Tech editors react to Meta Connect 2026: Will smartglasses become mainstream?

Welcome to all things mobile coverage of MetaConnect 2026

I'm Maya Zaktar and I'll be joined by a great group of experts to make this all make sense

We've got Will Greenwald, Angela Mascartolo, Timothy Beckworth, and Scott Stein will be

joining us live from the actual event. There were a lot of different devices shown off by Meta, but let's start in the order in which things were shown

Angela, we started off with a discussion about Muse. Muse is the AI agent assistant from Meta, and what they started with was it can make you money

Did you think that this positioning was a little bit unusual? Well, a little bit, but they also said that it could make you, apparently it's going to be able to make you more fit too

Not only richer, but, you know, have a better body too. It'll be able to, through the glasses, we saw a demo that was pretty exciting for me because I'm a workout, sort of workoutaholic

but the glasses Muse, the AI on the glasses can guide you through intervals for running

and then can update you if you actually make a personal record there

which to me, it's interesting. We'll see. Yeah, that was, it reminded me a bit of Google's health assistant

If you wanted to get coaching, Google's out of it. Siri is going to have it soon if it doesn't already

Will, what did you make of the Muse positioning? uh it's the sort of coaching that is we've seen it on smart watches and fitness trackers and i'm

pretty sure it has been on some smart glasses that use waveguides or just audio in the past

uh my bigger question is about muse in general because they're saying you can run it on local

hardware it's a lot of privacy a lot of security and i'm very skeptical about it and also the

The mascot reminds me of a Doctor Who monster that would eat people's fat

Look up the adipose. We're going to have to find a clip of that at some other time

Timothy, when I'm watching this thing and they're talking about partnerships with Spotify, PayPal, Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora

because your muse, however you decide to modify your Teletubby looking thing

can go online and buy stuff with you if you authorize it. the way Mark Zuckerberg was talking about this, it's like a great thing for humanity. To me

it looked a bit, well, not fun. It seemed like a horrible reality. Timothy, what did you see it as

Yeah, I mean, they're definitely trying to position it as a positive thing. They kept saying

like, we believe in people, we're optimists. But the thing that occurs to me, he said, you know

muse can see what you see, hear what you hear. And that means meta can see what you see and hear

what you hear and I personally don't trust Meta to see what I see and hear what I hear

So I don't know. It's really going to come down to how much people trust Meta. Maybe this cute and

fuzzy puppies and the like little boo-boo like mascot is gonna you know warm people's hearts but

I do think there's going to be an uphill battle to get people to to sign on but it's also Muse is

Facebook's Meta's like first real victory in a while. I mean people really seem to like this

thing. So no surprise they started off with that. It sounds like we have Scott Stein at the event. Scott

are you there right now? Because you got to see everything. And how did it feel at the actual event

Yeah, I've been here, but I'm walking outside. I was looking to connect with you guys, connect with you guys

So I did the demos, a lot of the stuff yesterday. I was following along

I'm walking out of the thing. I mean, yeah, Yeah, privacy is the big thing for what freaks everyone about meta perpetually

And you have concern about where the data is going and also who's capturing it and how on the glasses

So at this event, they didn't really address privacy much other than, I mean, you could say it's beta sensitive

private compute, a layer of private compute that is going to be encrypted

even the meta that's going to run for Muse for others coming over time

But again, not only do we not know how that's going to work

we also don't know if the agentic AI that is Muse, which is less than a month old

is going to go off the rails like a lot of agentic AI do. So there's that, and there's meta as whole questions there

But a lot of Glass's strategy was pretty much the same. And I'm surprised that for last year

for all the stuff that they made a big deal out of for Vanguard's for the Oakley glasses and the Garmin watch

and met a Ray-Ban display and the Neural Band, there was really no movement there at this event

I'm kind of saying no more presupportive if you wanted to wear Ray-Ban display glasses

