Xreal revamps entry AR glasses with lower price, better video

[NEW YORK] Xreal, an early pioneer in augmented-reality (AR) glasses, unveiled an upgraded entry-level product at CES, where smart eyewear will be a prevailing theme over the coming week.

The latest hardware, called the 1S, improves upon the previous Xreal One glasses by increasing the video resolution to 1200p from 1080p – allowing for a crisper, more detailed image, the company said in a statement on Sunday (Jan 4). The new glasses also have a blue finish, a change from the company’s standard black frames.

Notably, Xreal dropped the price relative to its previous model: The 1S costs US$449, compared with US$499 for the earlier version.

Xreal glasses put an expansive augmented reality, or AR, display in your field of view. They can be plugged into smartphones, laptops and certain gaming handhelds, meaning there’s no battery pack for users to worry about.

But compatibility with Nintendo’s Switch 2 has proven more tenuous, with the video game giant shutting out most unauthorised third-party devices from directly accessing the console’s video output.

To solve for this, Xreal is also introducing the US$99 Neo accessory, a two-in-one device that combines an external battery pack and video hub. Plugging Nintendo’s hybrid gaming machine into the Neo successfully passes the console’s feed to the 1S glasses, offering a private gaming session when the user is on the go. It’s possible that Nintendo could stamp out this workaround in the future, however. The Neo’s price will increase to US$119 after Feb 4, Xreal said.

Xreal’s glasses, which broadly resemble regular spectacles, lack the enclosed immersion and field of view that consumers can experience from headsets such as Apple’s Vision Pro and Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy XR. The overall video quality is not on the same level either. But the smaller form makes these more portable, and they cost markedly less.

Xreal is working with Alphabet’s Google on Project Aura, a standalone, more advanced set of AR glasses that run Google’s Android XR operating system with the help of a tethered battery pack. But more affordable glasses like the 1S remain an important part of Xreal’s product strategy.

Google has said the first smart glasses designed around its Gemini artificial intelligence assistant will ship this year, though there’s no official release date for the Project Aura product.

Apple is expected to unveil its first smart glasses as early as this year, Bloomberg has reported. BLOOMBERG