Last year I got my hands on Apple Vision Pro and after a day of studying its capabilities, I was frankly tired of it. Yes, it’s beautiful. But it’s completely inconvenient to use: it’s heavy, there’s not much software, it’s a toy for tech geeks who can afford to shell out several hundred thousand rubles for it.
Today nothing has changed – apple helmet, still just as cumbersome and incomprehensibleremains a high-tech toy. Therefore, for the New Year, I gave myself a curious device, Xreal Air 2 Pro, which is “extended reality” glasses.
This device looks like sunglasses. It weighs a little heavier than regular sunglasses. It does not have any heavy additional fasteners or control units. The Xreal Air 2 Pro doesn’t even have its own battery. The trick of these glasses is different.
The Xreal Air 2 Pro are essentially portable screen in front of your eyes. Just connect these glasses to any device, be it a smartphone, game console, PC, or even a TV set-top box, and watch movies or play on a big screen with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which no one else can see except you doesn’t see.
No drivers, dancing with a tambourine, or compatibility problems. You just always have a huge monitor in your pocket that doesn’t need separate power and connects via a USB-C cable to any source. And this monitor looks like ordinary sunglasses from the outside.
Below are my impressions after two days of using the Xreal Air 2 Pro, briefly. A full review will be a little later, if you have questions about this device, feel free to ask in the comments, I’ll try to check and answer.
What they look like
Hard case, glasses, cable – nothing else is needed.
Xreal Air 2 Pro is really light, weighing 76 grams. You can wear them for hours: the ears and bridge of the nose do not hurt, and the temples do not press. I spent three hours in these glasses without taking them off, everything was very comfortable.
The set includes three nasal bridges of different sizes; choosing the right one is very important – the quality of the image before your eyes will depend on it. The earpiece of size S suited me, with it the picture is as clear as possible and you can even read small text.
The nose pads are easy to change.
With glasses, you can even adjust the tilt of the lenses using the arms. The arms have three tilt positions, but they move very tightly and with a terrible crunch, as if something is breaking.
On the right arm there is a double rocker, which is responsible for changing the volume and brightness. To switch between these parameters, hold the rocker on the side closest to your ear and hold it until a beep sounds.
The included fabric-braided USB-C cable looks reliable, but is not too long. Instead, you can use any of your own, if desired.
How they work
The screens are installed at the top of the frame, and the eyes look at them through an optical system.
The main feature of Xreal Air 2 Pro really turned out to be the ease with which the glasses connect and work with any devices. I connected them to:
iPhone 15 Pro
Steam Deck
Asus Rog Ally X
MacBook Pro
Xreal Air 2 Pro works with all these devices without any problems or additional settings. Moreover, what I liked most about working with these glasses was on my MacBook, where you can set up two or three virtual screens at once, fixed in space. However, for this functionality you need to install a special Nebula application.
When I connected for the first time, Nebula even updated something in the glasses.
Without the help of the Nebula application, the screen is constantly in front of your eyes and is not fixed in any way, that is, if you rotate your head, the screen rotates with it. For some users this causes dizziness and even nausea, but for me it’s okay.
Nebula is available for smartphones on Android, for Mac and in beta version for Windows. This application is not available for iPhones yet.
Having connected the Xreal Air 2 Pro to the Asus Rog Ally X, I got the most out of it, playing the new “Indiana Jones” while lying on the bed and not disturbing anyone, but on a large and bright screen that was only in front of my eyes. This alone can be considered a successful purchase of glasses.
Xreal Air 2 Pro has built-in speakers, which are quite enough. Yes, they are not too bassy, but they are normal for gaming sessions. The main thing is that only you can hear the sound, while others around you can hear practically nothing.
Obvious advantages
They really look like simple glasses.
Designrepeating ordinary sunglasses. Wearing the Xreal Air 2 Pro won’t make you look like a killer robot from the future, and people won’t notice you at all.
Light weight allows you to take these glasses with you anywhere and use them anywhere without attracting attention.
No battery. The glasses do not need to be charged, which means there is no need to carry additional wires with you.
Screens from Sony with excellent brightness and resolution, they are pleasant to look at. Your eyes don’t get any more tired than if you look at a regular monitor in front of you on the table.
Ease of use. I plugged in the cable and got a juicy picture before my eyes. Just delight, nothing more is needed.
Price. I was lucky to buy these glasses for 29,990 rubles on Avito, with their average cost being 40-44 thousand rubles.
First cons
A great companion to portable consoles.
Nebula application, which allows you to create virtual windows, does not work with Asus Rog Ally. Digging a little deeper, I found many complaints about problems with the glasses working with MSI video cards. So far it looks like Xreal Air 2 Pro is designed to work with Nvidia cards.
For the same reason Failed to set 3D modeto watch a movie with Rog Ally X running Windows. You might be able to do this on a MacBook, because the glasses work great there in conjunction with the Nebula application.
Despite setting the glasses as correctly as possible (in terms of distance and viewing angle for my eyes), the image is slightly blurred in the corners. That is, I don’t see the same cross for closing the window clearly. In games this is not a problem, but when working with a browser and texts, you either need to get used to it or come to terms with it.
That’s where the cons end for now.
Intermediate impression
So far I like it. Let’s study further.
So far I’m more likely to like the Xreal Air 2 Pro than not. I have already decided for myself that the main scenario for using these glasses will be in combination with the portable Rog Ally X for games with maximum comfort anywhere, even on the road, even in a cafe, even in the park in the summer, even at home on the couch.
I like the look of the glasses, I like that the Pro version has photochromic lenses with three degrees of darkening, it’s all convenient and allows you to use the glasses in any lighting.
Yes, this is not a full-fledged replacement for the Apple Vision Pro in terms of immersion in virtual reality, but given the wider possibilities of using the Xreal Air 2 Pro, this Apple helmet, for me personally, is frankly inferior. And if you also compare the prices of these devices…
Yes, you can purchase additional “brains” in the form of an Xreal Beam device for these glasses to be able to fix the screen in space and use the picture-in-picture function, for example. But for now I don’t need it, maybe I’ll think about buying it later, considering that this “beam” costs about 18,000 rubles.
These are the first impressions. I will not recommend these glasses for purchase; first you need to fully understand their functionality. If you are interested in Xreal Air 2 Pro, don’t hesitate to ask, we’ll figure it out together.
Source: www.iphones.ru
