Meta Connect 2026: camera-free Ray-Bans, $1,299 VR glasses and a third-gen Ray-Ban Meta

Meta used its annual Connect conference on 23 and 24 September to widen its range of AI glasses in two directions at once: a pair with no camera at all, and a pair that puts virtual reality into a glasses-sized frame.

Ray-Ban Meta Audio: no camera, by design

The Ray-Ban Meta Audio is Meta’s first camera-free smart glasses. They are built for music, podcasts, calls and talking to Meta AI, without any ability to capture photos or video.

• Weight: 43 grams
• Battery: up to 12 hours, plus 48 more from the charging case
• Price: $349
• Availability: pre-orders opened 24 September, shipping 13 October

It is a notable choice. Cameras on smart glasses have been the category’s biggest source of privacy worries, for the people being filmed as much as for the wearer. A camera-free model gives buyers who only want audio and an assistant an option that bystanders have less reason to object to.

Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3

The third generation of Meta’s best-known glasses adds a 12-megapixel camera and 90 percent noise reduction for calls and voice commands, at $449.

Meta VR Glasses

The most ambitious product is Meta VR Glasses: a 5K Dolby Vision display in a 100-gram magnesium frame, priced at $1,299. Shrinking VR from a headset to something closer to glasses has been a goal across the industry, and weight is the main barrier.

And the rest

Meta also announced the Meta Adventurer ($249, available 23 October) and a limited-edition Meta Fury, completing its own-brand glasses range. Reports say Meta is working on bringing its Muse AI agent to its glasses.

Meta’s bet on glasses

Meta is betting that glasses, not phones, become the main way people use AI assistants: always there, hands-free, seeing and hearing what you do. This year’s lineup hedges that bet, offering more capability for those who want it and less for those who don’t.