XREAL Air 2 Pro AR Glasses Bundle

So I had to choose between two brands of glasses, and the other one started with a “V”. And after some research and extensive thinking, I chose these XREAL Air 2 Pros bundled with the Beam. And so far so good. It’s definitely good tech and well made, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

From all the reviews I’ve read it seems that these are made for a handful of specific head sizes and shapes. Fortunately mine made the cut, but just barely. It’s fairly comfortable but I have to keep it a tiny bit forward off of my face to see the full screen well and clearly.

As of now if I have it too close to my face, sort of like some normal sunglasses, I can’t see a sliver of the lower part of the screen. Which isn’t critical just a little annoying. But pulling it slightly forward fixes that, so basically I just have to have it perfectly spaced. The lenses also adjust to 3 different angles which is nice, but I do wish they also had a micro adjustment for the distance on the angled glass inside the glasses.

The weight isn’t that bad, at least nothing worth mentioning, they’re comfortable glasses considering there’s a piece of tech on your face that shows a large screen. Nothing like the immersive quality of VR glasses which I also have, but those are large and bulky and not practical in an outside setting nor is it comfortable for long periods of time. As far as browsing the net, your phone, watching movies these glasses are very comfortable.

A lot of people seem to get these for their Switch gaming system, but I mostly use it for viewing YouTube videos and streaming movies from my phone. Which I have the iPhone 15 Pro Max with the USB-C port which works flawlessly with these glasses plugged in directly.

I also opted to get this with the Beam because I want the smooth stabilization mode that you can only get with connecting it to the Beam, so that bumpy rides in vehicles or a plane keep the screen stable. As of now you can only adjust the size of the screen with the Beam. I wish you could make adjustments like moving the screen up or down, which for now you can’t. Hopefully there could be an update for this.

The open ear audio is pretty good actually and you can even listen to audio through earbuds or headphones if needed. I also opted for the Air 2 Pro so that I won’t need to mess with the lens covers because they are a slight hassle taking them off and on, I just use them to protect the glasses when in the case. The one button darkness adjustment is really convenient.

There’s really not much to complain about, it’s just connecting with different stuff like the desktop computer or gaming system (other than a Switch) is a little frustrating and can need several different attachments to get it working correctly, or just to work with keeping everything charged and stay connected for a long period of time. But since I don’t use these glasses for those devices I’m perfectly happy with just using these with my phone.

The wireless cast works ok, you just have to have a really good signal. Otherwise it’s not bad. I had an iPhone 14 (lighting port) prior to my 15 and that was really frustrating with all the attachments I needed and a slow connection because I had to use my WiFi to cast it to the Beam and it would sometimes lag.

I contemplated getting a Galaxy S23 since that’s the phone these work best with and has more options, especially with the DeX app that comes with the Galaxy, which gives you an actual PC desktop on the XREAL screen just by using your phone. But I went with the iPhone 15 because I have all my specific apps already set up on my iPhone and use mostly iOS stuff and don’t really need a desktop. I mainly use this for videos and streaming services.

I feel bad for giving these 4 stars because these glasses are really well made and serves it’s purpose. But for the price, I just wish it had a little more customizable adjustments to the fit and screen positioning, otherwise these are great and still happy I got them.

Most of my problems center around the Beam specifically, and I find the gripes I have around the glasses themselves to be a lot fewer and more forgivable, so I’ll complain about the glasses first.

The electrochromic dimming is a fluff feature. It works, but it doesn’t work as well as the lens cap, and even the caps aren’t fully opaque. That’s fine; just don’t buy the pro variant and save some money. The glasses have two independent microLED displays, which means they should actually be capable of stereoscopic output…but they aren’t. I’m going to assume this is either due to a lack of complex optics to handle IPD variance and the like, rather than an attempt to upsell to something that does support stereoscopy. Also, the edges of the screen are consistently hard to see and as a result really not suited for text. Limitation of the tech, I’m going to assume.

That’s really it for the glasses, so I won’t discourage anyone from considering the glasses by themselves for hooking up to a desktop or laptop. The Beam’s a bit of a big deal for connecting to most other things, so… well it’s a doozy.

The Beam is the sort of device that practically overheats because it’s too cold. The best advice I could give there is to use a phone chiller and just ignore how you’re stuck compensating for clear manufacturing and hardware selection issues. I’ve seen enough devices play around in that sort of thermal range under normal operation (nearly too hot to hold at times) and suddenly require reflowing to even function again, and I’m not eager to find out if this is one of those devices. Either way, it’s incredibly bad for this part alone.

The Beam is required for connecting a Switch, and for adjusting how apparently large/distant the virtual display is. It also introduces a really awkward moire pattern and just all sorts of other visual flaws associated with moving a virtual display around so that it doesn’t line up with the actual pixels in the displays in the glasses. This is not something you’ll need to deal with at all if you can connect the glasses directly to something, though you also won’t be able to redefine the display area.

The Beam is required for Miracast and Google Cast. Those are actually pretty decent when the source is a phone, but lag-related issues hurt perceived quality, and the Beam heats up quite a lot while handling either form of display streaming. Btw, aside from some oddball phones, you’ll probably need to keep your phone’s display on constantly while streaming, which sorta defeats the purpose here. The latter is not a problem with the Beam, but I really can’t recommend it for this use case unless you have a unicorn of a personal setup that just works here.

The Beam seems incapable of charging while receiving a video signal over USB, but really the battery life isn’t terrible here. 3-5 hours isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s about as long as I can stand to fiddle with this in one go anyway.

Alright, I front-loaded the gripes, but I do still want to say at least something positive about the glasses: they’re not perfect, but still fantastic in a lot of 3D games. I’ve caught myself trying to look around in Xenoblade, for instance, only to remember that I’m gonna need to pan the camera normally because it’s not a VR situation on either end of the cable. But this isn’t the virtual giant TV I was and you might be looking for, and I’m not even sure it exists yet. We may just be waiting another decade on stuff like this to be fully baked and ready.