Hands-on with Orion, Meta’s first pair of AR glasses

Mark Zuckerberg has been hyping up augmented reality glasses that layer digital information over the real world.

The glasses, called Orion, are Meta ’s first pair of AR glasses.

Orion features Micro LED projectors inside the frame that beam graphics in front of your eyes via waveguides in the lenses.

Orion is, at the most basic level, a fancy computer you wear on your face.

The Orion glasses weigh significantly more than a normal pair but also far less than mixed reality headsets like the Meta Quest or Apple ’s Vision Pro.

You control the glasses through a combination of eye tracking, hand tracking, voice, and the neural wristband, which loosely resembles a Fitbit without a screen.

Orion was supposed to be a product you could buy but was shelved in 2022 .

Orion represents the end state: full-fledged AR glasses with enough computing power to leave your smartphone at home.

Zuckerberg has been trying to get past relying on smartphones for a long time.

He recognizes that for AR glasses to work at scale, they need to function just as well when the AR is turned off.