All the news from Meta Connect 2025
5 min read
Meta’s annual Connect conference is happening on September 17th and 18th, and it seems like there’s going to be a lot of focus on smart glasses.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Wednesday evening keynote will discuss “the latest on AI glasses,” the company says. Rumors and a video leak from Meta already indicate that we might see Meta launch glasses that have a display on one lens and that are controlled with a neural wristband, as well as wraparound Oakley smart glasses with a camera on the nose bridge.
The company also says that Zuckerberg will lay out “Meta’s vision for artificial intelligence and the metaverse,” so there should be some non-smart glasses news to look forward to, too.
Zuckerberg’s keynote begins at 8PM ET / 5PM PT, and we’ll be covering the keynote and major announcements from the show live. You can keep up with all of our coverage from the event right here.
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When the Oakley Meta HSTN arrived earlier this year, it wasn’t what I thought Oakley-branded smart glasses would be. Sure, they had Oakley’s famous PRIZM lenses, but where was the wraparound design? Where were the athlete-focused features like stronger water and sweat resistance? Confusingly, it felt like the HSTN glasses were just Ray-Ban Meta glasses by another name. But that’s because Meta had the real athlete-focused glasses in its back pocket. Today, the company unveiled the new $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard — and it has everything outdoorsy athletes could want and then some.
“When we started building HSTN, it was an easier process of developing because most of the things we wanted for low-impact sports, like skating, don’t require a lot of technology in the eyewear from a performance standpoint,” says Oakley global president Caio Amato. Conversely, Amato says, the Vanguards were envisiond as a “revolution” not just for elite sports stars, but weekend warriors and everyday athletes.
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If you missed the transparent Ray-Ban Metas last year, good news.
There’s another transparent limited edition version in matte. Kewl.
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A live AI demo failed on stage.Chef Jack Mancuso was attempting to ask Meta AI to help make a recipe in a live video, but the AI got a little tripped up and he had to stop the demo.
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Conversation focus is the first new feature on deck.Zuckerberg introduced a small video showing how Meta glasses will be able to zero in on conversations and amplify voices in loud areas. It’s not quite like a hearing aid feature, but it does remind everyone that the second-gen Ray-Bans are an audio-first device.
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Zuck says that super intelligence will be “the most important technology in our lifetimes.”
Meta has been investing a lot into AI as of late.
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Meta has announced a new generation of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, featuring significantly improved battery life and the ability to record 3K video, which brings them up to par with the Oakley HSTN smart glasses. The new glasses, technically called the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2, are available to order today and start at $379.
Let’s dig in on battery, which is better on a few fronts. You can use the new Ray-Bans for up to eight hours on a single charge, which is twice the four-hour battery life of the previous generation. The charging case can charge the glasses to 50 percent in 20 minutes — a slight improvement over the 22 minutes to 50 percent for the first generation. The case for the Gen 2 glasses offers an additional 48 hours of battery life, up from 32 hours.
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Zuck’s onstage.
He was wearing a new pair of glasses that, according to a live video, have a display in the lens. He says he’ll talk more about them later.
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Ray-Ban’s website posts a “We’ll be back soon” note ahead of Meta Connect.
Taking a move straight from Apple’s playbook.
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Meta is about to kick off its annual Connect conference, beginning with a keynote address from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday night. Zuckerberg plans to discuss “the latest on AI glasses” and will lay out “Meta’s vision for artificial intelligence and the metaverse,” according to the Connect website.
As my colleague Victoria Song writes, Meta’s smart glasses are due for a major upgrade, and based on a leaked video from Meta, it seems like the company will announce exactly such a product during Connect: its first glasses with a screen. That video also showed new wraparound Oakley smart glasses. And Meta’s mention of the metaverse makes me think that Meta’s Horizon OS and VR work will get some airtime, as well.
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Meta’s next big Connect conference is nearly here, and this year, we’re expecting to see a lot of news about glasses. AI-focused hardware is all the rage, and Meta arguably already has the best gadgets around in its Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses. At this year’s show, we’re expecting to see more about glasses, but also some standalone AI updates and even some talk of the metaverse.
Here’s what we’re expecting from Connect, which will feature a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that we’ll be covering live on Wednesday at 8PM ET / 5PM PT.
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An unlisted and now-removed video from Meta showed off a new pair of Ray-Ban branded smart glasses with a display and a wristband to help control them, as reported by UploadVR. The video also features a new pair of wraparound “Sphaera” Oakley smart glasses with a camera on the nose, meaning that Meta itself may have inadvertently leaked two of its biggest announcements from its Connect event this week.
For the glasses with a display, the video includes branding that says “Meta | Ray-Ban” and “Display,” so perhaps Meta will call them the Meta Ray-Ban Display. Based on a brief clip included in UploadVR’s article, the actual display is in the right lens of the glasses, and the clip shows how the glasses will let you do things like ask Meta AI a question, look at a map on the glasses to help you navigate, translate a sign, or use your hand with the wristband to “write” a reply to a chat.
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This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.
About a month ago, I was walking in Williamsburg and a stylish Brooklyn hipster stopped me to ask about the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses I was testing. A few weeks later, I went to dinner with a friend that I hadn’t seen in years. It wasn’t until we were walking to the train that I noticed they were wearing a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. I went to a concert, turned my head, and saw someone in my section with the Ray-Bans’ recording light on. The next day, a quick search told me footage had been uploaded to TikTok.
