WIRED's review of Meta's new Nova smart glasses, the non-Ray-Ban-branded Gen 3 model, concludes that there is "not much new" to justify an upgrade. The glasses earn a 7/10 rating, with the main hardware gains being a nine-hour battery life, a slimmer frame, and a superior microphone array that performs well at culling background noise during calls. However, the cameras remain the same 12-MP sensors capable of 3K video as the previous generation, and much of the software is unchanged.
The biggest disappointment, according to the review, is Meta's AI assistant. In testing, it failed to correctly identify the features of the glasses even when the reviewer told it the frame model and let it photograph the product page. The assistant's poor performance undercuts one of the main selling points of smart glasses. Meta has said its more advanced Muse AI will arrive later this year, but it is not available on these frames yet.
From a business perspective, the review suggests Meta is still iterating rather than leapfrogging. The $299 Nova undercuts the Ray-Ban-branded Gen 3 models, which start at $499, but the feature set is largely the same as Gen 2. Combined with ongoing concerns about camera-equipped glasses being used for surveillance or harassment, the review implies that convincing existing owners to upgrade—or winning over skeptics—will require more than incremental hardware tweaks. As the reviewer puts it, the glasses "do just about everything Meta promises" as long as you ignore the AI. But that is a significant caveat for a product built around an assistant. The review notes that the indicator light has been made more tamper-proof, though that "is not necessarily enough to deter the creeps."