Meta's new $799 smart glasses come with a color AR display... and a wristband

The new Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses look like a regular ol' pair of shades, but they show you – and only you – a floating screen with useful content. That's already pretty neat, but I'm honestly more excited about the companion wristband they ship with.

Meta's already been at this smart glasses thing for a bit, so it knows how to pack a camera, mics, speakers, and AI smarts into a pair of spectacles for interacting with an assistant using voice commands. With the addition of a screen, it can now visually reveal contextual information like your phone would – except you don't have to fish a device out of your pocket.

The 600 x 600-pixel color display can show you DMs from apps like WhatsApp and Instagram, let you compose photos and review your shots, caption and translate conversations with people around you, see your contacts on a video call, guide you to your destination with maps, and bring up the weather, your calendar, and even your music or podcast playlist.

There's a six-mic array and open-ear speakers, Bluetooth to pair with your preferred wireless audio gear, and a 12-MP camera with 3x zoom on board.

The Neural Band is particularly interesting because it opens up a whole lot of ways to use these glasses. Using electromyography (EMG) tech that Meta's been perfecting for years, it can accurately detect a bunch of gestures you make with your fingers via muscle signals at the wrist to navigate through the on-screen interface.

That means you can respond to incoming messages, intuitively control settings within apps like the zoom on your camera, and scroll through Instagram Reels with inconspicuous hand gestures like pinching and swiping.

Since the band's sensing tech is highly sensitive, it can perceive minute gestures – so they don't require much effort, can be performed even without raising your arm, and won't be plainly obvious to people around you.

What's more, it's designed to work with people with mobility challenges who have trouble with large movements. The band was developed with nearly 200,000 research participants to detect gestures with high fidelity, so you don't have to train it to respond specifically to you before using it. Meta also notes that it will soon recognize handwriting too.

The glasses themselves feature transition lenses, which means they adapt to changing light conditions around you, going from clear to dark outdoors, and back to clear indoors.

The company says you can expect up to 6 hours of continuous mixed use from the glasses on a full charge, and the included foldable carrying case can provide up to 30 total hours of battery life. The band will run for up to 18 hours on a charge, and is IPX7 rated for water resistance.

That all sounds pretty nifty, if you're into that promised Google Glass life – or simply don't care to whip out a phone or smartwatch when you need a screen's worth of info. As much as I'm excited to try out this tech, I worry about getting too used to just being plugged into all of today's apps and feeds, and having a harder time disconnecting from them when I mean to.

Meta will begin selling these for US$799 on September 30 across the US, and is offering in-person demos and fittings to try out three sizes before you pick one up. The glasses will come to Canada, the UK, France, and Italy early next year.

Check out the Meta Ray-Ban Display over on the company's site.

Source: Meta

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