It sounds like that may not be a camera-free one, but it's very expensive in some of the case models

with cameras, so they didn't try to bring price down on that

And Muse had tried for a second, like here. Um, a little change

had some delay lag. And again, do you want that? So there's so many competing agents

even if, first of all, do you want AI? Secondly, if you do

there's a laundry list of options to choose from. Apple's getting more agentic. Google's got that stuff

And Google's got glasses coming out around the corner that run Gemini. So this is coming out ahead of that. Now

the thing I liked the most, I thought was the most interesting was the VR stuff. Um

it's expensive. The VR glasses. But following the space, they were impressive to try

VR, to me, is met as product success hot hand in that they rely less on outward data that may change in the future

It felt like a mini Vision Pro. Like, display quality, just about as good as that

They're a lot smaller. They're cheaper. They run the whole Quest library. So if you've got VR games, they don't come with controllers

And I tried the hologram thing, which... But to me, not that uncanny. It was actually weird how much of a deepfake it was. It felt like video me and video other person on the call versus the more uncanny avatar-like Apple persona

It's more like a video chat put in the real world, but it's not actually you in a video chat. It's an AI recreation

I had no idea about the Muse charm thing. That I wasn't briefed on? That little Tamagotchi thing? What the hell is that

I feel like that is something that, you know, are they working on a watch

Are they working on other things? I think they're excited about news

Yes. Scott, we're losing you. Okay. Well, go out there, try out more stuff, Scott

But thank you for all of your firsthand information. We also have a video up right now because Scott Stein got to try out all of these glasses

And the VR glasses were very interesting. But Meta did a great job not showing you that it has a wire attached to a secondary box or battery of some kind

Because it looked like just glasses, just glasses. But when you saw the video there from Scott, you could see that it's attached to another box similar to a Galaxy XR or an Apple Vision Pro

But $1,299, that's the price for these VR glasses, which are coming next year in 2027, in the spring, that is

We were talking about this before. Angela, we've got Apple Vision Pro at $3,600

You got Samsung Galaxy XR at like or And then you got these smaller VR glasses Do you think that the price anchoring makes it seem a lot more palatable or compared to like a pair of

Meta Ray-Bans, it just seems exorbitant? So it's going to be undercutting the

Galaxy XR by about $500 based on the pricing that they announced today. It's still expensive though

$1,200. These aren't transparent glasses that you can, you know, look through and wear while

you're walking around, like the Meta Ray-Ban display model, which is going to be more widely

available now. They say, actually, you're going to be able to buy it online without a sort of

pre-screening interview like you need right now. But, you know, for me, I'm more excited about

future advancements in the display, the color waveguide display, than I am in this sort of a

more like Vision Pro light, we can kind of call it. I think the biggest innovation there is the

weight reduction down to, they say, 0.22 pounds only from, let's see, the Vision Pro is 1.8 pounds

So it's just a fraction of the weight of Vision Pro, which is one of the biggest problems. I also

like that it doesn't close off your whole head, which I think that, you know, can sort of be

claustrophobic for people with, you know, these VR experiences. So it does address some of the

pain points of VR. Do I think it's going to be as big of a commercial success as their

quote unquote, pervert glasses? No, no, no, no. But yeah, we'll stay with that

Well, I mean, they did discuss private viewing in these VR glasses

I'm not going to make this more blue than it needs to be. Will, you test out these kinds of glasses all the time and these headsets

and they can be isolating. With this new version, it almost looks like something you could easily carry along with

You pop it on your face when you are traveling or just, you know

when you just have a couple of minutes to kill. What did you make of VR getting that small

I'm glad you mentioned that because, hey, have this. It looks like the meta VR glasses are, I believe, prism display smart glasses

a very wide field of view, 70 degrees. Glasses like these have, this one has 58 degrees

so definitely a bigger picture in front of your eyes, not nearly as much as a full VR headset or

the Vision Pro. But yeah, the tech is already there. And when they were mentioning that, oh

and it works with DisplayPort over USB-C, that's what this entire category of smart glasses does

