AR Development

Meta announced it’s pushing an update to Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta smart glasses that’s slated to make nutrition tracking easier by letting Meta AI visually suss out food before you eat it.

The News

Over time, the company says that a user’s food log will inform “increasingly personalized insights that get more useful, helping you make healthier, more informed choices.”

Meta says it will be somewhat of a manual process though, as users need to prompt Meta AI to log their food in addition to inputting specific nutrition goals.

While we’re not there yet, Meta says in the future glasses will be able to understand what you’re eating and automatically log your food, which in turn opens up even more personalized nutrition insights since you don’t have to remember to log every meal.

For now though, the company envisions users asking Meta AI questions like “What should I eat to increase my energy?” which will output a suggestion based on your food log and fitness goals.

Meta says the new feature will be available to users aged 18+in the US “soon” across all Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses, with its Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses getting the update sometime later this summer.

My Take

Meta doesn’t do health tracking; its smart glasses don’t track your heart rate, steps, activity, sleep (of course not), calories burned, O² levels—nothing.

Granted, they can link with Garmin smart watches which can do those things, although the glasses themselves essentially only act as a sort of audio relay, repeating the info sensed and stored by the Garmin app, meaning Meta can’t really do anything truly useful with the bulk of your health data. Notably, Meta smart glasses don’t tie into Samsung Health or Apple Health either, putting a majority of users’ health data out of Meta’s reach.

But it probably won’t always be that way. Meta seems to be leveraging what it can feasibly (and cheaply) do right now without having to cut any expensive licensing deals with dominant players in the smart watch segment.

The company does have a vector to get all of that data one day though. Meta Ray-Ban Display comes with a wrist-worn Neural Band controller that uses surface electromyography (sEMG) which lets users quietly write out messages and manipulate UI. I can imagine a near future where Neural Band has a packet of sensors similar to a smart watch, albeit without the display.

Provided Meta goes that specific route, the company wouldn’t need to integrate with existing health ecosystems at all for its future smart glasses. It will already have everything it needs to close the loop on what you’re eating and how you’re burning it off.

Meta and eyewear partner EssilorLuxottica announced two new “optical-forward” pairs of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which are said to support nearly all prescriptions.

Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses can already be paired with prescription lenses, although the latest pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are coming with new ergonomic features: overextension hinges, interchangeable nose-pads, and optician-adjustable temple tips, things designed to give users a more custom fit.

In a blog post, Meta announced it’s offering two new frame styles: a rectangular ‘Blayzer Optics’ design available in two sizes (Standard and Large) and a more rounded ‘Scriber Optics’ frame. Both come with a Dark Brown charging carrying case, with pricing starting at $500.

Colors include Matte Black, Transparent Black, and Transparent Dark Olive, although Meta is also releasing seasonal colors, such as Transparent Matte Ice Grey and Transparent Stone Beige.

Both new Blayzer and Scriber frames will be available for pre-order in the US starting today from Meta.com and Ray-Ban.com, as  well as at optical retailers in the US and and select international markets starting April 14th.

Meta also announced it’s releasing new lens and color options for Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and Oakley Meta lines. New options include:

• Vanguard Black with Prizm Black Lenses
• Vanguard White with Prizm Rose Gold Lenses
• Vanguard Black with Prizm Transitions® Ember Lenses (arriving later this Spring)
• Vanguard Prizm Transitions Cobalt Lenses (arriving later this Spring)
• HSTN Black with Prizm Dark Golf Lenses
• HSTN Light Curry with Clear to Brown Transitions Lenses

Coming this spring and summer, Meta is also releasing three new limited-time seasonal colors for Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2).

For the Skyler style: Shiny Transparent Peach with Transitions Brown Lenses. For Headliner: Matte Transparent Peach with Transitions Grey Lenses. For Wayfarer: Shiny Transparent Grey with Transitions Sapphire Lenses.

Apple is reportedly accelerating the development of smart glasses, as the company is ostensibly making a shift toward AI-centric hardware.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is ramping up development of its forthcoming smart glasses, which are slated to head into production as early as December 2026, with public release expected sometime in 2027.

Apple’s smart glasses are being positioned to compete with Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s most recent smart glasses, the report maintains.

While this mostly echoes previous reports from last October, Apple appears to be accelerating development, having recently distributed a broader set of glasses prototypes within its hardware engineering division.

According to an all-hands meeting with employees earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook supposedly also hinted that Apple would be pushing hard into AI devices, noting that the company was working on new “categories of products” centered around AI.

“We’re extremely excited about that,” Cook said in the internal meeting, saying “[t]he world is changing fast.”

Citing people familiar with Apple’s plans, the smart glasses (allegedly codenamed ‘N50’) are said to include two cameras: a high-resolution camera for photos and video, and another dedicated to computer vision tasks. The high quality onboard cameras and overall build quality are expected to set it apart from competing products, the report maintains.

