Xreal is opening preorders for its newest era of augmented actuality glasses, the Xreal Air 2 and Air 2 Professional, for a November launch within the US, UK, Germany, France, and Italy. The glasses are a follow-up to the first-generation Air glasses launched final yr beneath the corporate’s former identify Nreal. Beginning at $399, they plug into telephones, computer systems, and a wide range of gaming units to venture a show by a pair of sun shades.
The Air 2 glasses are an iterative improve from the unique $379 Air. They use Micro OLED shows to venture a 1920 x 1080 pixel show in entrance of your eyes, the identical decision as the unique Air. However they promise a brighter picture than their predecessors (500 nits, in comparison with 400 nits on the Air) and are about 10 p.c thinner and lighter than the first-gen model, which weighed 79 grams. (That makes them a bit heavier than the roughly 50-gram Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which function cameras however no built-in show.) Xreal says it’s improved the temple and nostril pads to supply a extra snug match as properly, and it guarantees it’s redesigned the audio system to pipe sound extra straight into your ears with out leaking it to the remainder of the room.
The Air 2 Professional, which begins at $449, provides you with one huge additional function: dimming management, an possibility that makes use of electrochromatic glass to regulate how a lot mild is allowed by the glasses, starting from full transparency to a blackout tint. Each fashions are purported to ship in mid-to-late November within the US and UK and seem in the remainder of the European market in December. They’ve already launched in China and Japan.
In contrast to many augmented actuality glasses, together with Xreal’s first-generation Light glasses, the Air 2 and Air 2 Professional don’t function cameras that may monitor or report a consumer’s environment. Meaning they will’t do some issues folks usually affiliate with AR glasses, like make digital objects stick with partitions or flooring. Fairly than closely mixing the bodily and digital, they’re designed to be used as an enormous display screen that may float in entrance of your face. Whereas that is far from a new concept, Xreal’s tackle it’s unusually svelte, straightforward to make use of, and (by AR glasses requirements) fairly normal-looking. It additionally provides you an actual view of the skin world as a substitute of a passthrough video feed like Apple or Meta. The draw back is that even with that bolstered brightness, you’ll sometimes get some picture transparency in something however a really darkish room.
The Air 2 makes use of a USB-C cable with USB-C or HDMI output to attach with a variety of supported units. Xreal touts help for the Valve Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Nintendo Change alongside Xbox and PlayStation consoles, iOS and Android units, and PCs and Macs. (That lengthy checklist is sensible because it’s essentially an exterior monitor — it is best to be capable to plug these into nearly something!) Patrons can select from graphite grey or carmine purple glasses and add an non-compulsory adhesive pores and skin out there in six colours: navy blue, royal blue, “verdigris,” “dale dogwood,” “jonquil,” and “dartmouth inexperienced.”