XREAL Aura impressions: very interesting AR glasses

At AWE, I was able to go hands-on a couple of times with XREAL Aura, which are probably the first consumer-oriented Android XR AR glasses. I think it is definitely a very interesting device. Keep reading to discover everything about this device, which is one of the most anticipated XR headsets of the year!

(Before we start, let me say a big thank you to Ralph Jodice Jr for having done his best to give me a proper demo of the headset)

XREAL Aura

XREAL Aura are augmented reality glasses developed by Chinese manufacturer XREAL. They are the first AR glasses running AndroidXR, and one of the first consumer-oriented AR glasses in general. They have been the result of a tight collaboration between XREAL, Google, and Qualcomm.

The glasses got a lot of interest from the community, especially for the form factor. Since the glasses work by being connected to a computational puck that does most of the heavyweight work, they can be small and lightweight. They look like bulky sunglasses, so you can also wear them outside your home.

At AWE, I had the opportunity to have two hands-on sessions with them, so in this article I can detail to you the impressions I had about this device. I did not have enough time to write a full review, but I could test it long enough to give you a detailed first impression about how good it is.

Specifications

These are the main specs of the device:

• Chipsets: Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite + XREAL X1S Spatial Coprocessor
• Optics technology: Birdbath
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200 per eye
• Framerate: up to 120Hz
• FOV: 70° (diagonal)
• Tracking type: 6DOF
• Tracking cameras: 2
• Vision cameras: 1 RGB
• Memory: 12GB / 16GB
• Storage: 256GB / 512GB
• Battery capacity: 4,455 mAh
• Audio: integrated Bose speakers + 4-microphone array
• Weight: 95g (glasses only)
• Connectivity: USB / Bluetooth / Wi-Fi

Design

XREAL Aura is an all-in-two headset. It features lightweight glasses that are connected with a cable to a computational puck that features both the chipset and the battery. The split design allows the glasses to be small and lightweight: they truly look like bulky sunglasses.

Let me show the glasses from all the points of view.

On the front, you can see the two tracking cameras on the sides, plus the RGB vision camera in the center. Close to the central camera, there is the privacy LED that turns on when the camera is in use.

The left and right sides show you the frames of the glasses, which look like thick glasses legs.

From the top, you can see the speakers of the glasses, plus the button to open the menu. From this point of view, you can also notice that the front part of the glasses is definitely thicker than standard glasses.

From the bottom, you can also see the speakers, plus the buttons to regulate the volume, and the button to turn on the headset.

The inner view clearly shows the birdbath optics, with the internal lenses that show the virtual content.

In general, I like the style of the glasses, and how people look cool when seen from the front. These glasses pretty much suit my face, and in the pictures with them, I truly look like I’m wearing sunglasses: these are some of the coolest AR glasses I’ve ever worn. There is a known problem, though: this cool look only happens when you are pictured from the front. If people see you from the side, you see that you are wearing very thick glasses that are weirdly too distant from your eyes.

I’m not saying the look is very bad from the side (I think some people are exaggerating this), but it definitely doesn’t look natural. That’s why I think these are glasses that are nice to wear at home, or in a cafe, or on a plane. But probably I wouldn’t wear them on the streets, where you could get some weird looks by wearing glasses that are wired to your pocket and are quite distant from your face.

Comfort

Since the glasses are lightweight, they are also kinda comfortable to wear. I say “kinda” because to evaluate the comfort, we need to understand in which category we put these glasses. If we compare them to headsets like the Quest, they are definitely more lightweight and comfortable. If we compare them to smartglasses like Ray-Ban Meta, these are definitely bulkier and less comfortable. In general, remember that the threshold for long-term wearability is 50g, and these glasses, with their 95g, are well above it.

In fact, when I wore these glasses, I found them light and comfortable, almost like wearing big sunglasses. But then, after 30 minutes of testing, I already started feeling a sort of little “strain” sensation on the top of my nose and on my ears, which are the areas where the glasses lie. This means that these glasses are surely comfortable, but you can not wear them the whole day.

During my tests, I’ve also felt the glasses become a bit warm on my forehead after a while of using them. I don’t know if it is something normal, or if that was happening because I was employing a test unit that had been overused for two days. But that was definitely another problem to flag.

I didn’t have many problems with the cable connecting the glasses to the computational unit instead. At least in my demo, it was never an issue. I have to flag instead that the computational unit is definitely heavier than it looks (it is around 300g). Luckily you can put it in a pocket… but make sure your pocket is strong enough 🙂

Visuals

When I asked people what they wanted to know about these glasses on my Twitter/X account, I got many questions about the visuals. I know there is a lot of curiosity about this part, so let me explain it in greater detail.

Passthrough and Dimming

Let me start by clarifying one thing: these glasses are see-through AR glasses. This means you see the real world not mediated by any screen. So there is no “passthrough resolution” to talk about, because you just see the real world through a lens, so unless you have screen-door effect in your retina (and I definitely hope not), you should see the real world in full resolution. There is one thing to talk about, though, and it is the screen dimming.

