Meta Ray-Ban Display: full specs for the $799 Hypernova smart glasses

The Meta Ray-Ban Display is Meta's first pair of smart glasses with a screen baked into the lens. It launched in the United States on September 30, 2025 at a price of $799, paired with the Meta Neural Band — a wristband that reads the electrical signals your fingers produce when you pinch, swipe, or write on a surface, and turns those signals into control input for the glasses.

This spec sheet is built from Meta's own launch materials and from third-party hands-on coverage linked at the bottom. Every "Confirmed" claim is in Meta's official press kit or product page.

What does the display do?

The display is a monocular panel built into the right lens. You see a small floating window of information roughly in your upper-right field of view. The panel is off by default; it lights up when the glasses detect a relevant prompt (a notification, a navigation step, a Meta AI answer).

Resolution: 600 × 600 pixels — Confirmed, Meta press kit
Field of view: 20° diagonal — Confirmed
Pixel density: 42 pixels per degree — Confirmed
Refresh rate: 90 Hz — Confirmed
Brightness range: 30-5000 nits adaptive — Confirmed, Meta says it's bright enough to read in direct sunlight
Lenses: Polarized or Transitions (photochromic) — Confirmed, both available at launch
Position: Right-lens only, upper-right quadrant — Confirmed

The display is not a full augmented-reality overlay. It does not render 3D content in space. It is a heads-up text window — the same idea as a smartwatch face, but floating in your line of sight.

What can you see on the display?

Meta has shipped a defined list of on-lens apps. As of June 2026 the confirmed set is:

WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram DMs — read incoming messages, dictate a reply with your voice — Confirmed
Turn-by-turn walking and driving directions — pulled from Google Maps or, in the US, from Meta's first-party Maps integration — Confirmed
Real-time translation — Meta AI translates spoken foreign language into English captions on the display — Confirmed
Camera viewfinder — see what the glasses' camera sees, framed on the display — Confirmed
Music controls — track name, play/pause, skip — Confirmed
Meta AI visual responses — when you ask Meta AI a question that needs to reference what you're looking at, the answer appears as text on the display — Confirmed
Video calling — see the caller's video in the upper-right corner — Confirmed

There is no app store on the glasses at launch. Meta controls the on-lens software surface.

What chip and storage does it use?

The glasses run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1, a chip that was custom-built for always-on wearable displays. It is paired with 2 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 32 GB of internal flash storage.

Chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 — Confirmed, Meta press kit
RAM: 2 GB LPDDR4x — Confirmed
Storage: 32 GB — Confirmed, of which roughly 24 GB is user-accessible for photos and videos
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 — Confirmed
Water resistance: IPX4 (splash-resistant, not waterproof) — Confirmed

The 2 GB of RAM is small by phone standards but adequate for the limited on-lens software surface. The glasses offload heavier work — large language model calls, video processing — to the paired phone over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

What about the camera?

The camera is a 12-megapixel sensor mounted in the bridge between the lenses. It captures both still photos and 1080p video. There is no optical zoom; the glasses offer 3x digital zoom, which Meta says is useful for "framing" a shot before you take it.

Sensor: 12 MP — Confirmed
Aperture: f/2.2 (per Meta's product page) — Confirmed
Video: 1080p at 30 fps — Confirmed
Zoom: 3x digital — Confirmed
Photo storage: Saved to glasses, syncs to paired phone over Wi-Fi — Confirmed
LED capture indicator: Yes, hard-wired — Confirmed, cannot be disabled

A capture LED on the front of the glasses lights up whenever the camera is recording. Meta says this is to address privacy concerns raised by earlier smart-glasses generations.

How is sound handled?

The glasses use an open-ear speaker system built into the arms, plus a 6-microphone array for voice input and call audio.

Speakers: Open-ear directional, one per arm — Confirmed
Microphones: 6-mic array — Confirmed
Audio quality: Adequate for calls and Meta AI voice, weak for music in noisy environments — Confirmed by multiple hands-on reviews

The open-ear design means the wearer hears environmental sound while listening to audio. This is intentional — Meta does not want to block the wearer's situational awareness.

What is the Meta Neural Band?

The Meta Neural Band is the controller. It is a 42-gram wristband that ships in the box with the glasses. It reads the electrical signals produced by the muscles in your forearm when you move your fingers — a technique called surface electromyography, or sEMG.

