Meta Platforms said Tuesday that it’s delaying the international expansion of its Ray-Ban Display glasses due to inventory constraints and “unprecedented” demand in the U.S.

“Since launching last fall, we’ve seen an overwhelming amount of interest, and as a result, product waitlists now extend well into 2026,” Meta wrote in a blog post.

Due to “limited” inventory, the company said it will pause plans to launch in the U.K., France, Italy and Canada early this year and concentrate on U.S. orders as it reasses international availability.

Since 2019, Meta has been developing smart glasses with Ray-Ban maker Luxottica, and renewed a long-term partnership deal in 2024.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses in September.

The product, Meta’s first consumer-ready AI glasses, lets users watch videos or respond to messages and is controlled through a wristband with neural technology.

EssilorLuxottica said in October that revenue grew in the third quarter due in part to its Meta partnership.

Meta is one of several technology companies moving into the smart glasses market.

Alphabet announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker in May and ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly working on AI glasses with Apple.

Alibaba‘s artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses went on sale on Thursday as the Chinese tech giant looks to ramp up its focus on consumer AI in an increasingly competitive market.

The Quark AI Glasses, first announced in July, come in two variants — the S1, which starts at 3,799 Chinese yuan ($536) and G1 at 1,899 yuan.

The tech giant has integrated its Qwen AI models — Alibaba’s version of ChatGPT — with the device which also links to its newly-launched Qwen app. This means users can use voice control to get the glasses to carry out tasks.

The lenses of the glasses are effectively screens and the device has a camera built into the frame. The main difference between the S1 and G1 is the display, Alibaba said.

The company said that some of the features include on-the-go translation, AI-generated meeting notes and the ability to ask the virtual assistants questions. Users take pictures of a product using the camera in the lens and then the device will show the price of that product on Taobao, Alibaba’s main shopping app in China.

Alibaba, like other technology companies such as U.S. giant Meta, are betting that smart glasses could be the next big consumer device after the smartphone.

In September, Meta unveiled the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the social media company’s first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display. Users can control the device via hand gestures with a special wristband.

Alibaba’s glasses will initially go on sale in China and compete with domestic rivals, including consumer electronics maker Xiaomi and startup Xreal.

The smart glasses market is still small but growing rapidly. By 2026, shipments of AI glasses are expected to exceed more than 10 million units, doubling from 2025, according to a forecast from Omdia.

For Alibaba, the glasses are its latest play in the consumer AI market as it looks to build on its recent successes. The company’s ChatGPT-style Qwen app got 10 million downloads in the first week of the public beta launch. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s cloud computing business, where it books much of its AI-relate revenue, saw an acceleration of growth in the last quarter.

The Hangzhou, headquartered company is one of the leaders in China’s AI space, and has been investing aggressively in AI alongside rival giants like Baidu and Tencent, and aggressively launching new models.

When it comes to the new $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, it’s the device’s accompanying fuzzy, gray wristband that truly dazzles.

I was able to try out Meta’s next-generation smart glasses that the social media company announced Wednesday at its annual Connect event. These are the first glasses that Meta sells to consumers with a built-in display, marking an important step for the company as it works toward CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of having headsets and glasses overtake smartphones as people’s preferred form of computing.

The display on the new glasses, though, is still quite simplistic. Last year at Connect, Meta unveiled its Orion glasses, which are a prototype capable of overlaying complex 3D visuals onto the physical world. Those glasses were thick, required a computing puck and were built for demo purposes only.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display, however, is going on sale to the public, starting in the U.S. on Sept. 30.

Though the new glasses include just a small digital display in their right lens, that screen enables unique visual functions, like reading messages, seeing photo previews and reading live captions while having a conversation with someone.

Controlling the device requires putting on its EMG sensor wristband that detects the electrical signals generated by a person’s body so they can control the glasses via hand gestures. Putting it on was just like strapping on a watch, except for the small, electric jolt I felt when it activated. It wasn’t as much of a shock as you feel taking clothes out of the dryer, but it was noticeable.

