If you attended Meta Connect this year and somehow missed the smart glasses, congratulations on your remarkable ability to stare at the floor. The social media giant is all-in on its burgeoning line of smart glasses, and the annual hardware-and-AI showcase made that abundantly clear. Meta staff and the usual flocks of influencers arrived with the glasses glued to their faces, and most of the demos on offer this week involved the specs. It was less a product launch than a bespectacled flash mob with a keynote.

I swiftly joined the bespectacled masses and found myself trying on pair after pair of Meta's high-tech eyewear. Among the more notable demos was Meta's new, still-unreleased, audio-only smart glasses - news of which emerged not long after the company weathered accusations that it was selling "pervert glasses," with critics alleging its camera-equipped specs could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes. The new model answers that PR headache the old-fashioned way: by removing the camera entirely. It packs six microphones but no camera and no native way to record your surroundings, which should go a long way toward easing privacy concerns. It's also significantly lighter than any other smart glasses I've worn, and genuinely comfortable.

The Meta staffer I spoke with emphasized entertainment and communication: you can listen to music easily (more comfortable than earbuds) and take phone calls without reaching for your phone. The glasses will also integrate with Muse, Meta's personal agentic system, which carries out tasks on the user's behalf. The integration, not yet available to the public, lets wearers speak to Muse and issue verbal commands. Meta also plans to personalize the agent, letting users pick from an assortment of cute digital avatars to represent it during communications.

I tried it out, which was fun but also somewhat comical. You have to be very direct with the agent, and you can't talk to anyone else at the same time or it gets confused. Problematically, I kept chatting intermittently with the Meta staffer who'd handed me the glasses, and the agent kept thinking I was speaking to it, so it would talk over her. Still, in the right context, it's easy to see how this could be incredibly useful. If you don't mind being seen in public talking to your own sunglasses, you can ask Muse to handle digital tasks - sending emails, reciting to-do lists - while you're grocery shopping or having a beer. You can also ask the glasses anything, and like a mobile version of ChatGPT, they'll spit out an answer. I asked about World War II and got a succinct, historically accurate response.

Finally, I test-drove a second audio-only pair: Meta's new glasses for the hearing impaired. Given that hearing loss affects many families - some 50 million Americans are said to have some level of hearing loss - this device, unlike a lot of modern tech gadgets, serves a clear and practical purpose. A member of Meta's research team told me the glasses had been in development for about five years, and he pointed out a price difference that could make them appealing: whereas a lot of hearing aids can run as high as $1,600, the glasses will sell for $150.

Wearing them was interesting. Meta had me put earplugs in first to simulate the hearing loss the glasses are meant to overcome. Once on, they seemed to amplify the voice of the person I was talking to. Users can switch amplification from focused, which zeroes in on the person in front of them, to omnidirectional, which picks up sound from all around, depending on how they want to experience their surroundings.

Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear he believes smart glasses are the future, and his company is doing its best to fulfill that vision. But smart glasses remain a niche that has yet to truly find its footing. What was most obvious at Connect is that Meta - attempting to succeed where others have failed - has cast a very wide net, trying to make its glasses stylish, functional, and, most of all, useful. Is this the future? Unsurprisingly, everyone at Connect seemed to think so. I suppose we'll have to see if the rest of the world follows suit, or just keeps rubbing its eyes.