Xreal’s new One Pro AR glasses are surprisingly good
It’s been a while since I’ve tried a pair of personal cinema-style AR glasses given their propensity to be rubbish. The field of view is often too restrictive, they’re often too low-res and they’re often prone to giving me eyestrain headaches. But after I tried on Xreal’s new One Pro glasses at CES 2025, I was suitably impressed as the company's latest addresses all of those gripes and plenty more.
Xreal turned up in Las Vegas to show off the One Pro, which is a marginal improvement on the Xreal One that debuted, and quickly sold out, a month ago. Both pairs are equipped with the company’s first in-house spatial computing chip, delivering less blur, no flicker and a 120Hz refresh rate. They’re also equipped with Bose-branded sound, not that I was able to test their quality in a crowded casino ballroom. The difference between the two comes down to slightly better optics.
The point of the new X1 chip is to ensure the glasses can do all the spatial brainwork without needing to rely on whatever device you’re hooked up to. That enables you to have ultra-wide displays that could be used to give yourself a mega desktop if you need to get some serious work done. Or, if you want to pin a games console in one place in your virtual environment, you can now do that even if you’re wired up to something low power. Speaking of, I got to try two different demos, the first playing Super Mario Odyssey on a Switch, and then one with an ultra-wide desktop display on a laptop.
On one hand, these glasses remain bound by the same constraint every other pair of these devices have ( and will always have). You’re trying to trick your eyes into thinking two small screens close to your eyes are actually one massive screen that’s a lot further away. Your eyes are, however, smarter than that, and it’s rare that I’ve been able to view the illusion as its creators intended. But, mercifully, the resolution, brightness, low latency and broad field of vision all help to sell the trick here in a way that worked better than I have ever experienced.
In fact, I got quite lost playing Odyssey, not realizing that I’d been playing for five or more minutes as my eyes didn’t put up their usual protest. Hell, the fact I just mindlessly got on with it and it never occurred to me to stop to give my eyes a rest was the first sign these were a cut above. When I got to the desktop and was able to comfortably read the text on the screen (even the tiny titles in browser tabs), it felt revelatory. Look, this is table stakes for a device like this, but the fact I managed to use it comfortably speaks volumes.
I’ll reserve full judgment until I’ve had the chance to put these through their paces properly but, right now, I’m impressed. The Xreal One will be back in stock shortly, while the One Pro should begin shipping in March 2025.
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© Photo by Daniel Cooper
