Wait... Smart Glasses are Suddenly Good?

MKBHD reviews the Meta Rayban Display glasses, calling them the best smart glasses with a screen he has tried, at $800 with monocular AR, neural wrist control, and no app store at launch.

• Meta Rayban Display ships with a monocular right-eye HUD at 42 pixels per degree, 5,000 nits, nearly invisible light leak from outside.
• Neural wrist band uses surface EMG to read electrical impulses; mid-air letter-drawing text input worked reliably first try.
• No separate compute puck unlike Orion prototype; everything self-contained in glasses weighing 69 g.
• Priced at $800; MKBHD suspects Meta is selling at a loss to drive hardware adoption.
• All apps are first-party only at launch: WhatsApp for messaging and video calls, Meta Maps, Instagram Reels — no app store yet.
• Live captioning and real-time translation of speech in front of the wearer runs directly on the HUD.
• Samsung and Google smart glasses entries expected within months, but Meta leads the category as of this review.
• Orion prototype cost $10,000 in materials alone just 10 months prior; the shipping product undercuts that trajectory sharply.

2025-09-19 · Watch on YouTube