Who's winning the smartglasses race? And does anyone care?

Meta has unveiled smartglasses with a display. Is XR and AR on our faces the future of personal devices, or will it be a repeat of the Google Glass debacle, wonders Nicole Kobie

- 

Remember Google Glass? In a dramatic reveal featuring a skydiver in 2012, Sergei Brin showed off Star Trek-style hardware that could record, show messages and follow voice commands. Alas, the product wasn't very good – it was like trying to read a text message off a TV across the room – and the privacy concerns and poor aesthetics saw users dubbed “glassholes”.

After an attempt at a business pivot, Google dropped Glass and is yet to release another iteration. But, in a turn of events that would have sounded bonkers back in 2012, it looks as though Google's dream may be realised by Facebook-owner Meta with its RayBan smartglasses.

Two years after Brin's big reveal, Meta spent more than $2 billion buying Oculus VR, grabbing the leading spot in the virtual-reality gaming headset market. Since then, the company has continued to invest in VR, made a big bet on the metaverse – even changing its name to Meta – and in 2021 released the first version of smartglasses alongside RayBan.

Known as RayBan Stories, they were similar to previous social media-focused smartglasses, with cameras, speakers and a microphone. So they were handy for uploading content, but didn't feature actual AR features such as a mini screen or projector.

In September, that changed with the arrival of Meta RayBan Display, which as the name suggests finally offers a display – just like Google Glass 13 years ago. Paired with AI to help you manage your life with large-language models (LLMs), the arrival of these AR smartglasses has plenty of people excited – and nervous. Apple is rumoured to be putting off development of a lower-end version of its Vision Pro headset in favour of glasses to compete with Meta, while Amazon, Samsung and even Google are also reportedly working on their own designs.