Meta Orion AR glasses: everything we know about the groundbreaking prototype
Meta’s first AR glasses have a broken cover in the shape of the groundbreaking Orion prototype. These glasses will never be available for purchase, but Meta says they are the precursor to consumer AR glasses. And based on what we’ve seen, they could be the best AR glasses in the world when they launch.
Those consumer AR glasses will likely be a few years away, but thanks to Meta Connect 2024 and what Meta staff have said afterward, we already have an idea of when the non-prototype Meta Orion AR glasses might appear, how much they might cost and what they will be able to do.
To make keeping up with the latest Meta Orion information a breeze, we’ve gathered everything we know so far into this one article, and added a section at the end of the features we want to see at launch .
Meta Orion AR glasses: price
Technically, Orion will probably never go on sale; it’s a prototype that only meta-staff, AR software developers, and those lucky enough to get their hands on a demo are likely to ever use, let alone own. Semantics aside, we already have an idea of how much the consumer version of Orion will cost when it launches. Unfortunately, it won’t be as cheap as Meta’s other XR technology and glasses.
When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion, he also outlined three goals Meta wants to achieve before releasing the glasses to the public. One of these is to ‘make them more affordable’ (via Meta) using practices like building Orion to scale. When we heard ‘affordable’ we hoped this would mean somewhere around the current Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses – which start at $299 / £299 / AU$449.
Unfortunately, this has been clarified by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. In an AMA on Instagram, he explained that the AR glasses “probably won’t be available at, say, a Quest 3S price, or even a Quest 3 price” – which immediately puts them above $499.99 / £469.99 / AU$1,049.99 cost. Instead, the team is aiming for the price of affordable phones and laptops – so hopefully somewhere around $700 (about £700 / AU$1,350).
This certainly makes more sense considering how impressive Orion sounded, although it does mean we may have to wait a while before a truly affordable model hits the market. Speaking of…
Meta Orion AR Glasses: Release Date
If you want to get your hands on the consumer version of Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype, you might not have to wait too long, with Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth revealing that the release timeline is in the region of “a few years, but not decades.” ”
Our guess is for a 2027 release, as this is the release schedule of an internal meta-roadmap The edge leaked back in early 2023. Based on Meta’s usual hardware schedule, we can further target a possible release date around late 2027 – specifically September to December 2027.
That said, chances are Orion is still in the prototype phase, meaning it won’t hit the market for a few years.
Meta Orion AR glasses: design and features
As a prototype, Orion’s design is not yet finalized, and it is actually one of the aspects that Meta has said it wants to optimize and make more fashionable before launch. However, that doesn’t mean we have no idea what Orion’s final form might look like.
First, Meta has said it wants to slim down the glasses and keep them light. Considering Orion already weighs just 100 grams, we expect the consumer version to be just as light (or lighter), and hopefully a lot less bulky – although hopefully it can do this without sacrificing battery life, which currently lasts two to three hours.
We also expect the glasses to adopt design cues from Ray-Ban glasses. Meta recently announced the continuation of its partnership with EssilorLuxottica (Ray-Ban’s parent company), and it turns out that Meta would like to adopt the fashionable classic Ray-Ban style for its AR glasses and not just for its AI smart glasses .
Meta may need to avoid making obvious consumer Orions, as with the existing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. CTO Andrew Bosworth has a special clear pair of Orion glasses, but revealed that because their design requires a frame without magnesium, the clear pair has significantly poorer heat distribution properties. As a result, the clear pair is “thermally drained” in about 30 minutes instead of lasting the full two to three hours.
As for features, we know that Orion has AR and AI tools. AR-wise, we’ve seen hints of the kinds of experiences it can facilitate, like floating windows for virtual multitasking, the ability to have AR video chats, and we imagine there will be an AR game or two at launch (here’s hoping for a fully AR Pokemon Go).
On the AI side, you can expect everything currently possible on Meta Ray-Ban’s existing smart glasses, such as Look and Ask, as well as the new photographic memory and real-time translation tools. Additionally, we expect several other AI tools to emerge in the coming years that Orion should also possess.
Meta Orion AR glasses: what we want to see
Standard transition lenses
In order for wearable glasses to work in all weather conditions, the only solution to this is high-quality transition lenses or a frame design that allows you to easily manually switch between clear and shaded lenses – lenses that should be separated to the AR displays.
We love the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, but the smart sunglasses aren’t useful indoors or on days when it’s not sunny. Conversely, smart glasses with only clear lenses won’t serve you well if it’s a bright day and you want to protect your eyes. The result is that the only sensible smart glasses solution gives you a wearable that can work in all weather conditions.
AI capabilities everywhere at launch
The biggest disappointment with the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses is that the AI features shown at their 2023 announcement were not available at launch, and are still not available in every region where they are sold. Without these AI tools, the glasses are not as impressive.
When the consumer version of Orion hits the market, Meta needs to make sure that every feature it announces for the specs is widely available when the AR and AI glasses come out (or at least within a few months).
Apps, apps, apps
The main problem that most XR hardware struggles with is not the specs, but the software. As impressive as the gadget may be technically, it’s useful if it doesn’t do anything to justify those specs.
For Orion to be a success, Meta will need to ensure that it is well stocked with AR software and features at launch – which may be why Meta plans to give software makers Orion prototypes as development kits to help them to help create AR apps.
A SIM card slot and phone connectivity
Mark Zuckerberg could envision AR glasses as the evolution of smartphones, so it would be nice to see them able to access a network completely independently of your smartphone – like an LTE smartwatch – but we’d like that the Meta Orion glasses play nice with phones too.
This includes piggybacking on their network if you don’t want to get a second SIM card, and also being able to perform actions like streaming video and audio from your phone, for when you want to switch between looking on the screen and on a main view up .
This last point may seem like an obvious addition, but other recent AI-powered so-called smartphone replacements have taken steps to differentiate themselves from smartphones, to their detriment. Smart glasses may one day replace phones, but for now they stand to gain a lot by working with smartphones, rather than against them.