Donning the new glasses was less shocking, until I had them on and saw the little display emerge, just below my right cheek. The display is like a miniaturized smartphone screen but translucent so as to not obscure real-world objects.

Despite being a high-resolution display, the icons weren’t always clear when contrasted with my real-world field of view, causing the letters to appear a bit murky. These visuals aren’t meant to wrap around your head in crystal-clear fidelity, but are there for you to perform simple actions, like activating the glasses’ camera and glancing at the songs on Spotify. It’s more utility than entertainment.

I had the most fun trying to perform hand gestures to navigate the display and open apps. By clenching my fist and swiping my thumb on the surface of my pointer finger, I was able to scroll through the apps like I was using a touchpad.

It took me several attempts at first to open the camera app through pinching my index finger and thumb together, and when the app wouldn’t activate I would find myself pinching twice, mimicking the double clicking of a mouse on a computer. But whereas using a mouse is second nature to me, I learned I have subpar pinching skills that lack the correct cadence and timing required to consistently open the app.

It was a bit strange and amusing to see people in front of me while I continuously pinched my fingers to interact with the screen. I felt like I was reenacting an infamous comedy scene from the TV show “The Kids in The Hall” in which a misanthrope watches people from afar while pinching his fingers and saying, “I’m crushing your head, I’m crushing your head!”

With the camera app finally opened, the display showed what I was looking at in front of me, giving me a preview of how my photos and videos would turn out. It was like having my own personal picture-in-picture feature like you would on a TV.

I found myself experiencing some cognitive dissonance at times as my eyes were constantly figuring out what to focus on due to the display always sitting just outside the center of my field of view. If you’ve ever taken a vision test that involves identifying when you see squiggly lines appearing in your periphery, you have a sense of what I was feeling.

Besides pinching, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses can also be controlled using the Meta AI voice assistant, just as users can with the device’s predecessors.

When I took a photo of some of the paintings decorating the demo room’s halls, I was told by support staff to ask Meta AI to explain to me what I was looking at. Presumably, Meta AI would have told me I was looking at various paintings from the Bauhaus art movement, but the digital assistant never activated correctly before I was escorted to another part of the demo.

I could see the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s live captions feature being helpful in noisy situations, as it successfully picked up the voice of the demo’s tour guide while dance music from the Connect event blared in the background. When he said “Let’s all head to the next room,” I saw his words appear in the display like closed-captions on a TV show.

But ultimately, I was most drawn to the wristband, particularly when I listened to some music with the glasses via Spotify. By rotating my thumb and index finger as if I was turning an invisible stereo knob,
I was able to adjust the volume, an expectedly delightful experience.

It was this neural wristband that really drilled into my brain how much cutting-edge technology has been crammed into the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. And while the device’s high price may turn off consumers, the glasses are novel enough to potentially attract developers seeking more computing platforms to build apps for.

WATCH: Next important wearable tech will be glasses, says Meta’s chief product officer.

Meta is planning to use its annual Connect conference next month to announce a deeper push into smart glasses, including the launch of the company’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display, CNBC has learned.

That’s one of the two new devices Meta is planning to unveil at the event, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will also launch its first wristband that will allow users to control the glasses with hand gestures, the people said.

Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021.

The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display.

Meta declined to comment. Luxottica, which is based in France and Italy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Meta began selling smart glasses with Luxottica in 2021 when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, which allowed users to take photos or videos using simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, and last year included the addition of advanced AI features that made the second generation of the product an unexpected hit with early adopters. 

Luxottica owns a number of glasses brands, including Ray-Ban, and licenses many others like Prada. It’s unclear what brand Luxottica will use for the glasses with AR, but a Meta job listing posted this week said the company is looking for a technical program manager for its “Wearables organization,” which “is responsible for the Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware.”