Sensor: sEMG (surface electromyography) — Confirmed
Weight: 42 g — Confirmed
Battery life: 18 hours — Confirmed
Water resistance: IPX7 (submersible to 1m for 30 minutes) — Confirmed
Charging: Magnetic puck, USB-C — Confirmed
Compatibility: Pairs only with Meta Ray-Ban Display (not with the cheaper Ray-Ban Meta) — Confirmed

The Neural Band lets you control the glasses without touching them and without speaking. A pinch of the thumb and index finger is a "click." A twist of the wrist is a "scroll." Writing on a surface with your index finger, as if you had a pen, types text that appears in the on-lens window.

How long does the battery last?

The glasses last about 6 hours of mixed use on a single charge. The charging case extends total runtime to about 30 hours before the case itself needs to be plugged in.

Glasses battery life: 6 hours mixed use — Confirmed, Meta spec sheet
Charging case capacity: 24 additional hours — Confirmed
Charging case input: USB-C — Confirmed
Neural Band battery life: 18 hours — Confirmed
Neural Band charging: Magnetic puck, full charge in 75 minutes — Confirmed

Six hours is short by smartwatch standards. Meta's framing is that the glasses are not meant to be worn continuously — you put them on when you need directions, a notification glance, or a quick photo, and you take them off when you don't.

How heavy are they?

The standard frame weighs 69 grams; the large frame weighs 70 grams. By comparison, a standard pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses weighs about 32 grams. The Neural Band adds 42 grams on the wrist.

Standard frame weight: 69 g — Confirmed
Large frame weight: 70 g — Confirmed
Neural Band weight: 42 g — Confirmed
Total worn weight: 111-112 g — Calculated

The glasses feel heavier than ordinary sunglasses but lighter than most AR/VR headsets. The weight is concentrated at the temples and across the bridge.

How much do they cost and where can you buy them?

Price: $799 USD — Confirmed
US availability: September 30, 2025 — Confirmed, meta.com and Best Buy
Canada, France, Italy, UK: Early 2026 — Confirmed by Meta's expansion announcement
Other markets: No date yet — Confirmed by Meta

There is no subscription fee. Meta AI features, including the on-lens AI responses, are included at no additional cost as of June 2026. Meta has not announced any future paid tier.

How does the display compare to a phone screen?

The on-lens display is much smaller and lower-resolution than any phone screen, but it serves a different purpose. The point is glanceable information, not immersive viewing.

Effective display area: Roughly the size of a 4-inch phone screen held at arm's length — Estimated from Meta's 20° FOV spec
Text legibility: Readable indoors and outdoors, per Meta's 30-5000 nit brightness range — Confirmed by hands-on reviews
Color: Monochrome white-on-dark by default; limited color support in some apps — Confirmed by hands-on coverage
Touch input: None — input is via voice or Neural Band gestures only — Confirmed

The display is meant for short interactions — read a message, get a navigation turn, see a translation — not for reading a webpage or watching a video.

What phones does it work with?

The Meta Ray-Ban Display works with both iPhones and Android phones. The companion app is the Meta AI app (formerly the View app). Pairing is over Bluetooth 5.3.

iOS: iOS 15 or later — Confirmed, Meta compatibility page
Android: Android 10 or later — Confirmed
Companion app: Meta AI (iOS App Store, Google Play) — Confirmed
Required for setup: Yes, the glasses cannot be set up without a phone — Confirmed

For a deep-dive on iPhone compatibility, see our iPhone compatibility FAQ.

What is in the box?

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses (frame of your choice)
Meta Neural Band
Charging case (glasses)
Magnetic charging puck (Neural Band)
USB-C cable
Microfiber cleaning cloth
Quick-start guide

A neck strap is sold separately for $29.

What is not in the box?

A wall charger — Meta follows Apple's lead and does not ship a power brick
A second pair of lenses — Transitions lenses are an upcharge at checkout
International plugs — the included USB-C cable assumes you have a local charger

What are the main compromises?

Three things to weigh before buying:

Battery life: 6 hours is short. If you want all-day wear, this is not the product.
Display is monocular: The screen is only in the right lens. Binocular AR (both lenses) is reserved for Meta's rumored Hypernova 2 and the still-prototype Orion AR glasses.
No app ecosystem: Meta controls the on-lens software. If you want on-lens Slack or on-lens Spotify lyrics, you'll need to wait for Meta to build or license those integrations.