I’ve always been a bit skeptical of smart glasses and mixed reality headsets. It’s not hard to find the utility of something like a Meta Quest in gaming, but Apple’s Vision Pro, for example, has never appealed to me in the slightest. Ahead of its first pair of Android XR glasses, though, I’ve spent some time with the XREAL One Pro and two things have become immediately clear – this is the hardware that could make Android XR shine, and XREAL will benefit greatly from Android XR.
If you’re unfamiliar with XREAL, I actually can’t blame you one bit. I always knew about this company, but the idea of glasses that put a screen in front of my face never sounded particularly worthwhile to me. But when XREAL mentioned it would adopt Android XR, I just had to give this tech a shot.
So, lately, I’ve been using XREAL One Pro, plugged into either a Galaxy Z Fold 7, MacBook, or a Redmagic Astra 2 tablet. The idea is really that simple. Whatever you’re doing, just plug it into the glasses and see it pop up on a 157-inch display (customizable) in front of your face. Initially, I wasn’t all that sure I’d find it useful, but a clear use case did immediately come up – airplanes.
Having a giant screen that floats in front of you and follows your movements is just so perfect in that context. It sure beats a seatback screen, and wearing them for a few hours on a flight is pretty comfortable too.