In June, CNBC reported that Meta and Luxottica plan to release Prada-branded smart glasses. Prada glasses are known for having thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable option for the Hypernova device, one of the people said. 

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company’s experimental Orion AR glasses.

The Orion features AR capabilities on both lenses, capable of blending 3D digital visuals into the physical world, but the device served only as a prototype to show the public what could be possible with AR glasses. Still, Orion built some positive momentum for Meta, which since late 2020 has endured nearly $70 billion in losses from its Reality Labs unit that’s in charge of building hardware devices.

With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That’s because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said.

Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million pairs of their second-generation glasses since 2023, Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February. In July, Luxottica said that revenue from sales of the smart glasses had more than tripled year over year.

As part of an extension agreement between Meta and Luxottica announced in September, Meta obtained a stake of about 3% in the glasses company according to Bloomberg. Meta also gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC in June.

Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view — meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position — and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages. 

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, said earlier this month that there are advantages to having just one display rather than two, including a lower price.

“Monocular displays have a lot going for them,” Bosworth said in an Instagram video. “They’re affordable, they’re lighter, and you don’t have disparity correction, so they’re structurally quite a bit easier.”

Other details of Meta’s forthcoming glasses were disclosed in a July letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to a lawyer representing Meta. While the letter redacted the name of the company and the product, a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed that it was in reference to Meta’s Hypernova glasses.

“This model will enable the user to take and share photos and videos, make phone calls and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interactions,” according to the letter, dated July 23.

The letter from CBP was part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for a consumer product. It refers to the product as “New Smart Glasses,” and says the device will feature “a lens display function that allows the user to interface with visual content arising from the Smart Features, and components providing image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities.”

CBP didn’t provide a comment for this story.

The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta’s CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms. 

The wristband is expected to be a key input component for the company’s future release of full AR glasses, so getting data now with Hypernova could improve future versions of the wristband, the people said. Instead of using camera sensors to track body movements, as with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s wristband uses so-called sEMG sensor technology, which reads and interprets the electrical signals from hand movements.

One of the challenges Meta has faced with the wristband involves how people choose to wear it, a person familiar with the product’s development said. If the device is too loose, it won’t be able to read the user’s electrical signals as intended, which could impact its performance, the person said. Also, the wristband has run into issues in testing related to which arm it’s worn on, how it works on men versus women and how it functions on people who wear long sleeves.

The CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature in July about its wristband, and Meta wrote about it in a blog post. In the paper, the Meta team detailed its use of machine learning technology to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. The additional data collected by the upcoming device should improve those capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.

“We successfully prototyped an sEMG wristband with Orion, our first pair of true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but that was just the beginning,” Meta wrote in the post. “Our teams have developed advanced machine learning models that are able to transform neural signals controlling muscles at the wrist into commands that drive people’s interactions with the glasses, eliminating the need for traditional—and more cumbersome—forms of input.”

Bloomberg reported the wristband component in January.

Meta has recently started reaching out to developers to begin testing both Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, people familiar with the matter said. The company wants to court third-party developers, particularly those who specialize in generative AI, to build experimental apps that Meta can showcase to drum up excitement for the smart glasses, the people said.

In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.

That device was also referenced by CBP in its July letter, referring to it as “The Next Generation Smart Glasses.” The glasses will include “components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with the Smart Glasses through touch gestures,” the letter said.

WATCH: Elon Musk asked Zuckerberg to join xAI bit for OpenAI

Meta and EssilorLuxottica on Friday unveiled a new line of Oakley smart glasses that include the social media company’s artificial intelligence assistant. 

The Oakley Meta HSTN, as the glasses are known, is the latest product borne from a multiyear partnership between the two companies. 

The HSTN smart glasses – which are pronounced how-stun – are pitched toward athletes and have a starting price of $399. The glasses represent Meta and Luxottica’s first expansion of their smart glasses beyond the Ray-Ban brand.

The companies released their first set of smart glasses in 2021, and they found a surprise success in the second generation of the device, which debuted in 2023. 

