February 28, 2025 – Meta unveiled an experimental augmented reality (AR) smart glasses named Aria Gen 2 yesterday, aimed at advancing machine perception, user-centered contextual artificial intelligence, and robotics technology. This research-oriented product is primarily targeted towards academic and commercial research laboratories and is expected to begin testing in early 2026, with no plans for consumer sales.
The glasses are equipped with a range of sensors, including a 6-degrees-of-freedom SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) sensor, eye-tracking sensor, anti-interference speakers, microphones, real-time heart rate monitoring, and a GNSS positioning system.
In terms of design, the Aria Gen 2 is slimmer than Meta’s Orion AR glasses, weighing 75 grams. This weight places it between the 98-gram Orion and the 50-gram Ray-Ban smart glasses. The battery life is claimed to last between 6 to 8 hours, eliminating the need for “obvious wire connections.”
Despite its weight being higher than the Meta-Ray Ban collaboration glasses and its thicker frames, the Aria Gen 2 appears more like regular glasses when the camera indicator is off. Additionally, it doesn’t rely on an external computing unit like the Project Orion.
In a demonstration video released on Meta’s official blog, a visually impaired person uses the glasses to navigate a supermarket, locating apples in the fresh food section using voice commands and AI assistance. This showcases a potential upgrade to the “Be My Eyes” AI tool found in the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
According to Mingfei Yan, AR Research Project Management Director, the Aria Gen 2 smart glasses are part of Meta’s effort to build AI products that “can better understand the wearer’s context and environment.” To this end, the second-generation product includes a new photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor at the nose pad for continuous heart rate monitoring, as well as a contact microphone to distinguish the wearer’s voice from background noise.
Although Meta won’t sell the Aria Gen 2 to consumers, it’s likely that some of its features, sensors, and AI upgrades will be integrated into Meta’s next-generation consumer products in the next one to two years. It remains to be seen how much of the Aria Gen 2’s technology will be showcased in Meta’s new products at the 2025 Meta Connect conference.
