Forget what you think you know about Meta smart glasses: Two new, unreleased devices just turned up in a leaked promo, and they signal a big move away from the market’s bleeding edge to something more daring—not to mention practical for real-world wear.
First spotted by UploadVR, the video showed users pointing at a “Ray-Ban Display” model with an uncluttered heads-up readout and a sporty-seeming Oakley-framed model that resembles what you would find in the Sphaera line. Were these to make it to the Connect stage, Meta is signaling that smart glasses are going from camera-first novelties to actually useful companions.
A real-world monocular HUD, not lab demos
Perhaps the most eye-catching leak is the Ray-Ban Display: classic frames that have a small monocular HUD built-in, with turn-by-turn directions, on-the-fly translation, messaging, and Meta AI suggestions to boot.
Perhaps crucially, it isn’t trying to be a full augmented reality headset. The display doesn’t float in front of you like a box on your face anchored to the world, which helps keep complexity, weight, and cost down yet still gives people what they want as they walk, commute, or ride.
Those design choices come with smart trade-offs. A monocular HUD generally requires fewer sensors than full AR—no persistent mapping or depth sensing—so you can prioritize battery life for the camera, voice capture, and the display. It also works to maintain frames closer in shape and mass to regular eyewear, a lesson the industry learned after years of bloated prototypes. Look for a small field of view tailored toward glanceable text, navigation arrows, and short system notifications, rather than immersive graphics.
To ensure privacy and social acceptance, the glasses will still need discreet recording indicators and conservative audio pickup. Meta’s initial Ray-Ban line set a foundation here already; building off that and adding a screen might allow these to pass the “coffee shop test” in ways headsets can’t. A bigger issue is overall optical brightness and outdoor legibility—because sunlit visibility is where many heads-up systems succeed or fail.
Oakley’s sport DNA could finally make smart eyewear for the masses
The second leak showcases a design based on Oakley’s Sphaera silhouette, suggesting Meta will play in performance frame territory as well as lifestyle.
That last move is important: Oakley’s standing in cycling, running, and field sports isn’t just about looks. Curved lenses, grippy temples, and superior venting can make or break a device you’d wear for hours on the move. This year alone, Meta and Oakley launched the HSTN; a continued effort with Sphaera-style wearable frames would delve deeper into an active lifestyle market that gravitates toward hands-free shooting and real-time data at a glance.
Think about route guidance that doesn’t take over your field of vision, lap times and pace cues that don’t necessitate wrist-checks, or translation prompts while you keep looking ahead during rush hour in a busy station. If prescription and polarized options are available—yet another functional must—this might be the first smart eyewear that athletes or commuters embrace because it fits into their routine instead of standing out from it.
The sleeper feature: a subtle control EMG wristband
The leaks also nod to a much-rumored accessory: an electromyography wristband for pinpoint, silent input. Meta has been teasing this tech since acquiring CTRL-labs, and early demos at past Connect events have shown finger-pinches and micro-gestures turning into clicks, scrolling, and text input. CNET’s Scott Stein found that the control is remarkably accurate in his hands-on testing, consistent with EMG’s claims to read nerve signals at the wrist with very little movement.
Why it matters: voice is fine at home but awkward in public, and tiny touchpads on frames are easily activated incorrectly. An EMG band could serve “invisible” compute: navigating the HUD, confirming prompts, or silently replying with canned responses—all without needing to glance in stutter-step at some nearby screen. The open questions are practical ones: daily battery life, Bluetooth latency from the phone to the wristband and back (great care must be taken not to introduce any perceptible lag), all-day-on-wrist comfort, and onboarding calibration so that it works dependably across a variety of users. Hit those, and the wristband might be that thing that makes a display on glasses actually usable.
Why these leaks are a step up for Connect
Smart glasses have been lurching toward a “just works” moment. Camera-first models won for creators but lost for productivity; full AR headsets provided immersion but demanded too much on battery, cost, and social norms. The use of a lightweight HUD combined with a neural input band is a practical compromise—more feature-rich than camera sunglasses yet less friction than headsets. It’s the same curve many wearables followed: find the everyday job, then iterate.
Competition is circling. Everyone from Rokid to Google is experimenting with approaches that fuse displays to an AI assistant, and the big-phone players are rumored to be getting their own glasses in line as well. If Meta leverages Connect to offer developers strong APIs for glanceable apps, and if Oakley’s performance frames expand the user base beyond tech early adopters, the category may finally leap from novelty to habit.
Leaks are never everything, but they’re enough to create expectations. If these rumors are true and what we’ve seen is legit—a glance-first Ray-Ban Display, an Oakley version designed for active wear, and the EMG wristband to link it all together—Meta won’t just be updating a hit product. It will be redefining what smart glasses do.