Meta’s VR glasses cost about £1,000, far below Apple’s Vision Pro
With a spring 2027 launch, a 100g display and a price near £1,000, Meta is betting that fashion-minded buyers will succeed where gamers stalled.
By
Callum Fairbairn
In brief
- Meta’s VR glasses are due in spring 2027, two years after its last VR product.
- The glasses weigh 100g, with a 300g puck holding the processor and battery.
- Meta plans to price them at US$1,299.99, around £1,000.
- Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, ESPN and Imax are announced partners.
Virtual reality has been through one boom and a long hangover, and Meta now wants a second act that looks less like a games console and more like a pair of spectacles. According to analysis published by The Conversation, the new glasses could be the tipping point for mainstream adoption, though that remains the author’s argument rather than a demonstrated outcome.
A boom, then a plateau
VR only reached ordinary consumers in 2019, when Facebook, Meta’s earlier incarnation, released Oculus Quest. It had bought Oculus five years before. Steady sales of later Quest models have since taken Meta to 20 million headsets worldwide.
The first signs of a slowdown appeared in early 2024: Apple’s Vision Pro, priced at £3,495, sold poorly in that first quarter. The author reads that as a sign gamers would not pay more than the cost of a games console. Another oddity is that the Quest 2, released in 2020 and discontinued in 2024, remains the most widely used VR device despite the Quest Pro, Quest 3 and Quest 3S. The author suggests early adopters felt little reason to upgrade.
What changes with the glasses
Meta’s answer is to shed weight and to change the pitch. The glasses are marketed for films, live events and replacing monitors with several screens, not primarily for gaming.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Glasses weight | 100g, against a Quest 3 (2023) that is five times heavier |
| Puck | 300g unit with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and battery, joined by a fibre-optic cable |
| Battery | Three hours of continuous high-resolution media playback, per Meta |
| Software | Meta Horizon OS, with access to the existing catalogue of games and apps |
Meta says the glasses can be worn for hours at a stretch. The separate puck is how the company achieved the low weight, leaving the display resembling a pair of ski glasses.
Price, partners and a ready audience
At US$1,299.99, around £1,000, the glasses cost far less than the Vision Pro. The analysis argues their real advantage is an audience Meta has cultivated since 2021 through AI glasses. From 2023 it worked with fashion names such as Ray-Ban and Oakley, and a 2026 Omdia report found the smart glasses market grew 322% in 2025, with Meta holding 85% of it. The author argues the company sidestepped VR’s awkward image; Mark Zuckerberg’s 2022 Horizon Worlds demonstration is described as disastrously awkward and failed to sell the Quest Pro to the mainstream.
In its favour
- A price well below the Vision Pro’s
- Launch partners including Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, ESPN and Imax
- Only 100g on the face
Open doubts
- A 300g puck must be carried separately
- Camera-equipped smart glasses have raised privacy concerns over covert recording
- No Ray-Ban version has been announced yet
Those privacy worries already shape policy elsewhere: Norway’s planned limits on smart glasses target the camera-equipped kind. The Conversation’s author concludes the VR glasses are not yet a hassle-free pair that toggles into VR mode, but a distinct step towards one.
Photo: Bricetofly / Wikimedia Commons