And specifically for the around $1,300 does everything hand gesture sort of experience, Xreal announced the Xreal Aura last year, and it seems to be pretty almost identical hardware

It's just one is Meta's ecosystem. The other is Android XR. Xreal has not actually announced the price for it, but I believe they've said it's going to be less than $1,500

It's definitely going to be less than the Snap Specs, less than the Android XR, way less than the Galaxy XR, way less than the Vision Pro

They're probably going to be facing off against each other as nearly identical devices with totally different ecosystems

And yes, Meta's VR platform is actually very good. It's one of the reasons why the Quest line has done kind of the best out of all of them

but I also looked at the Meta Ray-Ban display glasses and that is a really closed off device

that is way too limited for my tastes compared to other Waveguide glasses

So whichever way this device leans will determine whether it can actually succeed

compared with the Google powered alternative. And also because Android XR is anyone can actually make devices with that

So it's not just Meta making these things. We'll see where the ecosystem diverge

I wanted to ask you, Will, when it comes to interfaces, I mean, Android XR, I've tried that out

Apple Vision Pro is also very, very polished. What is Meta's interface like

Is this something that people will easily go towards? I would assume it's basically Oculus, the way that system runs

What's that experience like? I believe Scott knows. I'm actually not on site to try it out

But from what it sounds like and from what I've seen with the Xreal Aura, probably very similar in terms of hand gestures

There are cameras on it that will track where your hands are. And you can basically use it like a pointer, which is very intuitive

It's also what the Galaxy XR uses. The Vision Pro does that and also eye tracking

I don't believe eye tracking is on either of these smaller glasses because that needs its own internal camera system

And it's complicated, very intuitive, very complicated. And, yeah, hand tracking is probably the best way for these sorts of devices to work

It is really easy to get into compared to the neural band or the various rings or taps or voice controls

Just use your hands. Yeah, if you didn't know, the display, sorry, the meta Ray-Ban display glasses require the use of something called a neural band

It's a little wristband, so it can detect your gestures a lot, well, more accurately

Timothy, when we're seeing all these different glasses, Mark Zuckerberg was talking about people love the audio

Now, he didn't talk about the privacy issue with cameras being on glasses. But we do make glasses now that are first of its kind, which is not true, audio-only smart glasses

Did you think that Meta was trying to just evade being questioned about the pervert glasses as they're being called now

Or do they honestly believe that people love their audio? I think it's probably the they wanted to evade

I mean, if you're in this space, you know, Nuance, which made, you know, the first kind of quasi hearing aid style glasses

They just released their second generation of glasses a couple of days ago. So definitely not the first

It is an interesting product where you can see, oh, wow, that could be super helpful for millions of people

There aren't massive privacy implications. So I definitely understand the appeal of that one

That use case makes tons of sense to me. I get it. But I was waiting the entire time for Mark Zuckerberg to say like, hey, we've heard the complaints

We've heard the concerns about privacy. Here's what we're doing about it. And there wasn't any of that

I mean, he talked about privacy features and security features in the big picture sense, but no direct mention of the big backlash we've seen

Maybe that's a mistake. Maybe it's not. But that's definitely such a huge part of this conversation

I was really surprised. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I was surprised they didn't take it on head on

So we'll have to see if, you know, this quells off everyone's concerns over the glasses

But the big problem is people just can't be normal. I mean, people use those glasses for such sketchy things

So like Meta's biggest problem is its own customers. And I'm not sure how you solve that problem

Yeah, Meta was talking about, when they talk about privacy, Steve Zuckerberg is up there talking about, oh, it'll be encrypted between you and your glasses

I think a lot of people might be going, wait, it wasn't before? And what do you mean, Medicare, everything I'm doing

Like, I don't think that the audience was, at least I'm sure the audience there understood what was going on

But the general public should be aware that, yeah, right now, the way stuff's getting collected, it's almost Wild West-ish right now, which is really kind of scary when it comes to data collection

