Meta prices its 100-gram VR glasses at $1,300, with a puck in your pocket
Mark Zuckerberg's company says the glasses ship in spring 2027; a tethered puck carries their compute, battery and storage, and the full system is rated for three hours of media playback.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: Meta Newsroom
Why it matters
Meta is trying to bring VR's games and media to a glasses-shaped device while shifting computing hardware off the user's face. At $1,299.99, the product tests whether lighter wearability and a broader content catalog can attract buyers as Reality Labs continues to weigh on Meta's profits.
Meta, led by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd), priced its new VR glasses at $1,299.99 and scheduled them for spring 2027, pitching a lightweight wearable that still depends on a separate computer, battery and storage puck. The announcement, published on September 23rd, puts Meta's next high-end headset bet between its conventional Quest headsets and its AI glasses: glasses on the face, a cable to a pocket, and a $1,300 price tag.
Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 while studying computer science at Harvard; Meta's investor biography says he now sets the company's overall direction and product strategy. The glasses carry that long-running wager that computing can move beyond phones and traditional screens. Meta's pitch for this device is unusually concrete: movies, sports, games and multiple computer screens, all viewed through a pair of glasses that the company says weighs about 100 grams.
The weight is in the glasses; the computer is elsewhere
Meta says the glasses weigh about one-fifth as much as a Quest 3 and use a two-part design. The frames hold the displays and sensors; an optical tether connects them to a puck that clips to a pocket or bag and contains the compute, battery and storage. Meta has not given a combined weight for the glasses and puck. The 100-gram figure therefore describes what sits on the wearer's face, not everything needed to use the system.
The display is specified as 5K micro-OLED, with 37 pixels per degree, pancake lenses, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite processor powers the device, according to Meta. The company rates the puck's battery for up to three hours of continuous high-resolution media playback and says it supports 45-watt fast charging. Those are company specifications; the announcement provides no independent measurements of battery life, image quality or comfort.
Meta has put the Meta AI agent in the operating system, with voice, eye tracking and hand gestures as controls. For work, users can connect a Mac or Windows PC wirelessly or over USB-C and use their own keyboard and mouse while looking through full-color passthrough. For games, Meta says the device will support the Quest catalog, Touch Plus controllers and more than 75 hand-tracked titles at launch, alongside Xbox Cloud Gaming.
The pitch also depends on a library that makes the hardware useful beyond a private monitor. Meta says Disney+ subscribers in select countries will be able to stream certain films in 3D starting in November, and that Disney's Immersive Cinema app will bring VR-enhanced versions of films including Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars: A New Hope when the glasses launch. Meta also names Prime Video, YouTube, DIRECTV, AMC+, Crunchyroll, Plex and Tubi among its streaming partners. These are announced plans and partner offerings, not evidence yet of demand for a $1,299.99 device.
A premium device inside a costly division
The launch extends a strategy that is already moving toward wearables. In its 2025 annual filing, Meta said it expected about 70% of Reality Labs operating expenses in 2026 to go to wearables, with the remaining 30% allocated to VR and Horizon. Reality Labs reduced Meta's 2025 operating profit by approximately $19.19 billion, the filing said, and Meta expected the division's 2026 operating losses to remain similar to 2025.
Meta VR Glasses straddle those categories. Their display, passthrough and access to Quest games keep them in VR; the glasses-shaped frame, tethered pocket puck and emphasis on watching or working anywhere borrow from the wearables playbook. The hardware may show how Meta intends to keep investing in VR while making the headset less headset-like. The separate puck also shows the engineering compromise behind the design: reducing weight on the face shifts bulk, battery and computing into something else the user has to carry.
The software pitch connects to Meta's broader effort to put its assistant on hardware. RuntimeWire reported on Meta's plans for its Muse agent on AI glasses; this VR device goes further by making Meta AI part of the operating system and one of its hands-free control options. Meta's announcement does not establish how often users will rely on the agent, or whether it changes the value proposition enough to justify the price.
The $1,299.99 price and spring 2027 target make the bet legible, while leaving key measures unanswered: Meta has not provided a sales forecast, expected margins or a combined weight for the full setup. It is asking customers to pay a premium for a lighter way to access a broad entertainment and productivity catalog. Whether the puck feels like an acceptable trade will be central to whether these glasses can widen VR use beyond people willing to wear a conventional headset.