Xreal Air 2 Review

I have always loved the idea of smart wearables, and with the popularity of EDITH (Iron Man/Spiderman reference), smart glasses started to come into focus for me personally.

I already had a pair of Vuzix Blades and Vue Glasses and while they both have their pros and cons, they were still lacking for me (reviews to possibly follow later).

After browsing Reddit looking for Steam Deck accessories, someone mentioned about the Nreal/Xreal glasses. (Nreal was their old brand name.) After a small bit of research, I discovered special AR glasses that displayed a HUD (Heads up display) in front of you, like the Vuzix Blade, and pipes in amazing audio through the arms of the glasses, like the Vues, but with one additional benefit that stood out to me… the two unique selling points of those devices were combined into one!

As with me being me, it didn’t take long for me to convince myself I should get a pair and suddenly without warning, they appeared on my doorstep! Complete with their accessory, the Beam. I must have purchased them in my sleep again! Happens too often… 😉

First impressions on them were pretty good! They didn’t have the ‘Hey, look at my smart glasses!’ feel or look to them and they weighed next to nothing. As I’m not a glasses wearer, it took me a little while to get comfortable with them on my face but when I plugged them into my Steam Deck… It was worth it. My Steam Deck natively detected there was an external display turned off and when that screen came on, it was like a brand-new console! The graphics were just so enhanced on it due to the 120Hz OLED screens in the Xreals being better than the original run of Steam Decks and the audio was so clear without distorting the real-world audio around me, it was amazing.

The idea of having a 105” screen in front of me at any point watching my own content or streaming is still crazy for me but seeing as I just cut my grass whilst watching a YouTube video with subtitles, I must believe that there are only good things coming in this area or wearable technology. The screen can be resized to over 300" but I found for my use case, it wasn't practical. When wearing the glasses plugged directly into a phone or another device, the screen follows you wherever you look, however, when plugged into the Beam you have the option of stabilising the video from judder e.g. if you are watching on a train, or having the screen resized to 20” and assigned to a designated corner as a side view.

I had quickly realised however that for the use case I wanted, I would need to use the Beam otherwise my screen on my phone would always be on. I’m not covering Samsung Dex in this review just yet.

After a bit of playing around with the Beam, which is their bespoke android device that you can use as a video pass through to make the likes of the Switch or PS5 work on the glasses or as a standalone device, I got used to the idea of using them for day-to-day use, even watching my TV shows while lying flat in bed without the light or the sound disturbing my wife while she slept.

The free Nebula android app which is recommended for these glasses is just OK in my opinion. It has recently had a lot of new features added to it but it just doesn’t feel immersive enough for me. Also, sadly one of the use cases I wanted these for I was unable to use as my laptop wasn’t powerful enough for the Windows beta to support virtual desktops and I don’t have access to a MacBook where the app is out of beta.

As I mentioned earlier, Samsung Dex is supported and that took some getting used to. But it did mean that I was able to have YouTube Music, Google Maps and WhatsApp open on the glasses as I was sorting the washing so I can’t really complain. I also wanted to mention that with the recent addition of ‘transcribe’ on the Google Translate app, you can get a live translation of any conversation on the screen. There is a specialist app that hands this and feel free to check out ‘xrai’ if that’s something you want to utilise.

There are a few cons, of course they are. They are wired as the glasses draw their power and processing power from the device they are plugged into. This is how they were able to make them so light compared to their competitors. While the build is sturdy, it does sometimes feel that just one snag of the cable could mean snapping the arm. The biggest con for a lot of people is the price tag. With their 1st generation glasses currently selling for £339 and their second generation selling for £399 for the Air 2’s and £449 for the Pros, they might be out of reach for a lot of people while still being cheaper than others such as the Apple Vision Pro.

Overall, they are an amazing product and sadly the pictures and video review just don’t do the image and sound quality justice. It’s one you must experience yourself. Happy to answer any questions you may have on the product so feel free to drop a message on the post, WhatsApp or an email.

The official Xreal UK Website - https://www.xreal.com/uk/

*This is a personal review and I have not received any free products or compensation to write this or recommend this or any other product mentioned here.