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Journalism of Courage
As I left the keynote presentation where CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the new Ray-Ban glasses with a display and headed toward the press room at the old Meta campus, one thing that struck me was the slide showing the $799 retail price.
I was honestly shocked and surprised (although the glasses and their price had leaked just before the debut) to see Meta charging $800 and not $1,999 for what might be the first consumer-focused smart glasses with an actual display, allowing you to see texts, maps, or whatever else while you’re wearing them.
I couldn’t help but wonder about the timing Meta chose to reveal these glasses – the same week Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup goes on sale across major markets. One thing I keep coming back to is the price and retail availability of the Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses. At $799, they are priced the same as the baseline iPhone 17 model.
Is that a coincidence, or a well-thought-out strategy? If it is, it could put pressure on Apple, which seems stuck in time and unwilling to acknowledge that smartphones have a shelf life, and that there’s a world beyond them.
The $799 price tag may seem high for a pair of smart glasses — after all, it’s still a niche product category, and I get that. You still need a phone to use them, which means Meta’s dream of selling smart glasses that make users smartphone-free is far from fully realised. But I have to acknowledge that Zuckerberg has figured out a way to put a phone on your face.
It may not be as mature as a smartphone just yet, but it’s the beginning of something new, and consumers should realise that the new iPhone 17 they are getting this fall might not be so “new” after all. It’s still built on the same core technology that was introduced when the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007. And no matter which model you pick, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, or the base iPhone 17, they are all essentially the same.
The launch of the Ray-Ban Meta Display this week at Connect 2025, a two-day developer conference focused on virtual reality, AR, and the metaverse, marks a major shift, one that has been in the making for a long time: a form of computing display worn as spectacles is finally becoming a reality.
Until last year, it was still just a concept, with both Meta and Snap showcasing their respective prototype glasses. But today, the smart glasses Meta is showing to the world for the first time aren’t prototypes — they are retail products, and they’re hitting the market toward the end of the month, although initially only in the US. Yes, that’s exactly two weeks from now. In contrast, Apple took months to get the Vision Pro headset into consumers’ hands.
Meta was confident enough to give demonstrations of the glasses to the press, and the analyst community ahead of the Connect event at its old campus in Menlo Park, California. I got an early look at the glasses, and my experience was great, though, like any new product category (or should I say, first-generation product), they are far from perfect. They are stylish, albeit a bit thicker than the regular Ray-Ban AI glasses (in case you haven’t tried those, I highly encourage you to get some hands-on time — they are available in India, fortunately), but I bet you won’t look like an alien wearing these glasses.
When I tried them, a display lit up and was projected onto the lens of my right eye. I could navigate the apps entirely using flicks and pinches of my right hand, made possible by the neural band that comes as part of the set and tells the glasses what my hand is doing. The small display basically lets you see things like a text message, a video call, or a map- all while staying present in the real world.
For example, you could walk into an office wearing glasses, observe what others are doing, and at the same time read a WhatsApp message or ask Meta AI where to find nearby sushi. My experience was smooth. And although the glasses were paired with a smartphone, I could easily imagine wearing them for a substantial part of the day. The best part? I didn’t have to take my phone out of my pocket, at least not for the tasks I just mentioned.
I still believe the Display glasses are a step toward a true augmented reality future, and I am all for it. But someone has to take a risky bet, and it’s Meta taking that plunge first. Chances are, all the flak and criticism will come Meta’s way. And Meta should be well-prepared once the glasses land in the hands of the first wave of consumers and developers.
At the keynote event, the on-stage demonstration didn’t go smoothly, and Meta was later trolled for it once the clip went viral, but that always happens with tech demos at live events. The takeaway is that, since the glasses pack in so much technology and hardware, it’s hard to get everything right in a first-generation product.
The biggest litmus test for Meta will be whether people actually want to wear a pair of smart glasses all day — and whether the technology is advanced enough to partially, if not entirely, replace the smartphone. For that to happen, the use case must mature beyond its current state.
When Meta launched the first Ray-Ban AI glasses a few years ago, the company relied on simple features to help people get used to these things, like taking pictures and videos, making phone calls, and listening to music. Later, Meta introduced artificial intelligence to the glasses, and the voice-based assistant proved to be a great use case, effectively utilising the built-in microphones and speakers. All of these features helped people get the hang of the frames and start forming expectations around what smart glasses can actually do.
That was good enough, a first step toward making smart glasses work for mainstream consumers. But the technology has evolved since then, and as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly promised, he sees smart glasses becoming part of everyday life. But for that to happen, the use cases don’t need to be invented from scratch, a costly mistake Apple made with the Vision Pro headset. Selling a $3,500 headset, and expecting consumers to adopt augmented reality technology from day one was a misguided approach. Meta, so far, has avoided that – for good.
The Orion glasses Meta showed off a year ago are much more technically advanced and bring true augmented reality capabilities, but they are currently challenging to execute as a finished consumer product due to high manufacturing costs. Meta’s Display glasses take a middle ground between the Ray-Ban AI glasses and Project Orion. That helps keep expectations in check and doesn’t promise the kind of true augmented reality tech that’s still hard to achieve in glasses as sleek as regular frames.
As I was trying out the Display glasses, I could sense a clear effort to build a multi-generation platform: one that could eventually become independent from the smartphone. While these glasses are still an accessory for the phone, the possibilities, even in their current form, feel endless. For example, the neural wristband, which lets you control images on the screen, is genuinely impressive. It feels like the beginning of a new kind of interface. The wristband includes vibrating haptics that subtly indicate when you have clicked on something.
I remember I played music, and then held my fingers together and turned them like a dial to increase and decrease volume. That was unbelievably cool. I think the neural band has the potential to become a universal interface for the glasses or similar products. The heads-up display itself is clear and sharp, though not very large. The field of view is only about 20 degrees, which is just a fraction of what you get with AR glasses.
Meta promises six hours of mixed-use battery life for its new glasses, which is on the higher side for wearables, though still not comparable to smartphones.
Currently, these glasses are limited to Meta’s own suite of apps like WhatsApp and Instagram. However, if Meta manages to sell them in large volumes, developers may begin creating apps for the platform, a potential win for the company. At $799, the price isn’t a huge investment for developers, making it likely that they will be among the first to get their hands on the glasses when they go on sale.
For Apple, the arrival of Meta’s display glasses may not pose an immediate threat, but it could quickly shift the landscape, especially since Cupertino remains the only major tech player without a clear artificial intelligence strategy and is heavily reliant on the iPhone. Apple sells nearly 200 million iPhones annually, while Meta has sold only a few million units of its Ray-Ban glasses. Still, Meta’s glasses are priced at $799, the same as the base model iPhone 17, which could spark a psychological shift among consumers over time.
The iPhone 17, in comparison, looks like just another “boring” product. The iPhone design hasn’t seen significant changes in years, and even a potential foldable iPhone, if Apple ever launches one, might not recreate the excitement of the original iPhone. But that was the past, not the future.
The Meta Ray-Ban display glasses have the right ingredients to become a platform shift, something the iPhone has already achieved. The real question is how long people will continue to cling to their smartphones, and when smart glasses will take over and become the next generation-defining platform, as Meta envisions.
Only time will tell. However, Apple may need to step out of its comfort zone or risk becoming the next Nokia or BlackBerry.
