Meta Connect 2026 is fast approaching, and although it's been heavily speculated that we'll catch our first glimpse of the next Meta Quest headset at this year's conference, the first imagery of the brand's unannounced device appears to have leaked. As Valve and gamers celebrate the long-awaited launch of the Steam Frame, I'm not sure anyone needs to worry about Meta's Project Phoenix as competition, because it looks more like a pair of smart glasses than a VR headset designed for playing video games.
This much has been rumored for a while now, as Meta may even be steering clear of the "Quest" nomenclature for the upcoming device. It also goes hand-in-hand with the studio closures and layoffs Meta has done in 2026 when it comes to gaming and VR headset production. Wearables, like the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, have seemingly been a big hit, but Quest headsets have gone up in price while large swathes of Reality Labs employees have been laid off and profits are down.
First official visuals of Meta's Project Phoenix, found in the HorizonOS Prescription Lens firmware package! pic.twitter.com/YmN0SCJNCDSeptember 10, 2026
The new Project Phoenix looks like a hybrid between smart glasses and a headset, and we can see as much from imagery found in HorizonOS in the last few days. It was originally found and reported by Luna on Twitter and UploadVR, who found the new imagery via a new lens prescription partnering app available on Quest's OS. The app was first seen in August, revealing not an awful lot. Simply named "HorizonOS Prescription Lens", it's since received an update which contains visuals of the new device and how prescription lenses can be installed into it.
Other imagery shows that the headset has legs that are a lot smaller in size and very similar in their design to typical glasses legs. Like with other smart glasses we've seen, there's a cable that leads from the left leg back into what will presumably be a power supply/puck you can hold in your pocket or clip to a belt.
There's no imagery of any new controllers, but UploadVR does note that as part of the Connect conference schedule this year, Dongyi Li, a Software Engineer Manager at Meta, is giving a talk titled "A practical guide to controller-free interaction". This could point to a controller-less Quest device, which the brand has been leaning into since the Meta Quest Pro. I have concerns about what that means for this headset's gaming potential though, since the tactility and functionality of controllers in VR are more important than they seem.
While a lightweight headset design could be great for some games, fully immersive VR games usually mean vigorous head movement that wouldn't exactly suit a pair of glasses that could slip off. Moreover, the imagery we can see (if it's not a very complicated misdirect from Meta) shows a very small lens and potential FOV that wouldn't necessarily lend itself to gaming.
Personally, I'm not sure this device, whether it's the mainline successor to the Quest 3 or not, will be geared toward gaming. It will almost certainly run on HorizonOS and have access to all the same apps and games as other Quest headsets, but it looks like gamers will be better served by the existing hardware for now.
That's exactly why I don't think Valve has anything to worry about when it comes to Meta's next device. Although the company's CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth said there are no plans to leave the sector, closing gaming studios, laying off workforces, upping the price of gaming-capable headsets, and steering into a different direction with the next headset all signal to me that Meta might be looking to take a different approach than attracting the mainstream gaming market.
Valve certainly benefits from that, but with a $1,059 price on the Steam Frame, will it be able to attract the same sort of market as Meta's super affordable Quest devices?
Meta Connect takes place between September 23-24 this year, so official word isn't too far away.
For more on VR, check out the best Meta Quest accessories.