CNBC reported Tuesday that Meta was planning to release versions of its smart glasses under the Oakley and Prada brands. It’s unclear when Meta’s Prada deal and ensuing product line will be announced.

Meta said its latest smart glasses contain Oakley’s so-called PRIZM Lens technology, which are designed to help athletes see better “across changing light and weather conditions.” The Oakley Meta HSTN has a longer battery life and improved camera compared with the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta, which has a starting price of $299.

Like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the HSTN glasses use the Meta AI digital assistant and a corresponding smartphone app so users can ask questions about the weather or tell the device to record videos of their activities.

Some of the Oakley Meta HSTN’s various frame-and-lens color combinations include a gray variant with red lenses and a black model with black lenses. The gadget is also water resistant, the companies said. 

A limited-edition version of the HSTN glasses with gold lenses and accents will cost $499 and be available to preorder on July 11. The standard Oakley Meta HSTN will go on sale later this summer.

Other tech companies like Alphabet and Snap are also developing smart glasses. In May, Alphabet announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to develop smart glasses that rely on Google’s Gemini AI assistant, while Snap this month said it would unveil its sixth-generation augmented reality smart glasses next year.

Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan to release versions of their AI-powered smart glasses under the Oakley and Prada brands, CNBC has learned.

The addition of Prada and Oakley underscore the breakout success Meta had with its second-generation Ray-Ban glasses released in partnership with Luxottica in 2023. The Oakley expansion will be done in partnership with Luxottica, while the addition of Prada signifies Meta’s first step toward bring its wearable hardware to more fashion companies. 

Meta on Monday teased the Oakley release on social media, launching an Instagram account for “Oakley | Meta” with a profile description that reads “The next evolution is coming on June 20.”

CNBC reviewed a document that says the new glasses with Luxottica will be aimed at athletes. Meta is targeting active consumers after seeing several owners of its Ray-Ban glasses use the device to record themselves playing tennis, skiing and doing other activities.

The Oakley version of the glasses may cost around $360 as they are more weather resistant than their Ray-Ban counterparts, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about the upcoming device. The first version of the Oakley Meta glasses will feature similar technology to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses released in 2023.

Luxottica, based in France and Italy, has licensing arrangements with over 150 brands and owns notable brands including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue Eyewear and Persol.

Meta’s agreement with Prada comes after the fashion company in December renewed an eyewear-related licensing agreement with Luxottica for 10 years. That deals covers the “development, production and worldwide distribution of eyewear under the Prada, Prada Linea Rossa and Miu Miu brands,” the companies said at the time.

Besides giving Meta a high-end partnership, the Prada glasses may be a particularly good fit for the tech company as many of the brand’s models come with thick temples, former Meta employees said. That provides more heft for housing many of the components necessary for smart glasses, including microphones and chips.

It’s unclear when the Prada deal and product line will be announced.

Meta first partnered with EssilorLuxottica in 2019 to jointly develop the Ray-Ban glasses. The two companies released the first version in 2021, but they found success after the release of the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses in 2023. That version comes equipped with the Meta AI voice assistant and includes features and, when tethered to a smartphone, lets users identify city landmarks, get recipes when looking at ingredients and record and send voice messages on WhatsApp and Messenger.

EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February the companies have sold 2 million pairs of the Meta Ray-Ban glasses since 2023. Miller said he aimed to increase annual production to 10 million units by the end of 2026.

Meta and Luxottica announced an extension of their partnership in September, with plans to release more versions of their Ray-Ban glasses. That deal was worth $5 billion, according to a July 2024 report in The Wall Street Journal. As part of the deal, Meta gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. 

The two companies plan to release a bulkier, third generation of their glasses in time for the coming holiday season. The new device is expected to include a small display in one of the lenses, CNBC has previously reported.

Competition in the market is heating up.

Last month, Alphabet announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker that will see the two companies team up to release glasses infused with Google’s Gemini AI assistant. The companies plan to release the glasses sometime after 2025. 

