Meta's smart glasses are everywhere at this year's Connect

At Meta Connect this year, the company’s push into smart glasses was impossible to miss. Meta staff and the influencers who flock to the event wore the glasses everywhere, and most of the demos on offer were built around them.

One of the more notable products was a new, still-unreleased pair of audio-only smart glasses. News of the glasses arrived not long after Meta faced accusations that it was selling “pervert glasses,” with critics alleging its camera-equipped models could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes. The new pair carries six microphones and no camera, with no native way to record surroundings. A Meta staffer demonstrating them emphasized entertainment and communication uses: listening to music and taking calls without reaching for a phone.

The glasses will also integrate with Muse, Meta’s personal agentic system, which can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf through verbal commands; that integration is not yet available to the public. Meta plans to let users personalize the assistant, choosing from a set of digital avatars that represent it when it communicates with them. In a hands-on demo, the assistant worked but proved rigid — it required direct, exclusive speech, and casual conversation with a nearby staffer caused it to talk over her.

Meta also showed a second audio-only pair: glasses built for people with hearing loss, a condition some 50 million Americans are said to have to some degree. A member of Meta’s research team said the glasses had been in development for about five years and pointed to a price advantage over conventional hearing aids, which can run as high as $1,600 — the new glasses will sell for $150. Wearers can switch amplification between “focused,” which isolates the person directly in front of them, and “omnidirectional,” which picks up sound from every direction.

Mark Zuckerberg has said he believes smart glasses are the future, and Meta’s showing at Connect reflected that bet: trying to succeed where earlier attempts have failed, the company is casting a wide net, aiming to make its glasses stylish, functional, and useful. The category still hasn’t found a mainstream footing, but attendees at Connect left largely convinced it was headed there.

Why it matters

Meta’s push at Connect makes clear the company is betting on breadth — entertainment, AI-agent access, and accessibility — rather than a single device, wagering that this wider net succeeds where earlier, narrower attempts to make smart glasses mainstream have not.