Meta Orion AR Glasses: everything we know about the game-changing prototype

Meta's smart glasses are gonna get smarter

News By Hamish Hector published 1 October 2024

Jump To:

• Price
• Release date
• Design and features
• What we want to see

Meta’s first AR glasses have broken cover in the form of the game-changing Orion prototype. These glasses won’t ever be available to sale, but Meta says they’re the precursor to consumer AR Glasses. And based on what we've seen they could be the world's best AR glasses when they launch.

Those consumer AR glasses are likely a few years away, but thanks to Meta Connect 2024 and what Meta staff have said afterwards, we already have an idea of when non-prototype Meta Orion AR glasses might launch, how much they could cost, and what they’ll be capable of.

To make keeping track of all the latest Meta Orion information a breeze we’ve rounded up everything we know so far in this one article, and included a section at the end of the features we want to see at launch.

Meta Orion AR Glasses: Price

Technically Orion probably won’t ever go on sale; it’s a prototype that only select Meta staff, AR software developers, and those lucky enough to secure a demo will likely ever get to 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 tech and glasses.

When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion, he also outlined three objectives Meta is aiming to achieve before the glasses get released to the public. One is to “make them more affordable” (via Meta) by using practices like building Orion at scale. When we heard "affordable" we hoped that meant somewhere in the region of the current Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses – which start at $299 / £299 / AU$449.

Alas, this has been clarified by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. In an Instagram AMA in he explained that the AR glasses “probably won’t get in at, like, a Quest 3S price point, or even a Quest 3 price point” – which instantly prices them over $499.99 / £469.99 / AU$1,049.99. Instead the team is aiming at the price of affordable phones and laptops – so hopefully somewhere around $700 (around £700 / AU$1,350).

This certainly makes more sense given how impressive Orion was sounding, though it does mean we might have to wait a while longer for a truly affordable model to come along. Speaking of...

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