Snap, meanwhile, announced in June that it plans to release its sixth generation smart glasses under a new brand called Specs. Those glasses, expected for release in 2026, will include augmented-reality technology and will be smaller and lighter than Snap’s prior products, Snap said. 

Meta declined to comment. Luxottica and Prada could not be reached.

Bloomberg News first reported about the Oakley Meta glasses in January.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the month of Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s partnership extension.

WATCH: Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype.

Google on Tuesday announced that it’s getting back into the smart glasses game, and co-founder Sergey Brin said that this time will be different. 

“I’ve learned a lot,” Brin said Tuesday at a fireside chat during the annual Google I/O developer conference. 

His appearance came after Google announced a partnership with Warby Parker, which saw its stock rise more than 15% after the two companies said they plan to launch a series of smart glasses as soon as next year. The glasses will be built on top of Google’s Android XR, an operating system for headset computers, and they’ll include Google’s Gemini AI assistant that users can speak with to control the wearable devices.

Brin’s comments came in an impromptu appearance at a conference chat scheduled between Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and journalist Alex Kantrowitz about “the future of AI and its impact on our world.” 

During the chat, Brin said that with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, Alphabet is able to revive the idea of Google Glass, the wearable devices the company launched in 2013 for $1,500. 

“I definitely feel like I made a lot of mistakes with Google Glass, I’ll be honest,” Brin said, adding that he is still a big believer in the glasses form factor. 

“And now it looks like normal glasses without that thing in front,” he said, referring to the visible camera that existed on the corner of the original Google Glass prototype.

Brin attributed the failure of Google Glass in part to “a technology gap.” Since 2013 when Google Glass was launched, the company has developed advanced AI technology that powers Gemini, its flagship AI product and a key component for users to control a wearable device.

“Now, in the AI world, the things these glasses can do to help you out without constantly distracting you — that capability is much higher,” he said. 

Brin also said that during his first attempt at the Google Glass, he didn’t know anything about supply chains and how to get the glasses to a reasonable price point.

The Google co-founder’s comments come as companies race to compete for wearable glasses as a form factor for AI products. Meta partnered with EssilorLuxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban, to make smart glasses that have a camera for capturing photos and videos. Apple is reportedly working on smart glasses that use augmented reality.

Besides Warby Parker, Google on Tuesday said it will partner with developers and device makers for Android XR, including Samsung, Qualcomm, Sony, Xreal and Magic Leap. Google’s annual developer conference also included a number of updates to its AI products, including a new high-end subscription service called Google AI Ultra, which costs $249.99 per month.

Glass was first sold to developers and early adopters and gained popularity mostly among tech enthusiasts. Despite backing from Brin and fellow Google co-founder Larry Page, the Glass project never caught on as a mainstream product. The built-in camera led to fights over privacy, and the product became the butt of jokes on late-night television. The company tried to re-launch it as an “enterprise” product, but Google in 2023 announced that it would stop selling its Glass Enterprise smart glasses.

Brin on Tuesday joked about the infamous skydivers that introduced the glasses at Google I/O in 2012, which took place at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. At the time, four Google employees skydived out of a plane, live streaming their jump through their Google Glasses.

“Honestly, it would have been even cooler here at Shoreline Amphitheater,” Brin said, referring to the Mountain View, California, venue that’s currently used by Google for the conference.

“But we should probably polish the product first,” he said, which drew laughs from the audience. “Then we’ll do a really cool demo. That’s probably the smart move.”

WATCH: Balancing search, AI at Google I/O

Xreal on Wednesday launched its latest generation of augmented reality (AR) glasses as it looks to fend off competition from the likes of Meta and Snap.

The company, which is backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is hoping to capitalize on the growing interest in AR glasses.

The Xreal One Series features the X1 chip which is the company’s first self-designed processor for its glasses and marks a big step for the product’s capabilities.

