Zuckerberg's $800 smart glasses fail spectacularly on stage
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Meta's $800 smart glasses launch turns into viral disaster as Zuckerberg fails to answer a video call on stage. Four attempts, multiple failures, awkward Wi-Fi excuses.
Mark Zuckerberg just had his worst on-stage moment since the metaverse avatars got roasted. During Meta's Connect event unveiling their new $800 smart glasses, the CEO repeatedly failed to answer a video call using the device's flagship feature—while the entire tech world watched.
The viral clip shows Zuckerberg trying multiple times to accept a WhatsApp call through the new neural wristband controller. Nothing worked. After several painful attempts, he awkwardly laughed it off: "You practice these things like a hundred times and then, you know, you never know what's going."
The demo that went viral for all the wrong reasons
The September 18th Connect event was supposed to showcase Meta's leap into consumer wearables. Instead, it became instant meme material. Zuckerberg attempted to demonstrate the Ray-Ban Display glasses' killer feature—answering video calls with subtle hand gestures via a neural wristband.
First attempt: Nothing. Second attempt: Still nothing. By the fourth try, even Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth looked uncomfortable on stage. "I promise you, no one is more upset about this than I am because this is my team that now has to go debug why this didn't work," Bosworth said. The crowd laughed nervously as Zuckerberg blamed Wi-Fi issues. Online reactions were brutal. One user wrote: "Not really believable to be a Wi-Fi issue." Another joked they wanted to see "the raw uncut footage of him yelling at the team."
Earlier in the event, the AI cooking demo also failed. The glasses' AI misinterpreted prompts, insisted base ingredients were already combined, and suggested steps for a sauce that hadn't been started. The pattern was clear: Meta's ambitious hardware wasn't ready for primetime.
What Meta's $800 glasses actually promise
Despite the disaster, the Ray-Ban Display glasses pack impressive specs—on paper. The right lens features a 20-degree field of view display with 600x600 pixel resolution. Brightness ranges from 30 to 5,000 nits, though they struggle in harsh sunlight.
The neural wristband enables control through finger gestures:
Pinch to select
Swipe thumb across hand to scroll
Double tap for Meta's AI assistant
Twist hand in air for volume control
Features include live captions with real-time translation, video calls showing the caller while sharing your view, and text replies via audio dictation. Future updates promise the ability to "air-write" words with your hands and filter background noise to focus on who you're speaking with. Battery life: 6 hours on a charge with the case providing 30 additional hours. The wristband lasts 18 hours. They support Messenger, WhatsApp, and Spotify at launch, with Instagram DMs coming later.
Meta's also launching the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 at $379 and sport-focused Oakley Meta Vanguard at $499. Sales start September 30th with fitting required at retail stores before online sales begin.
Why this failure matters more than Zuckerberg admits
This wasn't just bad luck or Wi-Fi issues. It exposed Meta's fundamental problem: rushing unfinished products to market while competing with Apple and Google's ecosystems.
Alex Himel, who heads the glasses project, claims AI glasses will reach mainstream traction by decade's end. Bosworth expects to sell 100,000 units by next year, insisting they'll "sell every unit they produce." But who's buying $800 glasses that can't reliably answer a phone call? Early reviews from The Verge called them "the best smart glasses tried to date" and said they "feel like the future." But that was before watching the CEO fail repeatedly to use basic features on stage.
Meta's betting their entire hardware future on neural interfaces and AR glasses. Fortune reports their "Hypernova" glasses roadmap depends on similar wristband controllers. If they can't make it work reliably for a rehearsed demo, how will it work for consumers? The irony is thick. Zuckerberg pitched these as AI that "serves people and not just sits in a data center." Instead, he demonstrated expensive hardware that doesn't serve anyone when it matters most.
Meta's stock barely moved after the event—investors have seen this movie before. From the metaverse pivot to VR headsets gathering dust, Meta's hardware ambitions consistently overpromise and underdeliver.
The viral moment perfectly captures Meta's hardware problem: impressive technology that fails when humans actually try to use it. At $800, these glasses need to work flawlessly. Instead, they're another reminder that Meta builds for demos, not daily life.
