Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
Perching a pair of tethered glasses over my own lenses in an office in midtown New York, I see a familiar sight: Floating in front of me is a widescreen Mac monitor. It's just there, hovering in space. I move my head around to take in its size. Ironically, I'm not using a Vision Pro headset to do this. Instead, I'm wearing Xreal's newest glasses, which can cast larger displays and pin them in space, and it works with any device -- laptop, phone, game console -- that can output video via USB-C.
While Meta's Orion project promises widescreen AR glasses in years to come, and Snap's Spectacles play with 3D experiences on battery-powered glasses, there is currently a wave of smart glasses that do increasingly impressive things at lower prices. There are audio/camera glasses with emerging AI assistants, like Meta's Ray-Bans, and there are a bunch of improving display glasses like the ones Xreal's been making for years. But the new Xreal One glasses' extra display-orienting tricks make them feel even more like precursors for AR glasses to come.
The widescreen mode for PCs, for instance, is really good. In fact, I used them at home with my own MacBook to write this story. I saw all my open windows spread around me on a slightly curved virtual monitor. My field of view wasn't wide enough to see it all, but I was able to focus on the window I want and turn my head to see the rest -- no Apple Vision Pro or preloaded software necessary.
How do they do this? The Xreal One and Xreal One Pro glasses -- coming Dec. 9 and early next year, respectively -- have a custom chip --the X1, made by Xreal -- that can keep images fixed in space as you turn your head. These new glasses also have enhanced audio by Bose, a 50- or 57-degree field of view and optional AI-ready snap-in cameras. The Xreal One sounds smarter than Xreal's previous smart glasses -- and yes, that's exactly the idea.
I got into VR headsets to get work done this year, and I started wearing smart glasses for various reasons: ambient audio, FOV cameras or, in the case of Xreal and others, tiny wearable displays. But display glasses haven't been as good as VR headsets because of their more limited field of view and the way they "glue" your display to your eyes versus pinning the display in space so you can still move your head around and not feel like your whole monitor is drifting with you.
I've used the Vision Pro headset a lot more to cast virtual monitors to get my work done, but the Xreal One is really good at doing that, too. It feels close enough that I'd prefer to just wear the glasses, (maybe I will, once I get prescription inserts for them at least).
Smart glasses are ready to start working better with the devices you already have, and Xreal's newest display glasses are making gradual moves. But, chatting with Xreal's founder and CEO Chi Xu about his company's new glasses and where things are heading next, these seemingly straightforward display glasses are about to start flexing into some smarter territories: AI, more display customization and a custom chip that could be the beginning of building a better bridge with other devices.
"We made these glasses with 80% of the VST [video see-through] experience, but at only 20% of their cost in terms of price, weight, everything," Chi says in an exclusive interview with me for CNET. "One of the biggest breakthroughs we had was this extra chip. We thought, how can we actually enable this kind of universal 3DOF (three degrees of freedom) capability on any kind of hosting devices? There's no existing solution for that, so we had to build something from scratch."
At first, Xreal's new glasses felt like iterations. As I plugged them into my iPhone, it was hard to say I saw the beginning of something new. It's familiar: a big-screen showing of The Last Jedi floated in front of me. When I plugged it into a Steam Deck, I was able to play games on a big beautiful display. And then, connecting to a laptop, I saw a curved monitor spread around me, similar to what I've tried in VR or on a conceptual, experimental AR laptop earlier this year that was powered by Xreal's last-gen glasses.
But I'm doing this with just one pair of glasses, and it all looks and feels better than ever before. Also, these glasses range from just $500 to $600. Sometimes, I feel like I've slipped into AR glasses or a portable pair of mixed reality goggles. Xreal's hardware is ready to go into AR, but for the moment, they're thriving as great portable displays for anything and improving with every step.
The micro-OLED displays now have larger fields of view, 50 and 57 degrees, respectively, with 1080p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 600 or 700 nits of brightness. The Bose-powered audio is better. But the best and subtlest part is how displays can gradually move with you or stay fixed in one place. Xreal previously required a separate piece of hardware to get that anchored display to work, the Beam or Beam Pro; now, it's built into the glasses and works with anything -- from PCs and Macs to Steam Decks, tablets and phones.