Xreal talks up the ability for wearers of its glasses to be able to connect to devices such as a phone, laptop or games console, and see their content on a huge digital screen in front of them. The previous generation of Xreal’s product required a companion device called the Beam for connections to a device, but the latest chip means that the Beam is not required.

“I think that it’s the biggest upgrade in Xreal history and probably the biggest upgrade for the entire consumer AR glasses [sector],” Chi Xu, CEO of Xreal, told CNBC in an interview.

The X1 chip was in the works for three years, Xu said, adding that he sees it as a way to increase the capabilities of the glasses to differentiate from the competition.

“We have to step up to define a chip that is really defining some of the new features for these types of glasses,” Xu said.

Xreal is one of the biggest players in the AR glasses space, but it is facing intense competition from the likes of Snap, which unveiled a new set of its Spectacles in September, as well as Facebook parent Meta’s continued efforts with the Meta Ray-Ban product. Meanwhile, CNBC reported this year that Qualcomm is working on a set of glasses with Google and Samsung.

Xreal is among the companies that are betting on glasses — rather than large headsets like Apple’s Vision Pro or the Meta Quest — to be the mass-market winners in AR.

“People have started to realize a headset doesn’t make sense, we need to go to lighter form factors to the glasses category,” Xu said. “But the challenge for glasses is can we push the limit to deliver a headset experience on a much smaller form factor?”

The Xreal One and Xreal One Pro start at $499 and $599 respectively.

AR, which refers to a technology that overlays digital content over the real world, has been hyped up over the last few years. However, the market had not exploded like many had predicted. Large headsets have proved too expensive or uncomfortable and firms including Xreal and Meta are focusing on how they can make the experience with glasses more compelling.

There is also still a lack of content and killer use cases for the product, an issue Xu said needs to change before the product category reaches a wider user base. The CEO added that this begins with good hardware.

“We need a platform, we need an ecosystem to improve the experience because we don’t have any content yet. But in order to have the developers getting excited … you need to have good hardware to begin with,” Xu told CNBC.

Xu said the company is expecting to sell 500,000 units of its previous products in 2025, roughly doubling the figure of this year.

After a decade of development and billions of dollars, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September pulled back the curtain on one of the company’s most ambitious projects: an augmented reality prototype called Orion. A week earlier, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel took the stage at its annual Snap Partner Summit to introduce its AR capable, 5th-generation Spectacles. Both companies see massive potential for the technology, with a grand vision for AR glasses to usurp smartphones as the next generation of computing. 

“This is a major leap forward for technology,” Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin in an exclusive interview. “It’s a big step forward for our sort of goal to help define the next generation of computing.”

The dream of augmented and mixed reality is something tech giants have been pursuing for years.

Earlier this year, Apple started selling its Vision Pro virtual reality headset for $3,500. Over a decade ago, Google was first to market in 2013 with Google Glass, an early attempt at an AR device, but the product faced challenges and was ultimately canceled. Microsoft has also invested in AR technology for well over a decade, launching its HoloLens headset for enterprise in 2016. Failing to gain traction, the HoloLens was discontinued in October. 

“We’re in our adolescence,” said Tuong Nguyen, Gartner director analyst. “We see a lot of potential, but we haven’t quite reached that potential yet.”

While Snap and Meta have debuted AR prototypes, they’re still years away from selling those devices to consumers. The technology is too costly to mass produce. For now, Meta plans to use Orion as a developer device for its employees.

“We’re going to use it mostly internally to build out the software we need to,” Zuckerberg said at the Meta Connect conference in September. “We’re also going to work with a handful of partners externally to make sure we get a diversity of content.”

Snap similarly plans to invest in building out its ecosystem, renting its AR glasses to developers who commit to paying $99 a month for a year for the Spectacles.

“We’ve really tried to lower the barrier to folks getting started with this new technology,” Spiegel told Boorstin. “We’re at a unique moment where both consumers and developers are really ready for something new.”

