Meta used its Connect 2026 keynote on September 17, 2026 to fire a broadside at Apple Vision Pro and every AI-glasses rival at once, launching a new $1,300 tethered VR headset, a refreshed Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3, an audio-only smart-glasses line, sports-oriented Adventurer frames and a wearable AI keychain called Muse Charm.
Meta VR Glasses: 100 Grams, 5K, Snapdragon Reality Elite
The headline hardware is Meta VR Glasses, a 100-gram tethered device with 5K displays, full-color passthrough and pancake lenses that dock into a small compute puck powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite chipset. Priced at $1,300, the headset ships in spring 2027 with up to three hours of continuous playback, 45W fast charging, hand-gesture input, holographic avatars and 75 launch titles including a hand-tracking-friendly Beat Saber refresh.
Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3, Audio And Adventurer
Meta's most successful hardware franchise gets a redesign. Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 ($449) drops a slimmer chassis, a 12MP camera with 3K video, a six-mic array with 90% noise reduction, Dolby Atmos spatial audio and a nine-hour battery in Aviator, Zena cat-eye and Wayfarer styles, plus special-edition collaborations with Kylie Jenner and Blackpink's Lisa. A camera-less line, Ray-Ban Meta Audio ($349), targets privacy-sensitive buyers with a 12-hour battery, 43-gram frame and prescription-lens support. The sportier Meta Adventurer frames start at $249, opening pre-orders alongside the Audio line on September 23 for October 13/23 ship dates.
Muse Charm And A New Wearable Agent
Muse, Meta's assistant, now lives on your keychain via Muse Charm, a small device with a display, speakers, microphones and a fingerprint sensor that packages Meta's real-time voice and avatar stack into a pocketable form factor. Meta also refreshed Ray-Ban Meta Display in Europe at $799, added FDA-cleared hearing enhancement ($149 one-time or free with Meta One), and lined up Disney immersive cinema and 100+ live-sports events for the new headset.
An All-Out Assault On The Wearable-AI Category
The bundle firmly plants Meta between Google's $899 Googlebook, Apple's Vision line and rival AI-glasses vendors. Combined with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 launch and Meta's earlier Muse Mac hotfix, the message is that consumer hardware is Meta's frontier gambit for owning the AI-wearables layer.
Reporting based on Meta, Engadget and Tom's Guide.