Meta Connect 2026: VR Glasses, Muse AI, and a $1,299 Vision Pro Rival

Meta introduced its Meta VR Glasses at $1,299 at Connect 2026 on Wednesday, a roughly 100-gram headset pitched as "Cinema. Computer. Console." — three words that echoed Steve Jobs' 2007 iPhone unveiling.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed the device as "the result of more than a decade of work" and said it was "much lighter than Vision Pro." Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth joined him on stage in Menlo Park, CA, to demo hand and eye tracking that removes the need for controllers and to show a virtual keyboard that, Zuckerberg claimed, executives use at over 100 words per minute.

What's actually inside the $1,299 headset?

The VR Glasses ship this spring with a separate wired computing puck — a configuration the on-stage presenters joked about. They support the entire Quest catalog via optional controllers and run Xbox Cloud Gaming titles.

The launch catalog includes 75 titles. Bosworth played a new version of Beat Saber at "medium" mode. Meta also announced an Immersive Cinema mode inside the Disney+ app with immersive versions of Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, plus 3D National Geographic video shot at 180 degrees — a format that closely mirrors Apple's Immersive Video.

Holographic calling was the headline software feature. Meta showed full-body photorealistic VR holograms and added them to the Ray-Ban Display smart glasses line. Bosworth quipped that Meta had at last "solved the problem of legs in VR." The holograms will appear across both the new VR Glasses and the existing Display eyewear.

What was the "one more thing" surprise?

After the main hardware reveal, Zuckerberg pulled out a small keychain-sized puck called Muse Charm. About the size of an Apple Watch, it is built for talking to Meta's Muse agent. He said it would arrive "in time for the holidays" in December.

Meta's Connect blog described the device in cheerful terms: "Muse Charm is a delightful and fun device built for you to talk and interact with your Muse. It brings the power of Muse with a state of the art real-time voice model into a device that fits in your pocket." The company added that more details will follow later this year.

What about the smart glasses lineup?

Meta used most of its keynote on glasses rather than the VR Glasses. The company said it is "finally catching up with demand" for its Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses and will begin selling them in more countries.

The Ray-Ban Meta line got a Gen 3 refresh. The Wayfarers are slimmer, Meta added aviators and other styles, and the devices now record Dolby Atmos spatial audio. To fit the electronics into thinner Clubmaster frames, Meta had to redesign the internal components.

A new audio-only pair of Meta Glasses has no camera at all. Zuckerberg argued that "without cameras, this opens up a lot of new design possibilities," and said the device carries the longest battery of any Meta eyewear. Prices for the camera-equipped Adventurer style start at $249, down from the $449 Gen 3 Ray-Ban Meta.

Meta also unveiled a collaboration with the musician Lisa, who gets a signature frame and case plus a charm inspired by her pets.

Can the glasses double as a hearing aid?

Yes, with a paid add-on. Meta announced Hearing Enhancement, an FDA-cleared hearing aid replacement feature aimed at users with hearing loss. It costs $149 as a one-time payment.

The feature lands first on Meta Glasses and arrives on the Ray-Ban Meta line "soon." It builds on the Conversation Focus tool Meta showed off last year, which was aimed at noisy rooms. The company is also rolling out private processing for some glasses features and reiterated anti-tampering work around its recording light.

What did Meta's Chief AI Officer show?

Alexandr Wang, Meta's Chief AI Officer, took the Connect stage unusually early. He argued that Muse — Meta's AI agent — was already saving users money. Wang said one customer knocked down their internet bill by $85. "It's a banger," he said of the product.

Muse can now buy products across the internet through a Shopify integration and at Walmart, Best Buy, and Instacart, with PayPal handling payments. Zuckerberg said Meta plans to take a small cut of transactions handled by its agent and is handing out large numbers of free tokens to users in the meantime.

Wang also teased a new model coming "soon" out of Meta Superintelligence Labs, with no other details. The keynote closed with Zuckerberg invoking his own mission statement: "I am more and more convinced that the reason why Meta exists ... is because we actually believe in people. Building is an act of love."

Why does this matter now?

Meta holds more than 50 percent of the VR headset market, and its Quest line has outsold every alternative for years. The Connect 2026 announcements reset that franchise after a roughly two-year hardware drought. They also arrive the same week Valve launched the Steam Frame and roughly a year after Samsung's Galaxy XR debut, putting Meta in the middle of an unusually crowded XR launch window.

The shift toward AI-driven glasses and agent commerce reframes the company's hardware strategy as a play for the on-face computing surface rather than a pure metaverse bet. As Zuck put it on stage: the company had decided to focus less on the metaverse "unless there was a breakthrough. This is a breakthrough." Whether the $1,299 Meta VR Glasses and the December-bound Muse Charm turn that claim into a category-defining moment will depend on developer uptake and the holiday sales cycle.