Meta’s New Ray-Ban Specs Bring Iron-Man-Style AR to Daily Life for Less Than $1 K

Remember when smart glasses only shot 30-second clips? Meta and Ray-Ban just raised the bar. Their new Hypernova frames pack a tiny MicroLED screen into the right lens, throwing turn-by-turn arrows, text messages, or song titles straight into your line of sight while keeping the classic Wayfarer vibe. The launch bundle lands at $999, low enough to tempt vloggers who skipped Apple’s $3 000 Vision Pro add-ons.

The hardware reads like a gadget bingo card: a 12-megapixel camera for 1080 p, 60-fps video, open-ear speakers hidden in the temples, and a snap-on battery arm that doubles runtime to six hours. A five-microphone array feeds Meta AI, which can now translate French, Italian, Spanish, or English in real time—just look at a street sign or chat partner and subtitles float on the glass.

Meanwhile prank-channel regular Billy “Tuff Knuckles” hit social media wearing the specs, lowballing expensive cars and yes, he posted the first-person chaos for his two-million subscribers (search “BillyTuffKnuckels" on YouTube to see it).

Day-to-day use feels equally believable. Swipe the temple to take a call, glance at the corner to check your next subway stop, or tap once to stream a 60-second Reel straight to Instagram Live. Thanks to the slim display zone (about 42° of your view) the read-out stays subtle; look up and it disappears, so you’re not walking around in a sci-fi HUD all the time.

If the concept rings a bell, think Tony Stark’s E.D.I.T.H. glasses from Spider-Man: Far From Home. Meta insiders hint that a 2027 follow-up could widen the field of view and mirror the full-color holograms we saw on screen. For now, Hypernova focuses on practical, phone-adjacent tasks—translation, navigation, quick capture while keeping the frames light enough to forget you’re wearing them. At a sub-$1 K price, that might be enough to move AR out of the lab and onto everyday faces.