Watch the video as CNBC’s Julia Boorstin tries Meta and Snap’s augmented reality glasses and explores the future of this cutting-edge tech.

The most impressive aspect of Meta‘s Orion augmented reality glasses has more to do with size and comfort than flashy computer graphics.

CNBC senior media and tech correspondent Julia Boorstin was able to use Orion this week at Meta’s annual Connect conference, and she was captivated by the prototype’s compact form relative to the various Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro virtual reality headsets.

“What was really striking to me about these was that they were incredibly lightweight,” Boorstin said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the Orion glasses on Wednesday and pitched them as “a glimpse of a future that I think is going to be pretty exciting.” The glasses are black and thick framed and come with a wireless “puck” that allows the device to run apps like a holographic game of digital chess or pingpong that appear as digital graphics spliced into the real world.

The experimental glasses are part of Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar plans to build the next generation of personal computing for the so-called metaverse, a term used by Meta to describe people interacting with one another online in virtual 3D spaces.

While Orion is not capable of putting users in fully virtual worlds, the glasses can overlay digital graphics onto the real world. And unlike VR headsets that can be cumbersome to wear for extended periods, Boorstin said she found the Orion glasses to be a good fit.

“The form factor didn’t feel meaningfully different than wearing a pair of heavy, ordinary glasses, and they were not uncomfortable to wear,” she said.

Though the current incarnation of the Orion AR glasses could pass as a movie prop for the film “Revenge of the Nerds,” Boorstin said she believes they’re only going to get smaller as technology improves.

“This is the first generation — four years from now, how much smaller will they be?” Boorstin said.

When wearing the AR glasses, Boorstin was able to see digital holograms displaying the visual icons of apps like Instagram, Facebook, and some extras like a browser and a video game mixed with the surroundings inside a small office at Meta’s headquarters.

Boorstin saw those digital icons overlaid atop her real-world surroundings with her own eyes. That’s an improvement over “passthrough” techniques used by current VR devices. For passthrough, companies use cameras on the outside of their headsets to show users a digital representation of the real world blended with computer graphics through their device screens.

Orion is able to overlay digital imagery on the real world using a much more expensive method. Its lenses aren’t made from traditional glass or plastic but rather a refractive material called silicon carbide. When the Orion’s miniaturized projectors, built in to the arms of the glasses, beam light into the silicon carbide lenses, users can see “holograms” in their field of vision, an experience Boorstin said “felt totally normal and very natural.”

When the holograms were turned off, “it felt as if you were wearing glasses or sunglasses, and it wasn’t distracting or nauseating,” Boorstin said.

Boorstin was able to open, close and scroll through the apps with the help of a wristband, that she said felt similar to an old, lightweight Fitbit.

“The wristband can sense your finger and hand movements, so your hand can be by your side,” Boorstin said, describing how her finger movements and gestures manipulated the digital icons. “I was surprised that it was so accurate and that I could figure out these hand motions, and it picked them up exactly.”

In one demo, the Orion glasses were able to identify various food ingredients, like chia seeds, that were spread out on a table. It then projected a suitable recipe that appeared digitally above the real-world seeds. In another demo, Boorstin played a simple game of pong, except the video game graphics were projected onto a real-world desk in front of her.

One demo that really impressed her involved seeing the face of Stephen Desaulniers, her producer, digitally appear in front of her while he called from another room. The overall experience of the 3D video call “felt very clear” to Boorstin, who noticed that the graphic’s resolution would change depending on where she placed it within her field of vision. It was enough to startle her into questioning whether or not the producer could actually see her in real life since it appeared as if he was there in front of her (he could not).

“I could see him perfectly, and he could not see me,” Boorstin said. “But I could hear him, and it was like I was FaceTiming with him, but he was in my glasses.”

By experiencing Orion, Boorstin said she has a better sense of how Meta’s research and development is directly benefiting the company’s other products, like its Quest headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses.

“They’ve been working so hard to make these components teeny, tiny, efficient, weightless,” she said.