Meta Unveils First Display-Capable AI Glasses at Connect 2025, Pioneering New Wearable Tech Race

TradingKey - On Wednesday, Eastern Time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the company's major breakthrough in artificial intelligence hardware at the annual Connect conference: Meta Ray-Ban Display, the first consumer-ready AI smart glasses featuring an integrated display.

The product's release is widely viewed by the industry as Meta's critical leap in defining and driving the AI glasses category from proof of concept to mass adoption, generating significant industry attention.

Display Glasses + Gesture Control as Innovation Focus

Consistent with previously leaked information, the Meta Ray-Ban Display is based on the classic Ray-Ban Aviator series design but is bulkier than the previous screenless Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, accommodating additional components and a larger battery.

The product's core innovation lies in its integrated right-eye monocular full-color display, featuring a resolution of 600×600 pixels, providing a 20-degree field of view (FOV) and 90Hz refresh rate, with a peak brightness of up to 5,000 nits. These specifications ensure users receive clear, smooth visual experiences under various lighting conditions.

Additionally, the glasses feature built-in UV detection that intelligently assesses ambient light intensity to automatically adjust the display's activation and brightness, optimizing both display quality and device battery life.

Meta has paired the glasses with a neural wristband called "Neural Band." This wristband detects subtle electrical signals (electromyography or EMG) from users' forearm muscles to enable precise gesture control. Users can navigate music with thumb swipes, adjust volume by pinching fingers, and perform other operations.

Meta is also developing handwriting functionality based on EMG, demonstrating gesture typing input via the wristband that achieves 30 words per minute in English.

These innovations enable the glasses to go beyond simple information viewing and message replies (supporting WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram), implementing real-time video calling capabilities in AR glasses for the first time. Users can directly share first-person perspective footage, supplemented by real-time conversation captions and translation features.

AR Race Heating Up

Zuckerberg emphasized the product's maturity and strategic significance during his presentation: “We have been working on glasses for more than 10 years, and this is unlike anything I've ever seen." "This isn’t a prototype. This is here, it’s ready to go and you’re going to be able to buy it in a couple of weeks." The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are priced at $799 and will officially launch on September 30.

Mike Proulx, Research Director at Forrester, stated that the product's release "reminds me of when the Apple Watch first appeared as an alternative to smartphones."

An intriguing detail is that unlike previous Ray-Ban Meta series products, the new model places "Meta" at the beginning of the name (Meta Ray-Ban Display). This subtle adjustment may indirectly confirm Meta's high expectations for the product, suggesting they view it as a landmark strategic product comparable to the original iPhone launch.

Of course, Meta isn't the first to enter this space. Google launched Google Glass back in 2013, but it failed to succeed due to price, privacy, and social acceptance issues. However, over the past decade, core technologies supporting smart glasses (such as processors, batteries, micro-displays, and cameras) have made significant progress, laying the foundation for product maturity.

Meta's early move will undoubtedly stimulate other tech giants in the AR race. Industry widely expects competitors like Google and Apple to follow with their own AR products.

Following the demonstration, Meta's stock rose slightly by 0.5 percentage points in after-hours trading. TradingKey Stock Score has given it a "Buy" rating of 7.03 points, ranking 50th among 470 software and IT service stocks, while data shows Wall Street analysts have set a target average price of $850.312 for the stock, indicating 9.15% upside potential from current levels ($775.715).