphasize short, glanceable interactions to avoid fatigue in a virtual world populated with ads.
Intentionally, live features of AI are few and far between at launch, with Meta positioning a gradual ramp. The company demoed “agentic” behaviors—proposing calendar adds or surfacing info in response to conversation context—bringing up privacy issues that were sort of inevitable. Previous counsel from digital rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation has pointed to bystander notification and data minimization as must-haves around any camera wearables; Meta will face a challenge in showing that those checks exist strongly enough here.
The Display model comes in at $799, and you can choose either Black or Sand frames, as well as a pair of transition lenses. Hands-on demos featured the system connecting to a new sEMG Neural Band for hands-free control. A gaudy try to answer a video call slipped up, but volume and text entry gestures succeeded, proof of concept for low-friction inputs provided the software plays along.
Oakley Vanguard: Made for athletes, not just influencers
Developed jointly with Oakley, Meta’s Vanguard takes a direct shot at endurance athletes and action-sports creators. A central 12MP camera delivers up to 3K video, while the curved lens and frame design is claimed to enhance wind management and fit, with an IP67 rating that promises protection from sweat, rain and dust. Strava integration means audible stat callouts mid-run or ride, and sync with Garmin wearables portends a wider performance ecosystem.
At $499, Vanguard beats out a lot of action-camera-plus-mount arrangements while adding voice and AI assist. Coaches and athletes we know often talk about how they dislike the friction of mounts, of batteries, of editing; first person being as simple as “it just works” could open up training analysis and race storytelling even further. Open to question is stabilization: competitive creators are going to compare Vanguard with the chest- or helmet-mounted cameras that thrive on rough ground.
Ray‑Ban 2: The practical upgrades for everyday wear
Meta also updated its non‑display Ray‑Ban model with a larger battery and higher-resolution video. Endurance, for many everyday users, was the pain point — glasses that die by late afternoon just don’t get worn. A new Audio Boost feature being rolled out to older models will amplify in‑person conversations — a subtle but valuable utility play that, again, is designed to keep these glasses relevant even if you’re not filming or streaming.
Neural Band: sEMG control inches closer to the mainstream
The Neural Band harnesses surface electromyography technology, which Meta acquired when it bought CTRL‑labs, to pick up small electrical signals coming from muscles in the wrist. In demos, mimed pen strokes led to text input and a pinch‑twist gesture raised or lowered music volume. Researchers publishing in IEEE and HCI venues have demonstrated that sEMG can achieve the same level of accuracy with cameras, without the privacy tax; however, only after calibration (skin types, sweat factors, motion reliability). Here’s today: the groundwork is solid, but the software has to spend time out in the wild.
Horizon Engine, Studio & Meta TV expand the stack
More than just glasses, Meta unveiled Horizon Engine and Horizon Studio — a new generative creation suite that allows anyone to start worlds from voice prompts — whose demo scenes included an octagon arena, a minimalist home and an underwater seascape.
The strategy mirrors, in a broad sense, what analysts at firms like Gartner and IDC are referring to as “tooling the flywheel”: lower creation costs begetting more content, which attracts more users, which lures more creators.
Meta TV, a new dashboard for services such as Netflix and Disney+, also includes support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, signifying a push to keep entertainment within Meta’s surfaces. If it all works seamlessly — a single login, reliable playback, smart suggestions — this could be a sticky on‑ramp to the wider mixed-reality ecosystem.
What to watch next for Meta wearables and services
As for the Ray‑Ban Display, keep an eye out for battery (stamina and thermal), notification sanity (nobody likes eye‑spam), and strong bystander cues. Stabilization quality and creator workflows will make or break adoption for Vanguard. And for the Neural Band, love is reliability — can slow hand movements erase taps and swipes from everyday, hack-free use?
The bigger picture here is evident: smart glasses are moving beyond being camera-first gizmos to becoming context computers. If Meta gets comfort, clarity and consent right, the Display and Vanguard could represent the moment when spatial computing leaves the helmet and enters our daily reality — and sticks around.