When Meta teased its prototype Orion smart glasses at Meta Connect, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confidently said they were “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.” 

The prototype glasses are an attempt to bridge the gap between the popular Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses — which are lightweight and practical but limited in features — and the Meta Quest, a full-fledged VR/AR headset with an augmented reality display that’s also bulky and impractical for everyday use.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Meta will carry over some of Orion’s best features, such as the “small in-lens screen” and a wristband controller, to the upcoming model of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Also: Your Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses just got a massive AI upgrade

This would introduce an AR component to the glasses with a holographic interface while capturing your surroundings with a pass-through display that may be controllable with a wristband sensor. It’s a sensible step up from the current smart glasses model, which only allows for audio-based interactions and photo and video-taking.

The rumored wristband accessory would allow the user to navigate AR display menus with hand gestures: pinching your thumb and forefinger, for example, lets you “click” on options on a menu while your eyes act as cursors for scrolling through dialogue boxes. 

It’s important to note that so far, Meta has not confirmed any of these features outright since the Orion product is still in the testing phase and not slated to launch until 2027. However, the company acknowledged this technology is among the most requested by users. Bringing useful AR to a wearable that’s smaller than a massive headset is all new territory, but one that Meta seems committed to pioneering.

Of course, this raises a lot of questions. First and foremost, what kind of battery life are we looking at here with the addition of an AR display? The glasses don’t have much room to house a large, robust battery, so it will be interesting to see how many hours of life we can expect from the device. 

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses on the market right now aren’t winning any awards for battery life; They advertise four hours of use or even less with intensive video or live streaming. Introducing lenses with a pass-through display and integration with a wearable wristband suggests a whole new level of power demands.

Also: I took my Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses fly fishing, and they beat GoPro in several surprising ways

Along those lines, the whole design challenge with smart glasses is making them lighter, more discreet, and overall “normal” looking. This new technology will inevitably make them even larger unless there are some serious leaps forward in compressing the hardware. Even if Meta can make the finished product the same size as the existing Ray-Bans, that would be a success. 

The glasses demoed by the Wall Street Journal included a “puck” that paired with the glasses and acted as a sort of processing hub. This implies that there’s simply no room in the glasses’ frames to include all the hardware needed to accomplish the tasks they’re designed for. It’s unclear whether this will be part of the final design or just part of the prototype.

Pricing is another big question since, as reported by The Verge, each pair of Orion glasses costs around $10,000 to make, a point that isn’t exactly promising from a consumer affordability standpoint. However, Meta has clarified that the technology involved in Orion is still firmly in the development phase, leading me not to focus too much on this number for now.

We’ll be paying close attention to developments made in 2025 and in the meantime exploring everything possible with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which continue to receive regular feature updates like translation AI and in my humble opinion, one of the most practical features yet: integration with Shazam.