Meta's smartglasses push just got picked apart by the reporters covering it, not just the marketing deck.
PCMag's Iyaz Akhtar convened a panel of editors from CNET, PCMag, and Mashable - Timothy Beck Werth, Will Greenwald, Angela Moscaritolo, and Scott Stein - to react to Meta Connect 2026. The conversation covered Meta's new muse AI assistant, the freshly announced Ray-Ban Gen 3 glasses starting at $249, and a new line of camera-free audio glasses. They also dug into fashion collaborations tied to the smart glasses line and Meta's VR headset display technology. Privacy came up repeatedly, both as a feature question and a trust question.
That's the more useful lens than another spec sheet. Meta has shipped smart glasses before without mainstream traction, and the editors' skepticism about privacy signals what could actually stall adoption this time: not battery life or price, but whether people want a camera pointed at strangers on their face. A panel debating that in real time is a better read on consumer sentiment than a press release.
Google tried this a decade ago with Glass and got mocked into retreat; Meta is betting cheaper hardware and a fashion partnership can succeed where that failed - the editors clearly aren't sold yet.