Meta Wants AI on Your Backpack - DTNS 5360

Tom Merritt (0:08)

This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 24th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context. And really, I think this time we're helping each other understand a lot.

Sarah Lane (0:21)

Today, Meta is stunning the world by putting Muse in a Tamagotchi. And Rob DeMillo joins us to explain why Google is launching its chips, into space.

Tom Merritt (0:30)

Space! I'm Tom Merritt.

Sarah Lane (0:32)

And I'm Sarah Lane.

Tom Merritt (0:33)

Let's start with what you need to know, with the big story.

Yes, Meta announced several new products at its Connect conference on Wednesday. The star of the show was the Meta VR glasses. This is a VR headset, but it looks more like a pair of glasses than it looks like ski goggles, though it's still kind of goggle like. It is tethered to a puck that you need to keep in a pocket to put on a tabletop or something, but that puck has all the stuff in it. It has the battery, it has the computing components, cooling, everything. That means the glasses can be a little slimmer, and all they have are the screens and the ability to track your eye and hand movement. It can do immersive video playback, so you can watch sports and like be in the game or watch an IMAX movie. It can run office apps, it can browse the web, it can do video conferencing, and of course it can play games. They say there will be about 75 of those at launch, and it could serve as an external monitor for a computer, which is something a lot of these can do, but it's nice that it has that as well, if you don't need to use it for its internal computer. For video conferencing, you'll be able to create a virtual version of yourself that looks like you. And in fact, all the reviewers say, you know, I didn't know the person I was seeing that well, but I didn't realize it wasn't actually them at first.

That is also coming to Meta's Ray-Ban display frames early this autumn. You can set it up in the Meta AI app, you know, just hold it in front of you and do the move your head around stuff. Or if you do get Meta's VR glasses, you can do it just holding them up using the internal cameras. It can also project a keyboard onto any flat surface. So instead of like in the Quest where your keyboard is floating in the air, it can project it on a flat surface and you can type that way. More like typing on a tablet.

With everything happening on the puck, it only weighs 100 grams on your head. That's about a fifth of what the Quest 3S weighs. Runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite Processor. Has three hours of battery life, so that's double the Quest 3

And it has two micro OLED screens, one in each eye, and they deliver 24K. So not the 4K you get in the Apple Vision Pro, but it's still pretty good. Has 12 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and a micro SD card slot. Shipping this spring for $1,299. Sarah, what's your first take on the Meta VR glasses?

Sarah Lane (2:53)

Well, I do think $1,300 is expensive. It's definitely not Apple Vision Pro expensive, but it does make me wonder where Meta is going with the Quest line, because this feels like everything that the Quest was supposed to be, but now it's better.

Tom Merritt (3:16)

Yeah, it's a little bit like, I guess the Quest Pro is now just a distant memory, and this is that, right? Which is the extension of Quest. But they're not calling it Quest, because I think what they're saying now is, we are the smart glasses people, so we really want this to merge with the smart glass product line at some point. So let's retire the Quest product line.

I think it's an impressive piece of hardware. Certainly at $1,300, it's expensive, but it's also way less expensive than the Galaxy VR or the Apple Vision Pro. So if you compare it to that, which it is functionally more comparable to, it's got an advantage on pricing. And Meta says that this will pay for itself, that this is not a loss leader the way the Quest was, which is interesting to hear them say as well.

Sarah Lane (4:03)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we're, for the VR folks who were just into this whole industry years ago, it's been sort of few and far between.

Many companies have been working on it, but it was still a big thing you wear on your face. Some of us, cool with it. Other people, not cool with it. This feels like it's getting pretty close to, okay, yeah, you're wearing goggles, but if it's a VR experience and it's less of a headset that you wear, then I think Meta's onto something.