Wednesday night’s Meta Connect keynote in Menlo Park did something no amount of metaverse spending ever managed: it handed the smart glasses category a price that normal people might actually pay.
The Ray-Ban Meta Audio starts at $349 in the U.S. and ships October 13, giving Meta its first camera-free glasses and, for the first time, a product that privacy-wary buyers can consider without worrying about a lens pointed at them. Pre-orders opened after Zuckerberg left the stage. That ship date is three weeks away. This is not a roadmap slide.
The headliner hardware, the Meta VR Glasses born from Project Phoenix, costs $1,299.99 and goes on sale in spring 2027. It weighs roughly 100 grams on the face, with the computing, battery, and storage offloaded to a separate puck. The glasses use micro-OLED displays with pancake lenses, and the compute puck runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite. At $1,300, Phoenix undercuts the Apple Vision Pro substantially and takes a run at Snap’s competing device, which carries a $2,195 starting price.
The third-generation Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses also arrived Wednesday, available immediately at $449 with longer battery life and new frame styles. At the close of the keynote, Zuckerberg showed off the Muse Charm, a keychain-sized device with a small display, speakers, microphones, and a fingerprint sensor designed to give users a dedicated Muse AI interface without pulling out a phone. Pricing on the Charm remains unannounced.
So is Meta the one stock to own right now? The case is credible, but it is not simple.
Meta jumped about 7% on Monday, September 21, 2026, after Wells Fargo raised its price target to $796 from $640 ahead of Connect. Volume that day was elevated, reflecting a clear jump in institutional interest. About 80% of the stock is held by institutional investors. Analyst counts and consensus targets vary by data provider, so the exact Buy and Strong Buy breakdown depends on which service you use.
The financials underneath all this hardware activity are strong but not immaculate. Meta’s most recent quarter (Q2 2026, reported July 29, 2026) showed revenue of $60.80 billion and year-over-year revenue growth of 28%. Diluted EPS of $6.18 missed the roughly $7.19 consensus, though, a number that matters because the stock is now priced for excellence. The multiple demands that glasses and Muse become genuine revenue contributors, not just compelling demos.
Meta holds 68.7% of XR hardware shipments globally as of Q2 2026, but faces intensifying competition from Samsung, Google, Snap, and potentially Apple. The $349 Ray-Ban Meta Audio is the product that matters most in the near term, not Phoenix. A $349 price point can move units. The broader pivot away from bulky VR headsets comes after more than $80 billion in cumulative Reality Labs operating losses since late 2020, which means every new product line carries the weight of proving that years of spending were not wasted.
The counterargument is real: this is still a hardware company trying to become a platform company, with a premium headset shipping more than six months from now and an AI pendant with no price. Meta’s next earnings date is widely expected to be October 28, 2026, but as of today that date is still listed as unconfirmed by some earnings-calendar services. That report could either confirm the thesis or complicate it fast.
On balance, Meta earns the top slot today. The $349 Ray-Ban is in customers’ hands in three weeks. The institutional conviction is fresh and broad. The competitive position in wearables is real. Owning it means owning the risk that Phoenix underdelivers and that Muse revenues take longer to materialize than the current price implies. That risk exists. The opportunity is larger.
