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Xreal's AR Glasses are a Fraction of the Price of Apple's Vision Pro

By Rain Noe - December 9

in Tech | Wearables

It's pretty ironic that AR glasses, which promise to deliver you to augmented or virtual worlds, themselves require a brick-and-mortar experience in order to sell them. Because you'd have to try them on, to see for yourself how compelling or effective the visual effects really are. Without that experience, you're just looking at press images and guessing at how accurate they are.

This month Chinese manufacturer Xreal released their new One and One Pro AR glasses. These feature Sony Micro-OLED screens and a built-in Bose sound system. And in contrast to Apple's Vision Pro, the Xreal offerings resemble an ordinary pair of Ray-Bans, though they do sit off of your face a bit. (They can also accommodate prescription lenses.) They're also a heckuva lot cheaper than Apple's offering, at $499 for the One and $599 for the One Pro, versus the Vision Pro's $3,500 asking price.

Here is the company's depiction of what using them is like:

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As for the difference in the two models, the One Pro has slightly better stats than the One: A wider field of view, better image quality and clarity and enhanced brightness.

The One is expected to ship later this month, with the One Pro coming out early next year.

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Dee An

2 days ago

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Talk about comparing apples to oranges.
Xreal are a completely different thing to Apple's Vision Pro. The AVP is 'pass through' AR, where the user is looking at screens and the real world is captured by cameras and passed through to the screens. The Xreal uses an optical system to superimpose virtual graphics over the user's view of the real world.
More here:
https://kguttag.com/2024/01/27/ces-pt-3-xreal-bmw-octrux-nimo-planet-sightful-and-letinar/

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- Ryan Cee
  
  Dee An
  
  2 days ago
  
  Z
  
  1Z
  
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  Since they're doing the same thing in the end sounds like the method that works for a tenth the price is a lot smarter.
  
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  - Dee An
    
    Ryan Cee
    
    a day ago
    
    Z
    
    1Z
    
    Only they are not doing the same thing "in the end".
    Optical AR systems are usually better for presenting virtual information over a user's view of the real world - think Heads Up Displays. Google Glass, Microsoft Hololens. Pass-through AR (effectively a VR system with cameras and sophisticated motion tracking) are better at presenting a virtual world to the user. This latter category is Apple, and an industrial system from Sony and Siemens.
    My Casio watch tells the time for100th the price of an Apple Watch (or indeed, a Lamborghini with a clock in the dashboard, if you add some more zeros to the above fraction), but only in very specific use-cases is it 'doing the same thing'. If I only wish to know the time, then yeah, sure, the Casio watch is the 'smarter' product. That various users have various use-cases suggests that there may be room in the market for variety and not any one 'smarter' solution. Sketchbook or drawing board. Phone or desktop computer. Pickup truck or wheel barrow. Scalpel or machete. I would have hoped that a Product Design blog would grow the differences immediately and thus skip to the more interesting nuanced questions down stream.
    
    Anyway, if you have any interest in this field, Karl Guttag (link above) is a leading commentator, reviewer and analyst of AR technologies. He made the point that things that are easy for AR systems are hard for VR systems, and vice versa.
    
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