- Mark Zuckerberg teases third-gen smart glasses for 2025 in investor call
- He also called 2025 a “defining year” for Meta’s smart glasses plans
- We don’t have any official release date or price info yet
Recent leaks suggest that Meta is gearing up to launch a new generation of smart glasses this year – ones that are just like its existing Meta Ray-bans, but with a built-in display to show you previews of the images you snap with their camera plus notifications from your phone. While Mark Zuckerberg didn’t reveal any specific details on these rumored specs in the company’s recent Q4 2024 investor call, his comments about a “third-generation” of the technology and saying 2025 will be a “defining year” for Meta in the smart glasses category make me think a release is all but guaranteed.
Here’s exactly what Zuckerberg said according to the call’s official transcript on the subject of the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses: “Our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are a real hit, and this will be the year when we understand the trajectory for AI glasses as a category. Many breakout products in the history of consumer electronics have sold 5-10 million units in their third generation. This will be a defining year that determines if we’re on a path towards many hundreds of millions and eventually billions of AI glasses.”
Glossing over the ambitious “billions of AI glasses” target, what’s notable is that Zuckerberg highlights the importance of third-generation technology in determining the success of future iterations of that hardware, and then in the next breath says that 2025 will be the defining year for Meta in terms of smart glasses – suggesting the year will be defined by the success of Meta’s own third-gen glasses.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses so far have two generations under their belt – the original Ray-Ban Stories which launched in 2021, and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that came out in 2023. So for a third-generation of the hardware to bring about a defining year in 2025, Meta would have to launch it first.
Zuckerberg was careful not to promise a launch explicitly, but his comments go barely a hair from crossing that line, and in conjunction with leaks we’ve heard I’m feeling confident we’re getting new Meta specs this year. So, what could they have in store for us, and what do I want to see?
What I want to see from the next Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
1. Full-color displays
Leaks haven’t gone into specifics in terms of the precise quality of the hardware’s components, but they have effectively promised us the existing smart glasses with a “single small in-lens screen”, per people familiar with the project. Having tested other smart glasses, this means the display will effectively be half in your vision. This will have the advantage that it shouldn’t be too obscuring, though focusing on what it’s showing you may take some getting used to.
Given that other leaks suggest this display can show you previews of the photos you take with the specs, I hope that means it’ll be full-color – my main request for this display upgrade – and while I would prefer a two-lens solution there is one potential advantage a single lens would have: price.
2. Not too pricey
I expect the Ray-Ban Meta glasses with a display will cost more than the standard (display-less) pair we have currently at $299 / £299 / AU$449, though I hope rumors they could cost $1,000 (around £800 / AU$1,600) aren’t correct. I understand innovation isn’t cheap, but $1,000 feels way too expensive – especially for a product Zuckerberg and Meta hope will see mainstream success.
My hope is they cost somewhere around $650 (£550 / AU$1,050) with lens upgrades being what perhaps pushes them towards that higher $1,000. If the default model is that expensive then I’d expect a few upgrades – such as transition lenses by default (as my smart Ray-Bans with transition lenses are a game changer), improved speakers, and an upgrade I hope they get regardless of a price hike: better cameras.
3. Upgraded camera
The 12MP snapper the existing model boasts is fine for Meta AI’s Look and Ask tool (which allows the AI to see what you see for context to your requests), but I’ve found the quality isn’t the best – nine times out of ten I’d rather use my phone.
There are occasions that the smart glasses have been awesome for first-person footage – I’ve recorded clips and taken pics at concerts without losing out on the moment because I’m behind a phone screen – but a quality improvement would make my snaps higher quality, and would mean I’d rely on them much more frequently.
It’s unlikely we’d get smartphone-quality 50MP cameras, but a boost to the 12MP count – or some other sensor upgrades to improve their performance – certainly wouldn’t go amiss.
4. Longer battery life
Finally, the most important factor that needs an upgrade is battery. While Meta boasts a four-hour max battery life, the specs can only really achieve this with more intermittent use – such as occasionally asking questions or taking snaps. If you want to stream music or livestream your perspective to Instagram, you’ll burn through their battery more quickly, and I expect a display won’t help things.
Ideally, the next-gen specs would boast at least an actual four-hour battery life with the display on, though I’d accept three hours as perhaps a more reasonable target. If they can only approach one or two hours with the display on I’d be concerned about how useful the specs will be, though the project will be a balancing act from Meta between battery, specs, price, and weight.