Similar to Meta’s audio-only smart glasses though, Apple’s N50 hardware isn’t expected to include a display of any kind, instead relying on cameras, speakers and microphones for things such as phone calls, AI queries, listening to music, and capturing images.

Apple allegedly floated the idea of partnering with eyewear brands—similar to Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica or Google’s partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster—the company seems to have more recently decided on developing in-house designs, which are said to arrive in a variety of sizes and colors.

“Early prototypes of the glasses connect via a cable to a standalone battery pack and an iPhone, but newer versions have the components embedded in the frame,” Bloomberg reports. “The design uses high-end materials, including acrylic elements intended to give the glasses a premium feel. Apple is already discussing launching the device in additional styles over time.”

This comes as Apple is investing more heavily in AI in effort to better compete with Google and OpenAI, which comes part and parcel with a critical redesign of Siri. The report also maintains Apple is working on an AI-powered pendant and AirPods with expanded AI capabilities—all three of which will rely on visual input.

Notably, the report maintains that all three will rely on connection to iPhone. Apple did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

EssilorLuxottica reported its Q4 2025 financial results, revealing the company sold over seven million smart glasses last year.

The French-Italian eyewear conglomerate has been making smart glasses in partnership with Meta since the launch of the original Ray-Ban Stories in 2021.

Now, in its fourth-quarter results, EssilorLuxottica revealed it sold over seven million smart glasses last year—more than tripling sales since last reported.

In February 2025, the company announced it had sold two million Ray-Ban (Gen 1) smart glasses since release in late 2023.

It’s no wonder 2025 was a landmark year for the company though. Alongside Meta, EssilorLuxottica not only released a hardware refresh of its popular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but also Oakley Meta HSTN, Oakley Meta Vanguard, and the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses—the company’s first smart glasses to include a heads-up display.

In addition to its smart glasses efforts, EssilorLuxottica maintains that 2025 marked a further acceleration in its “evolution from an optical company into a leading medtech and big-data group,” owing to growth across both its Nuance Audio hearing-aid glasses and AI-driven healthcare platform.

While Meta and EssilorLuxottica are current market leaders in smart glasses, the XR wearables race has really only just begun. As it appears today, companies largely see smart glasses as a first step towards creating all-day AR glasses of the near future, with  potential contenders including Google, Samsung and reportedly also Apple.

Alibaba released a pair of display-clad smart glasses, ostensibly looking to go toe-to-toe with Meta Ray-Ban Display, which launched in the US for $800 back in September.

The News

China’s Alibaba, one the world’s largest retailers and e-commerce companies, just released its first smart glasses, called Quark AI Glasses, which run the company’s own Qwen AI model.

Seemingly China-only devices for now, Alibaba is now offering Quark AI in two fundamental versions across Chinese online and brick-and-mortar retailers:

• Quark AI Glasses S1: starting at ¥3,799 (~$540 USD), includes dual monochrome green displays
• Quark AI Glasses G1: starting at ¥1,899 (~$270 USD), no displays, sharing core technology of ‘S1’ model

Quark AI Glasses S1 is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 chipset and a low-power co-processor which drive dual monochrome green micro-OLED displays, boasting a brightness of up to 4,000 nits, according to South China Morning Post.

It also features a five-microphone array with bone conduction, 3K video recording which can be automatically upscaled to 4K, as well as low-light enhancement tech said to bring mobile phone-level imaging to smart glasses. Additionally, Quark AI Glasses S1 include hot-swappable batteries, which plug into the glasses’ stem piece.

You can see the English dubbed version of the Chinese language announcement below:

My Take

At least when it comes to on-paper specs, Quark AI Glasses S1 aren’t exactly a 1:1 rival with Meta Ray-Ban Display, even though both technically include display(s), onboard AI, and the ability to take photos and video.

While Meta Ray-Ban Display only feature a single full-color display, Quark S1’s dual displays only offer monochrome green output, which limits the sort of information that can be seen.

Quark S1 also doesn’t come with an input device, like Meta Ray-Ban’s Neural Band, limiting it to only voice and touch input. That means Quark S1 user won’t be scrolling social media, pinching and zooming content, or other nifty UI manipulation.

Still, that might be just enough—at least one of the world’s largest e-commerce, cloud infrastructure, and FinTech companies thinks so. Also not worth overlooking is Quark S1’s unique benefit of being tightly integrated into the Qwen AI ecosystem, as well as the Chinese payment infrastructure for fast and easy QR code-based payments with Alipay; that last one is something most Chinese smart glasses are trying to hook into, like Xiaomi’s own Ray-Ban Meta competitors.

Although the company’s Qwen AI model is available globally, I find it pretty unlikely that Alibaba will ever bring its first-gen models of Quark AI Glasses S1/G1 outside of its usual sphere of influence, or meaningfully intersect with Meta’s supported regions.