Xreal’s New Entry-Level Cinema Glasses Turn Every Seat Into a 330-Inch Theater

The elevator pitch that stole CES

LAS VEGAS—On the ride up to the Xreal booth, a fellow journalist grinned and said, “Wait till you see the $399 pair.” Thirty seconds later I was staring at a wall of virtual darkness, the Strip’s neon erased by what looked like a pair of everyday Ray-Bans. Inside those lenses, Star Wars: A New Hope was playing on a 330-inch screen that followed me wherever I turned my head. No backpack battery, no tether, no $1,000 sticker shock—just a USB-C cable snaking into my phone.

What changed—and what didn’t

Xreal’s refresh, quietly unveiled here at CES, keeps the same 1080p micro-OLED panels found in last year’s flagship Air 2. The magic is in the optics: a new pancake lens stack that cuts weight by 17 % and bumps brightness to 600 nits, enough to stay vivid on a sunny patio. The entry-level model ships without the premium speakers—instead you get a tiny directional array baked into the temples. It’s not concert-hall audio, but it’s loud enough that a colleague three seats away couldn’t eavesdrop on The Mandalorian.

“We asked 2,000 commuters what stopped them from buying smart glasses,” Xreal founder Chi Xu told me in a curtained-off demo room. “Price won. So we built the same cinema, just without the jewelry.”

The spec sheet that matters

• Price: $399 (€429) when it ships Q2
• Field of view: 52°—roughly a 330-inch screen at 6 m
• Weight: 72 g, down from 87 g on the Air 2
• Compatibility: any USB-C device that outputs DisplayPort Alt Mode—Steam Deck, iPhone 15, Samsung Galaxy, MacBook
• Battery life: powered entirely by the host device; optional 20,000-mAh neckband adds 5 hrs for $79

Augmented reality? Not quite

Forget spatial anchors or hand tracking. These glasses don’t even include the cameras required for 6DOF. Xu calls the product “a conscious step back to a single, killer use-case: a private IMAX.” The gamble is that consumers would rather have a flawless cinema experience than a half-baked metaverse.

The competition heating up

TCL’s RayNeo Air 3 and Rokid Max both sell for $379, but tip the scales at 89 g and require a finicky brightness-boost dongle for HDR. Apple’s Vision Pro promises jaw-dropping fidelity at $3,499, while Meta’s Quest 3 can stream movies but weighs in at a neck-straining 515 g. Xreal’s pitch is simple: best screen-to-weight ratio under four bills.

Hands-on verdict

I watched the opening of Blade Runner 2049 on a crowded show floor. The contrast felt infinite, the blacks ink-soaked, the yellows of Wallace’s office searing. When I pulled the glasses off, the mundane carpeted corridor looked naked, almost gray. For the first time in a decade of CES wearables, I didn’t crave the next version—I wanted this one, right now, on the flight home.