There are more on-device customizations, too. A pop-up menu controls the virtual screen size (from 117 inches to 191 inches), the virtual distance of the display (4 to 10 meters) and engages an ultrawide mode of 244 inches that works with PCs and Macs. The settings require tapping through menus with a button and volume rocker buttons that also control the glasses' dimming function, which works at three levels like Xreal's previous Air 2 Pro glasses. The menus almost make these glasses feel like a smart TV for your face.
The field of view still isn't as big as Meta's prototype Orion glasses (which have a 70 degree field of view), and the viewing area is still smaller than VR headsets (which generally have 90 degrees or better). But Chi sees improvements coming and acknowledges the perfect size isn't quite here yet.
"We definitely can get past 70, even 80 [degrees field of view] in the near future," Chi says. "We're talking about the next couple of years, we will see that. And especially for spatial computing, you need to at least 70 degrees to have a really decent kind of experience. But for spatial display glasses, 50, 57 is pretty nice."
Xreal's One glasses still use angled, prism-like "birdbath" lenses that float the displays over your world but still add thickness. The One Pro thins the prism lens down to something flatter, but it's still a chunk that juts from the inner frame and makes perching the glasses on your face feel less flat than regular glasses or Meta's Ray-Bans. "If you want to replace glasses you're wearing today, we're probably seeing 5 to 10 years still," Chi says. "But, you know, I think for now, if you really want to have a sunglasses-type of device you carry this with you all the time, I think this one is pretty good."
The Xreal One and One Pro glasses don't come with cameras onboard, but one is being sold separately: a small single camera that snaps in right under the nose bridge, looking out at the world. This camera is made for future AI hook-ins (think Meta's Ray-Bans, or how Snap's developer-focused AR Spectacles fold in some OpenAI features).
Camera-driven AI is a hot topic now, and companies like Apple and Google are already experimenting with it on phones. Chi says it's a big part of Xreal's future plans, too.
"AI is going to be a big complement to AR glasses going forward," says Chi. "It's going to make AR glasses more efficient in terms of interface. On the other hand, if you look 5 to10 years [from now], AR glasses are probably the best platform for AI to take off ... to see the world you're seeing, and also get feedback."
Xreal's original product, the Nreal Light, was actually designed as a pair of portable AR glasses way back when the Magic Leap One was showing off what the concept of AR could be: The glasses projected 3D imagery and tracked motion in a room using its cameras. Since then, Xreal has shifted to more practical territory, focusing mostly on smart displays. But there are clear signs where these glasses -- particularly the Xreal One -- could slowly be adding AR-type features.
Doing that will also mean coming up with new ideas for input. Mixed reality and AR glasses, from Apple's Vision Pro, Meta Quest headsets, Snap Spectacles and Meta's Orion concept glasses, have hand tracking. The Vision Pro and Orion also have eye tracking, and Meta's Orion has its own unique EMG wristband for hand gestures using neural input sensing, too. Xreal's glasses don't have inputs at all yet.
Xreal is working on ideas in the input department, but Chi doesn't feel all these new inputs are perfect yet. "We're transitioning from the 2D interaction to 3D interaction, and that is more complicated," he says. "It is actually getting less efficient. So the goal is not coming up with different types of interaction tools, it is coming up with a system where you feel like this is more intuitive and also efficient. We're still working on that, and we're not working on that alone. We're working with different kinds of partners. Hopefully, in the near future, we'll come up with some really nice solutions."
Chi also knows it'll be a long road and the company's glasses are still going to be temporary-use, tethered products for now. And, unlike Meta's prototype, extremely expensive, thinner-lensed Orion glasses, which it demonstrated earlier this year, or Snap's experimental Spectacles AR glasses for developers, Xreal's glasses are made to be used right now. But future versions could be transformed into AR glasses, piece by piece, right before our eyes. Xreal sees its new custom X1 chip as part of that transition over time.
"It is a very important pivoting point. Going forward, there's going to be more and more kind of computation off the glasses," Chi says. "Right now, we have 3DOF [tracking] operating here; maybe later, 6DOF and hand gesture, and maybe even some of the AI capability will happen here [on the chip], and eventually, you will realize you can actually cut off this wire. That's the point."
Until then, the Xreal One and One Pro are improvements on an already good product. They're tethered, yes, but they're better portable displays that work with all the things I already use, and I can do work with them better already. It makes me want to carry them around with me... and while AR glasses still remain a work in progress for everyone, that's no small thing.
