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Xreal One Pro
The high price remains an obstacle, but the OLED panel and spatial computing tech lend it appeal
The original Xreal One AR glasses impressed us back at the start of the year (see issue 366, p70), and I’ve been eagerly waiting to try out the enhanced Pro version. Now it’s finally here, I’m delighted to say it’s worth the wait; it might even be worth the steep asking price.
If you’re not familiar with AR glasses, the idea is simple: using a standard USB-C cable, you can connect them to almost any smartphone, laptop or computer, and either extend or duplicate the device’s display onto the inside of the lenses. The result is a huge, high-quality virtual screen that’s completely private to you. I love this technology for long trips on trains and planes, as it allows me to turn the phone in my pocket into a personal movie projector – but no matter where you wear them, AR glasses open up a whole new world of entertainment and productivity.
The Xreal One Pros look similar to the original Xreal Ones, but the front is much flatter, with a sleek and subtle design. AR glasses are usually bulky, conspicuous things – on long-haul flights, I’m accustomed to getting double-takes when I’m wearing my larger-than-life techno specs, but nobody has yet batted an eye at the Xreal One Pros – and while they’re slightly heavier than the regular Ones, their premium construction feels great to wear for hours.
The other big difference becomes obvious once you put them on. Thanks to a new Sony micro-OLED display, the Xreal One Pro really showcases the visual capabilities of the company’s custom-designed X1 processor. It’s the best picture quality I’ve seen from any AR hardware, with supreme clarity and colour.
As a bonus, the image is also noticeably bigger than you’ll get with the regular Xreal Ones. Where those have a 50-degree field of vision, the Pros extend this to 57 degrees, giving you the equivalent of a 171in ultrawide (32:9) display, viewed from four metres away, with the resolution of two 1080p displays side by side. To be sure, that’s nowhere near the best in the business – the Meta Quest 3 goes up to a terrifically immersive 110 degrees – but in use I found myself perfectly happy with the scale and stability of the virtual screen.
On that note, the X1 chip provides three-axis head tracking while you’re wearing the glasses, so if you activate anchor mode, the display stays put wherever you’ve pinned it in virtual space, while you can freely look up, down and all around it. Alternatively, you can switch to follow mode, where the display is always central in your vision, or temporarily shunt the display up into the top corner, to keep it in view while interacting with the world around you.
No matter which mode I tried, I never saw any sign of fringing or edge blur, and the electrochromic lenses do a great job of shutting out unwanted intrusions from the outside world: you can adjust these from fully blacked-out theatre mode to clear mode, or pick a restful shade in between. Throw in a 120Hz refresh rate for perfectly smooth tracking and on-screen action, and it’s an amazing experience for games, movies or work. If you’re not worried about disturbing the person next to you, you can even enjoy surprisingly powerful sound from the tiny Bose speakers built into the arms.
The glasses come with very little in the way of accessories – just a cable, a set of nose pads and a protective case – but you can optionally add on the £99 Xreal Eye camera, which clips onto the front of the nose bridge. This lets you capture 12MP stills and 1080p video from a first-person perspective while you’re using the glasses; it’s a fun idea, and it can produce some good-looking images, but it struggles in low light. The camera also increases the motion sensitivity to six degrees of freedom, tracking lateral movement as well as rotation, but I didn’t notice that this had much effect.
In theory this technology should open up the next upgrade to Xreal’s spatial computing experience, but since that’s not here yet I’d recommend you save the money for now.
Although the Xreal One Pro glasses are extremely impressive, the price is hard to justify. For anyone just wanting a handy personal display for their Steam Deck, or an expansive movie experience in a confined space – which is probably most potential buyers, to be honest – the Xreal One will do a fine job for £130 less. Indeed, there are decent options at far cheaper prices, such as the RayNeo Air 3s (see issue 369, p73), currently available on import for around £220 inc VAT.
But the Xreal One Pro glasses aren’t really aimed at that market: they represent a generational leap forward in display technology, and in the AR user experience. If you’re someone who’s regularly on the go and demands a premium display to use in place of a laptop screen or portable monitor, the One Pro is an unbeatable investment that should keep you happy for a very long time.
