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Aug 25, 2023

Meta Glasses: News and Expected Price, Release Date, Specs; and More Rumors

Meta is already planning augmented reality glasses for 2027 Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves

Meta is already planning augmented reality glasses for 2027

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

Meta's augmented reality glasses are still a few years away, but we already think we know a few details. The consumer version will be designed for all-day use and include a wireless device with a battery, modem, and touchpad. The glasses might be limited to a 50-degree field of view and use LCoS display technology.

Meta could have these glasses operational as soon as 2024, but only for testing. After the internal launch for Meta employees comes the public launch of the glasses a few years later.

2027 is the current estimate.

There's no word yet on how Meta will price these glasses.

There won't be any information about pre-ordering until Meta announces the product.

Most of what there is to know about these glasses is available from The Verge, which obtained a presentation covering Meta's AR/VR roadmap through 2027.

In that report, the website says the glasses are designed to project high-quality holograms of avatars onto the real world. This means they're augmented reality glasses, not virtual reality glasses. In other words, they blend real and digital items in the same space.

You'll put them on to see virtual items in your vision as if they exist in the real world in front of you. In addition to holograms, these glasses will most likely project other information into the surrounding room, like texts, emails, calendar alerts, and other things forwarded from your phone. The glasses will likely be lightweight and easy to wear because Meta intends for them to be worn throughout the day as a replacement for your smartphone.

Meta's VP of AR, Alex Himel, makes it clear that ads will also play a prominent role in these glasses:

The Verge reports that instead of using MicroLED displays in the AR glasses, Meta will opt to use Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) instead. Why does that matter? Well, according to The Information, this technology "isn't known for its brightness," which leaves some questions about how usable these glasses will be in bright settings. This tech is, however, less expensive. It's currently used in similar products like HoloLens 1 and Magic Leap 2.

The company has also reportedly abandoned silicon carbide in the glasses, sticking to glass waveguide technology instead. The difference is that the field of view might be limited to 50 instead of 70 degrees. This matters because the field of view dictates how "big" a virtual image is when viewed through the glasses, with a smaller field of view producing narrower and potentially lower-quality images.

There will be two versions of these glasses. One will be used in-house by developers only, and the other version will be what the public gets their hands on. The second one will have the limitations I just described, while the demo version will come with MicroLED displays and silicon carbide.

Meta's AR glasses will come with a so-called "puck," an oval-shaped device meant to bear some of the burdens of computer processing. The Information says that while the puck with have a battery, 5G modem, and touchpad, it will not come with a lidar sensor as initially planned. This sensor was responsible for AR-related tasks like importing objects into the digital world.

A Meta smartwatch is also apparently in the works that will accompany at least one pair of their upcoming smart glasses, so it wouldn't be surprising to see something like that pop up around the time these AR glasses are released.

You can get more tech news from Lifewire, but here are rumors and other related stories about Meta's AR glasses specifically: