Whilst we still don’t have the Apple Vision Pro here in Australia, I’ve always thought that more traditional glasses were a better formfactor for a screen on your face, so I was extremely eager to try out the XREAL Air 2 Pro as I’ve been following the XREAL brand for a few years now.
Immediately, the unboxing experience was super premium. In the box, you get a case for your glasses, three different sized nosepads, a little lens attachment that can be placed with your own lens, a darker shade for the glasses (which we’ll get into in a sec) as well as a cleaning cloth.
As far as customisation on the actual glasses, you can obviously change out the nosepads, but you can also adjust between three different angles at the handles to try and get the most straight on view to find the sweet spot for the lenses.
At only 75 grams on weight, the XREAL Air 2 Pro is an extremely comfortable pair of AR glasses. I wear glasses day to day, so honestly, it wasn’t any different to me in terms of wearing something on my face with no noticeable pressure on my nose or sides of my head.
The one difference with the Air 2 Pro versus the standard Air 2 is that you can change the dimming level electronically between three different levels. 0% is essentially seeing the entire world around you with the screen just floating there, 35% is a bit of dimming and 100% is totally blacked out. You then get a pair of blacked out snap on shades that can also go in front of the glasses to totally black out the glasses.
The actual displays in the lenses are Micro-OLED with 500 nits of peak brightness and I was really impressed with the brightness as well as how vivid the colours were when playing games or watching movies through the lenses. It takes a little bit of time to get the sweet spot, otherwise you’ll find that part of the image will be cut off and there’s maybe the slightest bit of blurring at the edges, but for the most part, I was really impressed with the image.
The speakers have been updated from the original mode, with a speaker near your ears on each side that provides clarity and loudness without being heard from those around you. Obviously, there’s a tiny bit of leakage at the top volume, but nowhere near what you hear inside the glasses.
There’s two buttons on the handle of the glasses which can control brightness of the actual image, volume as well as activating 3D mode if that’s something you wanted to test out.
If you’re just using the glasses without the Beam (which we’ll get into later), you basically can air cast at up to 130-inches with a 120hz refresh rate. This is done by just plugging the glasses directly into a device such as your iPhone 15 Pro, an Android device, a PC handheld such as an ASUS ROG Ally or your MacBook Pro.
The glasses will essentially use the battery from whichever device it’s plugged into and the screen will follow you based on the direction that you’re looking in which will be fine for most people. You can also use the Nebula app on your computer to create anywhere from one to three virtual displays if you want to use the glasses for productivity.
If you want to get ultimate functionality with your XREAL glasses, you can get the Beam which is part portable charger/part multimedia device. Whilst connected, you’ll get about 3.5 hours of battery life and whilst connected, you can either use the in-built apps for Netflix and Prime Video, or use AirPlay/Cast from your phone or just use the 32gb of storage to load it up with movies.
Whilst using the Beam, your viewing options go up dramatically. You can use a Smooth Follow mode which will more smoothly following where you look, but you can also control the size of the display up to 330-inches. There’s also a Body Anchor mode which will allow you to basically lock the screen to one place, so maybe next to your TV or an external monitor, and then there’s a Sideview mode which allows you to place a 20-inch screen in one of four corners whilst you’re working on something in front of you.
I don’t think the Beam is super essential if you’ve got an iPhone 15 or a USB-C compatible device that you’ll always have with you, but it is a super cool piece of tech, and the way XREAL has built the device is to be commended.
I also had the chance to test the XREAL Gaming Hub, which essentially allows you to charge the device whilst connected to your glasses, so think of it as a double adaptor of sorts that allows you to keep your glasses charged up as well as the device connected.
I used this with the likes of my AYANEO 2, ASUS ROG Ally and iPhone 15 Pro and it worked well, although just be aware that my ASUS ROG Ally couldn’t go into the 30w turbo mode which didn’t really surprise me as it’s fussy at the best of times.
The XREAL Air 2 Pro is a fantastic device. The same questions remain about where most people will use this, but I’ve really enjoyed using it in bed with a portable console and I could definitely see it being used for day to day productivity or on long-haul flights.
