GoKawiilThe price of good displays that fit into eyeglass frames is going down, even if you might not find a need to use them. Display glasses like the ones Xreal makes aren't the same as Meta's smart glasses (at least, not yet): They're tethered by a cable to act like a mobile monitor for your devices and don't use AI services. Many of them don't have cameras onboard, either.
The strangely named new X By Xreal A01 Plus glasses, which I've been trying out this week, are lower-cost than Xreal's other glasses ($299, versus $449 and higher for the others). In exchange for the budget price, they drop a lot of the extras of Xreal's other glasses, which I actually love and use. There's no adjustable display sizing, no variable-tint front lenses to block out light, no pin-in-place display anchors, no widescreen modes or auto-transparency.
Instead, these glasses are simply plug-and-play USB-C micro OLED display glasses with 1080p resolution and a lightweight frame. Feature-wise, they're on par with the similarly priced TCL RayNeo Air 4 Pro glasses that I recently tested.
Scott Stein/CNET
However, the Xreals are better for me. The virtual field of view of the fixed-distance display is bigger (50 degrees versus 47 degrees), and the brightness level is higher (1,600 versus 1,200 nits). They're also lighter (62 grams versus 76 grams), so they rest really easily on my face, even with prescription lens inserts in. The adjustable nose pads feel good, too and, like TCL's glasses, the arms angle at three clickable positions to help adjust the screen position if you need it.
Another fun perk of Xreal's glasses is their swappable face plates, which offer extra looks. The mirrorshade sunglass front on my set snapped off easily, and I tried a fully opaque black visor to completely block outside light for movie watching.
The A01 Plus glasses with the front face plate snapped off, and another pair of shades I tried on them. You could wear these with no face plate at all, but it would look weird. Scott Stein/CNET
The downside, maybe, is that the front face plates feel pretty light and flimsy. But they work well enough in a pinch.
Another downside is that light blocking without a fully dark shade is a mixed bag. The good news, though, is that these Xreal glasses are significantly brighter than other models, so they'll more easily overpower a normally lit room.
Because the onboard displays use angled birdbath-style lenses (like the Xreal 1S) instead of the flatter lens on the One Pro (and Viture Beast), there's more glare reflected up from things like my brightly logoed T-shirt.
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