Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 costs $449, adds an hour of battery and an action button
Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) went on sale on September 23, the day Meta announced it at Connect, starting at $449 in the US. Meta says the new generation runs for up to nine hours on a charge, an hour more than Gen 2, in a slimmer frame with a customisable action button for Meta AI.
Zena, the cat-eye frame new to Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3), in shiny black with clear lenses. Image: Meta
That $449 is a starting price across 27 colour and lens combinations in three styles: Aviator, Wayfarer, and Zena, a cat-eye frame new to the range. Meta’s own store lists Gen 3 from £409 in the UK and from €449 in Germany, each of them an entry price for the Gen 3 line rather than for one frame.
Meta is also marking the 90th anniversary of the Ray-Ban Aviator with a limited-edition Aviator in a vintage-inspired colourway, and has not given it a unit count or a price of its own.
The camera moves up to 12 MP and 3K video
Gen 3 records 3K Ultra HD video through a 12 MP camera, and a feature Meta calls dynamic photos lets you choose which frame of a shot to keep. As on every generation, a built-in LED lights up when the camera is running, and that is the signal a Bluetooth-sniffing app for spotting camera glasses cannot read.
Dolby Atmos capture is not part of the launch. Meta says its AI glasses will be the first consumer devices that can capture and play back video in Dolby Atmos with 360-degree spatial sound, and dates that for later this year.
Six microphones and a button you can remap
The other hardware change is a six-microphone array, which Meta says cuts more than 90% of background noise on calls and voice commands. Meta gives no test conditions for that figure.
The action button is new to the line and sits beside the touchpad, opening Meta AI or whatever else you assign to it. Meta also fits professional-adjustable temple tips for fit, and its Connect round-up calls the battery the longest of any Ray-Ban Meta model, although nine hours is an up-to rating rather than a measured runtime.
Where Gen 3 sits in a widening glasses range
Meta calls Gen 3 the next generation of the world’s best-selling AI glasses, and publishes no sales figures behind the claim. The range around it keeps growing: the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio is on pre-order from $349 in the US, and Meta Ray-Ban Display sits above Gen 3 with a screen and a wrist-worn neural band.
Glasses without a display are where the volume sits. Counterpoint’s mid-year numbers found that 96% of AI glasses shipped in the first half of 2026 had no display, so Gen 3 is competing in the part of the market that actually sells.
Gen 3 is on sale now in the US from $449. The Dolby Atmos capture Meta announced with it is not, and Meta has put no date on it beyond later this year.
