Snapchat and Meta Reportedly Plan to Reveal Dueling Visions of AR Glasses Next Month

Reports from The Verge indicate that both Snapchat and Meta are set to unveil new AR glasses next month. Both companies have been working on these projects for several years.

According to The Verge’s Alex Heath, Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, will introduce the fifth generation of its ‘Spectacles’ AR glasses on September 17th at the annual Partner Summit conference in Los Angeles. Just a week later, Meta will showcase its own AR glasses (codenamed Orion, as per Heath) at the Connect conference on September 25th.

Snap has been developing its ‘Spectacles’ smartglasses line for some time, with the fourth generation in 2021 being the first to feature proper AR capabilities. The upcoming fifth generation of Spectacles is expected to further enhance the device’s AR functionality.

Similarly, Meta has been enhancing its Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses since the first generation in 2021. A second generation was launched last year, but AR capabilities have not yet been added.

Although both companies are working towards making AR glasses mainstream, the devices to be unveiled next month are not expected to be ready for consumer release. They may be made available to developers for experimentation before a future consumer version is launched.

According to Heath, Snap’s latest AR glasses will have a similar design to the previous generation, with improvements in field-of-view and battery life. This is a significant upgrade from the previous model, which had limited field-of-view and battery life.

Meta has teased that its AR glasses will offer high field-of-view immersion, but it remains unclear how they will compare to other AR glasses or VR headsets. It is also uncertain whether the glasses will be a partnership with Ray-Ban or feature Meta branding like the Quest.

Both companies aspire to create AR headsets with immersive capabilities similar to MR devices like Vision Pro and Quest 3, but fitting these capabilities into a sleek glasses form factor remains a challenge.

Leading devices like Magic Leap 2 still resemble bulky goggles rather than glasses, even with the compute and battery components offloaded into a separate ‘puck.’

For more details on Snap and Meta’s upcoming AR glasses, refer to Alex Heath’s report.