XREAL Aura features “electrochromic dimming,” which basically means they can dynamically make the outside lenses darker or more transparent. When the outside lenses are fully black, you enjoy VR; when they are fully transparent, you enjoy AR. This is what we always dreamed about in glasses: a device that can do both AR and VR. Aura can exactly do that. It is great. The dimming can be set manually (there are 5 levels of dimming to choose from), or you can let the operating system handle that: if you launch a VR experience, the lenses become dark, and if you launch an AR one, they become transparent. This is very handy, and I hope this feature will be copied by many other competitors.

There is one little problem to talk about, though: birdbath optics require lenses that darken out your surroundings so you can see the virtual elements better. This means that you can never make Aura lenses fully transparent: they will always darken out a bit the world around you. This darkening is definitely noticeable, but it is not something that prevents you from operating in the world around you. Someone asked me if it was safe to walk in the streets with them on. I tried to walk in the expo area with the Aura on, and I had absolutely zero problem. Yes, the world was a bit darker, but it was not a big deal. If the environment around you is lit enough, you should enjoy the experience anyway. But still, it is something you should know because it makes the AR experience a bit less natural, since it darkens out all the world around you.

A final note about AR and VR switching: Aura has a glasses form-factor, so it features an open periphery. If you are enjoying an AR experience, this is great, because it means that while you can see the virtual elements only in a 70° FOV, you have the full peripheral vision of the real world, which makes the experience more immersive. But if you are playing a VR experience, seeing the real world in your periphery can be distracting and can make you lose a bit of immersion.

Virtual Visuals

Talking purely about the virtual visuals, I think they were pretty good… probably even better than I expected. Thanks to the 1920 x 1200 pixel displays in a limited 70° FOV, the pixel density was definitely good. Objects appeared well defined. The colors were also pretty bright, both in AR and VR.

I opened Google Docs, and I was able to clearly read and modify text, so if the text is not too small, you can definitely read it. I opened a YouTube video (someone left an Olivia Rodrigo video open, so I couldn’t resist playing it), and it looked good too. I tried a 3D video, and it was nice as well. I tried to look for chromatic aberrations, which are pretty common in headsets, but I couldn’t find much of it, either. I definitely had no complaints about the visuals of this headset.

Actually, I have one: when moving my head left-to-right, I noticed a slight warping of the visuals. This deformation is not big enough to ruin the experience, but it is still noticeable. This can be fixed in the future via software, I guess.

FOV

XREAL Aura features a 70° diagonal FOV, which is bigger than many other AR glasses, which usually have around 50°. Many people asked me how it feels.

I would say that it feels “usable”. As I’ve already said in my review article on Lumus waveguides, I’ve come to the conclusion that 70° is the threshold that makes a general-purpose XR device usable. Below 70° you always feel you are looking at a “small window” of XR, while above you start feeling immersed. Of course everything depends on the use case (in some applications, even 20° can be fine to just show some notifications), but in general, this is my feeling.

The FOV of Aura looked “decent enough”. Of course I wanted to have more, but it felt usable; it let me do all the operations I wanted, without cutting out too much of the experience that was in front of me.

There was a problem, though: the vertical FOV. Since Aura uses 16:10 displays, the FOV is mainly horizontal. And in fact, on the horizontal axis, your vision is definitely good. But on the vertical one, you really feel limited. So if the experience you are playing develops mostly horizontally, things are pretty good. But if you have something that spans vertically, then it is frustrating, and you start having the “small window” feeling again.

This is my main complaint about the device from all my testing sessions: the vertical field of view really feels limited. How much it impacts you depends on the experience you are playing, but your eyes constantly feel that they would like to see more of what there is above you.

I guess you would like to know what the FOV is like for enjoying media. Well, if you are watching a movie, usually the format is already something like 16:9, so the little vertical FOV is not disturbing much. If you are watching immersive 360 content, instead, the whole FOV feels a bit limiting, and maybe you should switch to a headset like the Quest.

Audio

I am not an audio expert, and I did not have a proper demo to test the audio quality. So the only thing I can tell you is that the audio works, but I wouldn’t go into details about this statement. I could hear the audio of the experiences, and when I was speaking, Gemini could understand what I was saying. This means that the integrated audio does its job, which is already a good thing.

Tracking

Positional tracking

XREAL Aura is a 6DOF device, meaning you can move around the virtual elements you see in your space. Tracking is guaranteed through two tracking cameras on the sides of the front of the headset.

Tracking was pretty solid in my tests, but I had a couple of moments, especially when I was typing on my phone to take notes to write this article, where the tracking was lost, and the virtual elements moved around me. I think these occasional glitches should be fixed in a future release.

Talking about tracking, travel mode is integrated, so you can also use these glasses to watch movies on a plane.

Hand tracking

You can control many of the experiences using your hands. And luckily, hand tracking is pretty stable. I tried to move all my fingers in both hands, and the tracking was pretty accurate. I also tried to put my hands one on top of the other, and the tracking still kinda worked in this scenario. It was not as resistant as the one on the Meta Quest; there were hiccups in the case of occlusions, but it was better than I was expecting. In fact, every time I used hand tracking in an MR experience, it always worked very well.

The only thing I can complain about is the reactivity. There was a small-but-noticeable lag from when I moved my hand and when the system reacted to my movements. So the system was accurate, but with a delay. This means hand tracking is not suitable for fast experiences à la Beat Saber.

The hand tracking FOV was bigger than the Vision FOV, but not super large… it couldn’t track my hands when they were at rest, alongside my body. These glasses don’t have cameras pointing downwards like the Vision Pro, so to track your hands, you should have them roughly in front of you.

Controlling scheme

XREAL Aura has no associated controllers. But you actually have a lot of ways to interact with it:

• Physical buttons: for some operations, you can use the physical buttons on the glasses to trigger them. For instance, on the right leg of the frames there are two buttons to regulate the volume and one button that can either open the menu (press) or invoke Gemini (long-press)

• Vocal commands: if you invoke Gemini, you can use your voice to open applications, have a live session with AI, or trigger some commands in some applications (e.g., Gemini can look for any locations inside Google Maps)
• Controlling puck: the computational puck can also be used as a controller. You can use it to swipe and click, for instance

• Hand tracking: this is the preferred interaction modality, and in fact, you interact most of the time with your hands. You usually aim at elements and then pinch with your index and thumb fingers to select them. There are also gestures you can use, for instance to open the menu, to swipe, or to zoom elements. Hand tracking works fairly well, so these interactions feel natural.

Most of the time, I had no problem interacting with the operating system of these glasses.

User experience and content

As soon as I put on the headset, a tutorial started. The tutorial taught me how to use the hand gestures to interact with the operating system: how to tap, swipe, zoom in on elements, and so on. The tutorial was simple and well-made. After that, I could see the menu of Android XR, which I guess you know pretty well.

Using my hands, I could point and click to open the applications. Then, when a 2D window was opened in space (e.g., Chrome), I could use my hands to move it in space or to make it larger or smaller. The interface mostly felt intuitive.

This is some of the content I tried:

• Google Chrome, where I watched some videos on YouTube
• A WebXR experience inside Chrome. It’s good news that Aura is WebXR-compatible
• Google Maps. Inside Maps, I opened the New York location, which features 3D buildings, and I could see them in front of me. It was pretty cool.
• Google Docs, inside which I edited a document
• A nice vibe-coded AR experience called Molecule (or something like that). I could look at something in the real world, pinch it, and the application was able, thanks to Gemini, to infer what material composed that element, and show me in 3D the molecule of that material. So, for instance, if I looked at a plastic bottle, it showed me the molecule of a type of plastic
• Another short experience that let me draw cords in MR and then play them to compose music. Or otherwise, I could let AI make a melody for me.
• A small MR game where I could use some rocks to destroy some evil asteroids that wanted to hurt a cute planet

Every piece of content I tried worked as expected. I have not tried anything particularly heavy, so I can’t judge the performance of the Snapdragon Elite. But everything I tried was fluid, and that’s a good sign.

I didn’t have enough time to test the Gemini integration thoroughly either. Some quick tests revealed that it worked, and I could ask Gemini to draft me a document or to move me to a location in Google Maps. Also, XREAL and Google are investing a lot in letting creators make vibe-coded experiences through Gemini: the Molecule experience was exactly vibe-coded by the people at Google. But I could not test all of this thoroughly, so I can’t provide you with an informed opinion about the AI integration.

Privacy

The glasses feature a white privacy LED that turns on when the front camera is in use. This, for instance, happens when Gemini is analyzing your surroundings, like in the Molecule app.

Price and availability

XREAL Aura can be preordered on the XREAL website. The final price is unknown, and the company only officially said it will be “less than $1500”. The right estimate is something between $1000 and $1500. The launch should happen this fall.

Final impressions

All in all, I’ve found XREAL Aura to be definitely interesting. It feels kinda lightweight on the head, it has a usable field of view, it features natural interactions, it is integrated with Gemini and Android XR, and it allows you to play both AR and VR content. And it does all of this while kinda looking cool on the face, especially if someone watches you from the front.

We are still in the early stages of AR, so this device can’t be perfect, and it has its drawbacks, the biggest one of which is the limited vertical field of view. But there are also some minor annoyances like the little warping on the visuals, the lag on the hand tracking, or the fact that the glasses look a bit weird on people when seen from the side. Regarding the tethered design, it is more a matter of personal choice: I know some people hate it, while others can live with it. I’m not a big fan of having a cable on my body, too, but this form factor allows the glasses to be very lightweight, and this is a big pro.

I personally think it is a good step forward for AR: that’s why when someone asked me what the most interesting things I tried at AWE were, I always put XREAL Aura in my top three classification. I think if you are looking for AR glasses to be used indoors, that rely on a stable operating system, and that have good computational power, you should definitely consider these glasses as an option. I can’t suggest them as a must-buy without having had enough time to write a full review (I hope I’ll be sent a unit), but I can definitely tell you that this device is interesting and you should keep an eye on it.

Now the big question remains always the same: will there be a “killer” use case for these glasses? This will determine if they are worth the money or if they just remain as a cool tech gadget.