Xreal is arguably the biggest name in the AR smart glasses space, thanks in part to its partnership with Google, but it’s not alone in its efforts to make big virtual screens that blast stuff into your eyeballs—in fact, the video glasses room is becoming increasingly crowded.
Acer, for example, now wants a piece of Xreal’s AR glasses domain, launching its own competitor, the $500 Acer AR Glasses GR0. Like Xreal’s video glasses, the GR0 are tethered, meaning they need to be plugged into a separate device (your laptop or phone) for power, and they act as a big virtual screen on your face once they’re wired up. They’re also solid spec-wise. The Acer AR Glasses GR0 have a micro OLED screen with a 1080p resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate. Inside, the AR glasses can project a screen that’s equivalent to 172 inches, according to Acer, and they have three degrees of freedom (3DoF), meaning they can be used for stuff like spatial computing—pinning apps in 3D space. © Acer To be honest, they’re not much different than Xreal’s similarly priced AR glasses, but then again, neither are the ones made by RayNeo, an XR company owned by TCL. I’ve tried the RayNeo Air 4 Pro, for example, and the experience is as plug-and-play as you can get. They have HDR10, dual micro OLED displays, and a 120Hz refresh rate. They could be a little more comfortable, but in my testing, the virtual screen was bright, sharp, and more than you need for things like gaming or watching movies. Oh, and to top it all off, they cost just $299. That price, if I had to guess, has had some ripple effects. Xreal just recently launched a sub-brand called X by Xreal (XBX, for short, which feels like a copyright disaster waiting to happen), and the price of its first video glasses, the a01, mimics RayNeo’s Air 4 Pro. The smart glasses, which are coming to the U.S. in July, have a 1,600-nit micro OLED display with HDR10 and weigh 62g—lighter than the Xreal 1S, which weighs about 82g. The screen has a 50-degree field of view and is the equivalent of a 147-inch TV when you have it on your face. If customization is your thing, you can also swap the front plates of the a01 for fun.