But the way these are being positioned is fashion first. That's what they kept talking about

It's about fashion. It's about fashion because glasses are really personal. And Zuckerberg's talking about 2 billion people wear glasses

It like yes they do I wear them You kind of need them Angela they talked about the Meta Rayman Gen 3 They been slimmed down from the other ones The temples have been slimmed They got a better battery life They claiming Dolby Atmos spatial audio capture I mean you got a pair of Metas

i have the oakley meadows right here uh you know what i know what the pervert the pervert glasses

thing but i love them as a creative tool they allow me to take photos and videos in ways and

and times that i never would be able to before i do a lot of hiking i do a lot of cycling i love

this for taking photos and videos when i'm doing adventurous things no i don't want to wear a go

pro on my head i want to wear these glasses that i wouldn't wear anyway so you know i like to see

um meta innovating continuing to innovate on the camera models i think that the audio only ones are

sort of a pr stunt i don't think anyone's really gonna want them um maybe like muse super users

which i have been testing use it's pretty good but i think it's sort of the this is their way oh look

you know now now we have camera free ones but meanwhile we have a hundred other pairs

with cameras these things aren't going away the the risks are real of course um as a woman you

need to be aware of how to spot these cameras and the recording lights and ways that these lights

can be and cameras can be obscured but uh just because there are some perverts out there using

them in a bad way you know i it's still a great product and it's been a commercial success so

meta's continuing to lean in there continue with the fashion element that there's a new version

from kylie jenner right now you're seeing the one from lisa from blackpink she's got a new pair

of glasses and they come with charms so like you can collect them and you can customize them i am

not making that up. That's a way that Meta is trying to get you to get these new glasses. And

she appeared, I don't know, very not excited to explain that she's doing this. Will, did you get

a sense of, yes, this is something Lisa wanted to do forever. And these are the glasses that people

would love. Tech collaborations with any one who's not in the tech sphere, like you see them all the

the time, whether it is a branded pair of glasses or an audio company that announces headphones

And then you get this like two minute clip of, uh, of an engineer or a famous musician going like

oh yeah, I've always imagined this is going to, this is how I want music to be. This is how I'm

expressing myself with the technology. It's, I take it as usually an act because seriously

And also they're kind of chunky looking. Yeah, they're very large. I mean, I kind of wanted to see this video done in front of a mirror almost

It was being shot by the glasses or something. But no, it just seems like she was in a hotel and somebody had a phone up and they shot this promo

which I think is a little bit lower quality for Meta than I was expecting

I would think like, okay, they're going to make sure that she's in a well-lit space and it's this kind of thing

But it was just this little recorded message from Lisa. Timothy, you know, I'm going to veer us off into a totally different spot

We're talking about fashion, so much fashion about this. And I couldn't help but notice Mark Zuckerberg's shirt that said, building is my love language

And the other gentleman, Alexander, I forgot his last name. I will find it for you

Wang. Alexander Wang was wearing what appeared to be a deer hunting shirt

What kind of messages were you getting from this style of presentation

Yeah, so I'm, I believe one of the few tech reporters who's covered fashion a little bit

And so it is something I'm interested in care about. I'll just kind of tell you how the Mashable group chat was going

We were not big fans of that shirt. The overwhelming message was he wants to be cool so badly

And he's just not. And, you know, of course, there's nothing less cool than trying to be cool

And of course, like having these billionaires dressed like just like you and me, it's like it's always a little disingenuous

I mean, maybe that's how they dress in real life. But we know there's stylists behind the scenes and everything is very curated

So it is what it is. I mean, they want to seem cool

They're trying really hard. But, you know, some of the language around it was also just weird

Like building is my love language. They kept saying, we believe in people, we believe in people, which like doesn't really mean anything

If you stop and think about it, it's just kind of like metaphysical mumbo jumbo

But I get it. They're trying to project positivity in a space where like there is a lot of negativity

So I see what they're going for. I'm not sure it entirely worked for me

Yeah, the humanization of what they're trying to do is be more human, which is also scary at the same time

