Sorry, but you’re going to want a pair whether you know it or not.
There’s one thing people want to know when they see my first-gen Ray-Ban smart glasses, and it’s got nothing to do with AI, or cameras, or the surprisingly great open-ear audio they put out. They want to know what’s probably front-of-mind right now as you’re reading this: Do they have a screen in them? The answer? Sadly, no… until now.
At Meta Connect 2025, Meta finally unveiled its Ray-Ban Display smart glasses that, as you may have gathered from the name, have a screen in them. It doesn’t sound like much on the surface—we have screens everywhere, all the time. Too many of them, in fact. But I’m here to tell you that after using them in advance of the unveil, I regret to inform you that you will most likely want another screen in your life, whether you know it or not. But first, you probably want to know exactly what’s going on in this screen I speak of.
The answer? Apps, of course. The display, which is actually full-color and not monochrome like previous reporting suggested, acts as a heads-up display (HUD) for things like notifications, navigation, and even pictures and videos. For the full specs of that display, you can read the news companion to my hands-on here. For now, though, I want to focus on what that screen feels like. The answer? A little jarring at first.
While the Ray-Ban Display, which weigh 69g (about 10 more grams than the first-gen glasses without a screen) do their best not to shove a screen in front of your face, it’s still genuinely there, hovering like a real-life Clippy, waiting to distract you with a notification at a moment’s notice. And, no matter what your feelings are about smart glasses that have a screen, that’s a good thing, since the display is the whole reason you might spend $800 to own a pair. Once your eyes adjust to the screen (it took me a minute or so), you can get cracking on doing stuff. That’s where the Meta Neural Band comes in.
The Neural Band is Meta’s sEMG wristband, a piece of tech it’s been showing off for years now that’s been shrunk down into the size of a Whoop fitness band. It reads the electrical signals in your hand to register pinches, swipes, taps, and wrist turns as inputs in the glasses. I was worried at first that its wristband might feel clunky or too conspicuous on my body, but I can inform you that it’s not the case—this is about as lightweight as it gets. The smart glasses also felt light and comfortable on my face despite being noticeably thicker than the first-gen Ray-Bans.
More importantly than being lightweight and subtle, it’s very responsive.
