Meta Connect 2025: Smart Glasses That Impress and Frustrate
Kevin Abbaszadeh
Technology Editor
Meta’s Connect 2025 event wasn’t subtle. The company is betting hard that the future of tech isn’t in your pocket but on your face and wrist. The stars of the show were the Ray-Ban Display smart glasses and the Neural Band, a wrist device that claims to turn your thoughts into commands.
On paper, the glasses are slick. They look almost like regular Ray-Ban Wayfarer’s but hide a full-color screen in one lens. That display can show texts, navigation arrows, or translations hovering in front of you. When it works, it feels futuristic and practical. The Neural Band is even bolder. Worn on your wrist, it reads the tiny electrical signals from your muscles and translates them into input. Instead of fumbling with buttons or saying “Hey Meta” out loud, you can just twitch your fingers and make things happen. Some reviewers walked away calling it magical, like controlling a computer with your mind.
But the hype doesn’t erase the problems. First, the display only works for one eye. That causes strain for a lot of people after even short use. The glasses themselves are chunkier than the marketing photos suggest, and while they try to pass as normal eyewear, the bulk gives them away. During the keynote, even Mark Zuckerberg struggled to answer a call smoothly. That slip showed what many tech reporters confirmed afterward: the system isn’t always responsive, and features like live translation or app switching can lag. Battery life is also underwhelming. Six hours of “mixed use” means most people will need to recharge halfway through the day, which undercuts the whole vision of replacing your phone.
Meta is charging $799 for the bundle, and right now it’s U.S. only. For a device that still feels experimental, that price is steep. International rollout won’t happen until 2026, which means adoption will be slow. This isn’t an iPhone moment yet. It’s more like Meta trying to show investors that it still has the guts to chase the next platform.
Here’s the honest truth: these glasses are both groundbreaking and half-baked. The Neural Band is legitimately impressive, the closest we’ve come to brain-computer interaction that feels natural. But the glasses aren’t ready to replace a smartphone, and most people will probably see them as a curiosity rather than a necessity. Meta is pushing hard to make wearable AI the next big thing, but the road ahead is full of technical, cultural, and business hurdles. The company doesn’t just need to make the hardware work. It needs to convince people that strapping their next computer to their face and wrist is worth it.
Contact Kevin at kevin.abbaszadeh@student.shu.edu