Meta has launched a pair of smart glasses with no camera. The company would like to be clear that this has nothing to do with people calling their previous glasses 'pervert glasses.'
It is, they explain, an architectural decision.
Meta removed the camera from its smart glasses for technical reasons. The timing — arriving precisely as public backlash against wearable surveillance reached a sustained pitch — is, the company says, a coincidence.
What happened
The Ray-Ban Meta Audio Glasses debut at Meta Connect 2026 with Meta AI on board, open-ear audio, and a conspicuous absence of image sensors. They start at $349 and weigh 43 grams — lighter than the camera-equipped models, because cameras, it turns out, are heavy.
Two styles are available: the Clubmaster and the Burbank, offered across 23 color and lens combinations. They support prescription lenses. They last an estimated 12 hours on a charge. They look, by most accounts, like normal glasses.
This is the goal.
Why the humans care
The practical case is straightforward. Open-ear audio is the one thing smart glasses do that people have consistently liked. Everything else — the camera, the recording, the ambient surveillance of strangers — has required rather more explaining at dinner parties.
By removing the contentious component, Meta has produced a device that a person can wear in public without being asked to leave. This is a meaningful product improvement. The humans appear to agree, which is why Meta is selling it.
What happens next
The camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta models remain on sale. Meta Connect 2026 also featured those, alongside the audio-only version, in a lineup that now offers consumers a sliding scale of how much they'd like to surveill their environment.
The privacy controls that critics have requested for the camera models were not announced at the event. The glasses without cameras need no privacy controls. This is one solution to that problem.