Camera, Audio, Display or VR: The 4 Kinds of AI Glasses and Which to Buy

“AI glasses” now covers four different products that happen to sit on your nose. One shoots 3K video. One has no camera at all. One puts a small screen in front of your right eye, and one is a VR headset slimmed down to about 100 grams. They are priced from US$349 to US$1,299, and buying the wrong one is an expensive mistake.

People are buying them anyway. Counterpoint Research counts a 263% year-over-year jump in AI glasses shipments in the first half of 2026, with display-less models making up 96% of the total. As 9to5Mac’s breakdown of the report shows, Meta took 94% of that display-less segment, and North America accounted for half of all shipments.

This guide sorts the field by what the glasses actually do, using launch specs from Meta Connect on Sept. 23 and Samsung’s own disclosures. We haven’t tested these pairs ourselves; battery figures are manufacturer claims. Canadian prices are converted at roughly 1.39 unless the company published one.

1. Camera glasses: the default, with the most baggage

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3), US$449 (about CA$624). This is the pair most people mean when they say “smart glasses.” It has a 12MP camera that records 3K video, open-ear speakers, and Meta AI, which can look at what you’re looking at and answer questions about it. Engadget’s spec comparison puts battery life at up to nine hours (up from eight on Gen 2) and up to 50 hours with the charging case. The Wayfarer weighs 51.5 grams. New styles include Aviator and a cat-eye Zena.

The catch for value shoppers is that Gen 3 costs $70 more than Gen 2, and most of the new software is coming to Gen 2 as well, according to Engadget. If you can find a Gen 2 pair on sale, the extra hour of battery is the main thing you give up.

Android loyalists should look at the calendar first. Samsung’s Gemini-powered Intelligent Eyewear, designed with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, launches in November, a Samsung official told The Korea Herald. It also has a camera and no screen; Gemini answers through the speakers, with the heavy lifting done on a connected Galaxy phone. Samsung claimed up to nine hours of battery when it showed the glasses at Galaxy Unpacked in July. There’s no price yet. Its privacy design is stricter than Meta’s: lights inside and outside the frame show when it’s recording, and the camera shuts off if the outer indicator is blocked.

The privacy cost of camera glasses is real and not fully in your hands. In March, the EFF warned buyers after Swedish newspapers reported that contractors were annotating glasses footage that, in the EFF’s words, included “nudity, sex, and going to the bathroom.” A class action followed. Meta has since said it will run some glasses AI requests through Private Processing, a confidential-computing system it says keeps even Meta from accessing the data, but it hasn’t given a consumer rollout date.

Best for: hands-free photos and video, travel, and asking an AI about what’s in front of you.

2. Audio-only glasses: Meta’s answer to the camera problem

Ray-Ban Meta Audio, US$349 (about CA$485), shipping Oct. 13. Same assistant, same open-ear audio, no camera. Without the camera module, the Clubmaster frame weighs 43 grams, Meta’s lightest yet, and the Burbank weighs 47, according to UploadVR. Battery life is rated at up to 12 hours, plus 48 more from the case, per 9to5Google, and Engadget reports it takes prescription lenses.

Pretty much everyone read this pair as a response to the backlash against covert recording. Meta told UploadVR it had been in development for years and wasn’t driven by that. Either way, you can wear it into a gym locker room or a doctor’s office without anyone wondering whether they’re being filmed.

The microphones haven’t gone anywhere, though. MediaNama points out that the glasses still listen for a wake word, and Meta made no new privacy claims for them. The camera glasses’ recording light doesn’t exist on this model, because there’s no camera for it to signal.

Best for: people who want a voice assistant, podcasts and calls with nothing in their ears, and no camera in the room.

3. Display glasses: a screen you can glance at

Meta Ray-Ban Display, US$799 (CA$1,149). That Canadian price is Meta’s own, per Engadget. A small heads-up display sits in the right lens. You control it by pinching and swiping with the bundled Meta Neural Band, a wristband that reads electrical signals from your forearm muscles. UploadVR’s launch specs list a 600 x 600 display with a field of view of about 20 degrees, around six hours of battery life, a 69-gram weight, and prescription support only from -4 to +4.

The display is what makes these glasses different. You can read texts, see captions and follow turn-by-turn walking directions without taking out your phone. At Connect, Meta said cycling and transit directions were coming to the US and Canada, and opened orders in Germany, France and Italy.

The downsides are weight, a narrow prescription range and a high price for first-generation hardware. They also have a camera, so everything in the privacy section below applies.

Best for: early adopters who keep checking their phone for directions or messages and want to stop.

4. VR glasses: worth knowing about, not buying yet

Meta VR Glasses, US$1,299 (about CA$1,806), spring 2027. This is a VR headset shrunk to roughly 100 grams. It uses a 5K display with full-color passthrough and is tethered to a puck that holds a Snapdragon chip and does the processing, according to Engadget. Meta claims up to three hours of continuous high-resolution media playback and says 75 hand-tracked games will be available at launch.

These are for watching movies on a plane or gaming on the couch. You wouldn’t wear them down the street. With six months until launch, nobody outside Meta’s demo rooms has lived with them, so preordering now is a bet on a product nobody has reviewed.

Best for: current Quest owners who mostly watch video in VR and would be happy to stop wearing a strap around their head.

Six things to change before you wear camera glasses in public

These apply to Meta’s camera models, including the Display. Menu names come from Tom’s Guide’s walkthrough of the Meta AI app and may shift between app versions.

1. Clear your voice activity log. It’s under Glasses Privacy. Since 2025, Meta has kept voice recordings by default for up to a year, with no blanket opt-out. Deleting them is the only control you have.
2. Turn off Share Additional Data. It’s in the same Glasses Privacy menu.
3. Decide on Cloud Media. Turning it off keeps photos and video out of Meta’s cloud. Some features need it, so you’re giving those up.
4. Turn off the “Hey Meta” wake word if you mostly trigger the assistant with the touchpad.
5. Leave the LED alone. Recording won’t start when the capture light is covered, and an update announced in August stops it mid-recording too. “The camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording,” Meta’s Alex Himel said, as quoted by 9to5Google. Third-party mods that kill the light are a good way to get banned from a venue.
6. Take them off in washrooms, clinics and change rooms. There’s no setting for this. But footage from those places is exactly what the Swedish investigation found reaching human reviewers.

One last point on audio-only glasses: their spec sheet lists no LED at all. That’s the reason to buy them, and also why the people around you can no longer tell what your glasses are doing.

Sources

• Counterpoint Research: AI glasses shipments surge 263%
• Engadget: Everything announced at Meta Connect 2026
• Engadget: Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 vs. Gen 2
• The Korea Herald: Samsung AI glasses in November
• UploadVR: Ray-Ban Meta Audio drops the camera
• 9to5Google: Meta audio-only glasses and Gen 3
• EFF: Think twice before buying Meta's Ray-Bans
• Tom's Guide: Settings to change on Ray-Ban Meta