Meta's $1,299 VR Glasses arrive in 2027 as AI pendant ships for holidays

Meta will sell its new VR Glasses for $1,299 when they go on sale in spring 2027, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday at the company's annual Connect developer conference. The price is more than four times that of the $299 Quest 3S, the company's most recent VR device, which debuted in 2024.

The announcement signals that Meta is pressing forward on two fronts at once: the metaverse bet centered on virtual reality hardware, and the parallel push into AI agents built around the recently released Muse personal assistant.

A headset that looks like glasses

The Meta VR Glasses are smaller and slimmer than the company's older Quest-branded family of VR headsets, Zuckerberg said on stage. The reduction in size and weight comes from an unconventional engineering decision: the device is powered by an external puck that houses a Qualcomm processor and battery. The puck functions as a mini-computer, and moving the compute and battery off the face reduces the glasses' overall weight and size.

The trade-off is price. At $1,299, the device costs far more than the Quest 3S, positioning it as a premium product rather than a mass-market replacement for the existing Quest line.

Zuckerberg framed the device as a category first for the company. "We have built a new kind of VR device that delivers the same magical feeling of presence and immersion, high-resolution displays and views of the world around you in a form factor that is a pair of glasses for the first time," he said.

The glasses display better visuals than the older Quest headsets, according to Zuckerberg. They also contain sensors that track eye and hand movements, reducing the need to use handheld controllers to interact with the device — a change that pushes the hardware closer to the everyday form of a pair of glasses rather than a gaming peripheral.

The Muse Charm

Alongside the glasses, Zuckerberg debuted a handheld device called the Muse Charm, designed to work with Muse, the AI personal agent Meta recently released. He shared few details about what the Charm can do, saying only that people will be able to speak to the gadget to interact with their Meta AI agents "without having to unlock a phone or open an app."

"We've packed a lot of technology with this little guy," Zuckerberg said. "So, if you're not wearing glasses, this is going to be by far the fastest way to talk to your Muse and to show it what's going on around you."

He did not announce a price for the Charm. He said Meta still needs to "finalize laying out the components" and is "planning to have this ready to ship in time for the holidays in December."

The pairing of the two announcements is deliberate. The Charm gives users without Meta's glasses hardware a way to talk to and show their surroundings to the Muse agent, extending the AI assistant beyond phone apps and into a dedicated physical device.

Why it matters

The announcements show how Meta's hardware roadmap has converged with its AI ambitions. The company that spent years and billions on Quest headsets for the metaverse is now building its newest devices around AI agents as the primary interface — voice interaction, ambient sensors and agents that can see what the user sees.

The gap between the two release dates is notable. The Muse Charm is slated to ship within weeks, in time for the December holidays, while the flagship VR Glasses will not reach consumers until spring 2027. That sequencing puts Meta's AI wearable in stores during the year's biggest shopping season while its premium VR hardware waits in development for more than a year.

The $1,299 price also marks a strategic shift. Meta built its VR business on relatively affordable hardware — the Quest 3S launched at $299 in 2024. The new glasses position VR as a high-end computing platform closer in price to premium devices than to consumer gaming consoles, reflecting both the miniaturized form factor and the external puck architecture.

For developers gathered at Connect, the message is that Meta's platform now spans two device classes: immersive VR in a glasses form factor, and lightweight AI access through a handheld charm. Both connect back to Muse, the recently released personal agent that Meta is positioning as the reason to buy its hardware.

Whether consumers will pay a premium price for glasses-form VR — and adopt a pendant for talking to AI agents — will become clear in stages: first with the Muse Charm's holiday launch in December, and then with the Meta VR Glasses' arrival in spring 2027.