Viture Luma Pro
Impressive clarity and mesmerising colour packed into a sleek pair of specs, but beware the import costs
When it comes to choosing a pair of AR glasses, wearability, picture quality and versatility all come into play – and Viture’s latest specs excel in all three regards. It’s true that Xreal has a technical advantage with the X1 chip built directly into its One Pro glasses (see opposite), but if you’re looking for a comfortable viewing experience with great picture quality, the Luma Pro is absolutely worth considering.
In the US, the Luma Pro costs $499, the same as the standard Xreal One glasses. However, Viture doesn’t have a UK distributor, so while you can order these glasses online, you’ll need to pay for international shipping plus VAT and import fees, which together push the price close to £500.
Even at that price, the Luma Pro is a very likeable piece of kit. The frames are comfortable and stylish, and the display is stunning. To understand what makes it so special, I need to tell you about the technology behind the Viture Luma Pro. It starts with Sony’s micro-OLED display; this is a little more power-efficient than previous AR displays, so you’ll get more battery life out of whichever device you plug these into.
A bigger deal is the custom tweaks Viture has applied to make the image look a lot sharper than its 1200p resolution would imply; the firm refers to it as “4K-like”. This is achieved using telescope-inspired optics to minimise distortion, with a camera-grade anti-reflective coating has also been applied to eliminate glare.
The result is a gloriously crisp picture, with vivid colour and an equivalent screen size of 152in that makes games and movies look spectacular. The sharp display makes these glasses unusually good for text-based productivity applications, too, for those who want to work on the big screen. There’s a very welcome myopia adjustment, although, to avoid distortion, the glasses can only compensate up to -4 dioptres, so those with stronger prescriptions might not be able to take advantage.
The design of the frames is just as thoughtful. The familiar faux-Wayfarer design is getting more and more subtle by the generation. You still wouldn’t mistake these for regular shades, with their big “birdbath” optical units sitting behind the lenses, but slight refinements in the size and shape take us another small step towards a truly stylish design. I even rather enjoy the customisable lighting effects along the arms: normally, I find RGB pretty cringe, but this is so tastefully done I can’t help but appreciate it.
It’s not all about looks, though: Viture has clearly thought about practicalities and ergonomics. Three sets of magnetic nose pads are supplied in the box, so you can easily snap on the ones that set the glasses at the best height for your eyes, and the arms can be set at different angles for just the right wearability. The soft-touch plastic that sits over the ears makes these impressively comfortable over many hours of wearing, on long flights or through a whole day at work.
Inevitably, there are weaknesses. For one – as is pretty inevitable with AR glasses – the audio is lacking. The Harman-branded sound system may suggest an audiophile experience, but at the end of the day any speakers that come built into a pair of glasses are going to be tiny. At maximum volume the sound is easily drowned out by background noise – and when you’re somewhere quiet enough to properly hear them, they’re pretty tinny. You’ll want to pair some decent headphones to properly enjoy games and movies.
The other big issue is to do with the software. Unlike Xreal, which relies a lot on its home-grown X1 silicon, Viture likes to implement its features in software. This might mean missing out on certain optimisations, but it gives you a lot more flexibility, and the Luma Pro offers some tricks that the Xreal glasses simply can’t match, such as simulating a triple-stacked vertical display array, or turning 2D content into 3D. I’m impressed by how well these features work, and I also like the way you can place a virtual screen in mid-air next to a physical desktop monitor or laptop display to seamlessly extend your workspace.
The catch is that not all the Luma Pro’s promised features are up and running just yet. For example, the glasses have a built-in camera that can be used both for taking photos and for six-degrees-of-freedom motion tracking, so that virtual windows can be locked to any location in space. That’s the idea, anyway – but those features aren’t yet enabled, so who knows how well they’ll work?
Yet despite those question marks, the Viture Luma Pro specs are among the best AR glasses you can buy. The Xreal One Pro glasses offer a bigger screen, a wider field of vision and an anchor mode that works really well, but the Luma Pros are cheaper, even with import costs – especially since the camera is built in. Just going by the software capabilities that are working already, it’s an admirably versatile partner for a spatial computing world, and the picture quality is superb, no matter what device you plug them into.