But included with the humanization is this idea that you can really customize your muse if you want

You can have a grippa, which I believe has a toga. That was Mark Zuckerberg's and we had other various muses

But there was also this muse charm. This was something that Scott mentioned that we did not expect

It is simply a, like basically a big fat watch, if you want to say it that way

or Tamagotchi-style device that includes a Muse on it. It sounds like it has cameras on it because you can show things to it

It should be, what they were claiming, like the easiest way to use Muse when you are around

So, like, if you didn't want to have it as a phone app or something, you could have this on your keychain

It is big and it's chunky, but it's not coming out until, I think they say later this year, which is surprising

Angela, what do you think of this kind of version of AI

We've seen it in glasses, watches, phones, and now it looks more like a stopwatch to me, but this handheld

It's a cute little thing, you know, it's trying to make the AI unassuming, this AI that's going to take over the world and look at it here in this cute little thing

You know, it's sort of downplaying the concerns for sure. but you know they're saying this is the easiest way to access and use if you don't have the smart

glasses and it'll save you the trouble of having to pull out your phone and open the app and you'll

just have this thing in your hand well to me that's another device to carry around and potentially lose

so it's sort of it's definitely a gimmick yeah the size of the idea like pull it out of your pocket

You have a phone. Just do that. Maybe the hardware is specialized for Muse. Maybe the display makes Muse look better. Maybe the audio is better. I'm not really sure what to make of that device. Oh my gosh, this was so..

So I'm going to say what I enjoyed about it because I think I've been very negative

I like the idea that they're trying to humanize this technology because AI in general is this kind of vague concept

They're trying to sell feelings and things. So people are going to like that. Here's fashion

Here's other stuff. So I like that the idea of it's fashion forward and it's actually stuff you would want to wear out in public, theoretically

I don't like so much of the other stuff that's going on. So I'm afraid of all of this

just Meta in particular, because Meta's got this habit. Anybody, correct me if I'm wrong, if you disagree with me

Meta has a habit of doing something bad, getting caught, not apologizing

continuing to do the bad thing or maybe say oh oops and then just keep going It not like Google when they like we got caught We sorry We will comply blah blah blah And Apple we do nothing wrong ever

So I just can't get my head around what Meta's doing. Does anybody disagree with me on the Meta thing where they just kind of keep going

I can't really trust me about anything in terms of AI or privacy

It is just, there have been too many questionable decisions and, well, really unfortunate decisions

And just seeing the almost attempting to dominate the world, create the new internet stuff with the ideas of the metaverse and also now calling artificial intelligence super intelligence

there's just too much skeevy stuff in meta's history to really trust

that muse will be safe as your little buddy you can tell all your important things to

i'm going to bring us right back to the meta vr glasses because there was more to that

introduction they actually discussed a lot of content that would be available i thought that

was really smart there's going to be all kinds of sports they said that it would work with mlb

It'll work with NBA. It'll work with every sporting app. There's 100 events or so per year that you'll have access to these wide 180 degree video through ESPN

And maybe even when you're seated in a stadium for 3D style feel like that sounds interesting

Angela, do you think it was smart to go, look, if you're going to buy these, we have content for you

Well, look, they had James Cameron sitting in the front row of that keynote

So they're really highlighting the built for cinema, quote unquote, aspect. These things have Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision support

It should provide a pretty good experience, barring if you really want to wear that

You know, I could see it being useful for, you know, a flight, but or maybe working at a coffee shop

But outside of those kind of use cases, we'll see whether it's worth the twelve hundred dollars for that

We'll see, because for me, I already have a TV and I already have a couch that I can sit on

I don't want to sit on my couch and wear a headset, even if it is only point two two pounds

I could just look at my TV. So for me, it's really out of the home use cases

and whether the 1200 is justified for that is, we'll see. We will see when we review them

Will, you test TVs. Do you think there would be a huge difference between using a pair of VR glasses

sorry, the meta VR glasses, because that's the name of it, versus just looking at a nice 70-inch TV

A TV is probably going to be better just in general because you're not wearing something on your face

And even when smart glasses are a lot lighter than a headset

and I've watched a lot of things on smart glasses and not just, you know, when I'm flying

like it is nice if I'm somewhere else and I'm just going to sit back and watch something on

these glasses. That's a nice experience. But when you're at home, having a good TV is so much better

because you don't have something on your face. And a hundred grams is pretty chunky for prison-based

smart glasses. I believe that this, the Vitture Beast is around, I think, 60, 70 grams. It doesn't

have nearly as many like sensors on it or as many cameras, but like, yeah, it's not the

most comfortable thing. Okay. So, you know what, let's get some final thoughts before we wrap up

Timothy Beckworth, what did you think of this? Do you have any final thoughts you want to share with the audience

I'm probably most excited about the VR glasses. I did love the Vision Pro as a piece of technology

I wouldn't recommend buying it because of the price. So I am really interested

I agree with Scott. I think the VR stuff is some of the most promising and interesting

It doesn't have as many privacy nightmares involved with it. So I will be very eager to try those when they come out next spring

Again, I think they're going to be a very niche product, but everything they showed off today

that's the one where I'm like, I want to try that. Well stated

How about you, Angela? For me, the one that I'm most excited about is the Gen 3

metaray bands and and that's because they say now you can actually make a call through these things

on a jet ski and i haven't worn i have worn these ones on a jet ski i will say they did not break

even with a high velocity water they did not break i've worn them in the ocean kept them above water

But, you know, even with splashes from water, they're fine, these Oakley ones

So, you know, with the mic update, we'll see. With the slimmed down frame, you know, that should be nice

They say there's some new capture modes. We don't have too many details on that yet

But, yeah, with Meta, I agree with you, Ayaz. You know, they've been pretty naughty in the past with certain things

And, you know, they're seeing some ramifications of, you know, their actions right now around the social media addiction settlements

And I just want to bring up the fact that, you know, social media addiction is something that, you know, affects people of all ages

And, you know, if people are feeling like they're scrolling too much, my advice, because I have been there, is to delete those apps cold turkey

You can always re-download them and they make it very easy to sign back in if you want

But, you know, social media addiction is real. And if you feel like you are, you know, feeling bad about yourself from scrolling, maybe it's time to take a break

But they're making these things highly addicting. And I could see it with Muse, too, even with this little keychain thing

It's just going to make AI even easier to use, more kind of fun and cute

So, yeah, there's some concerns there for sure. But you can't deny they make a good product with the glasses

Yeah, I'm excited about the hardware in general. Will, do you have any last words

Yeah, I'm excited about the VR glasses too. their hardware is good and in terms of the VR development outside of their metaverse

they made a really good they made several really good headsets and they made a really good ecosystem

with a lot of great software and now a lot of software is going to be on the glasses which is great so yeah I'm most hopeful about that not so much for the AI

the way the reason why I'm excited about the hardware is that I'm hoping that people will

be able to knock it off and it'll be like on Android it'll be everything else you can have another firm were on there because I personally am not the biggest Meta fan. That doesn't mean

that they're evil. I'm not saying anything like that. Please don't sue me about that

I just think that I've had weird experiences with it, but I will give them some credit for

creating some really nice looking hardware. They're really trying new things. They are trying

to make AI cute, but that does have that other side of it, like Angela was saying that, yeah

it's cutesy and everything, but if you're interacting with it, basically you're getting too much sugar and you're going to get hurt with this

We're going to have a lot more coverage over at PCMag.com. We're going to have it at Mashable

We're going to have it at CNET. Basically, anywhere and everywhere, we are there

And we'll be covering each and every item that was available at Connect

And before you know it, we'll have reviews. I've been I, as Aktor, I want to thank everybody for joining us

and this excellent panel for making this discussion happen. And we'll see you next time

you