Smart glasses are all trying to get smarter. In an ongoing quest to find ways on our faces, companies are pitching ever-more-normal-looking glasses promising AI onboard that can interact with our lives using built-in cameras. Meta’s already laid out a path to that future with current Meta Ray-Bans and future dreams of Meta Orion full AR glasses, while Google and Samsung have plans for AR glasses using Android XR. RayNeo, another AR glasses company, has a pair of compact AR glasses announced at this year’s CES show in Las Vegas and coming this year that aim for the same zone.
The RayNeo X3 Pro is an update to a line of AR glasses I’ve tried before, but they’ve gotten a lot smaller this time around. The 3-ounce glasses look pretty everyday normal from RayNeo’s photos, yet they have built-in dual Micro LED displays that are projected onto the transparent lenses via wave guides. RayNeo’s previous glasses had a VR chip to power its AR/AI features, the same chip that was on the Quest 2. This time, the glasses use Qualcomm’s AR 1 Gen 1 chipset that’s focused on shrinking glasses’ size and optimizing for AI. They still have dual cameras, room tracking and even hand tracking. The X3 Pro is coming later in 2025, at a still-unknown price.
The previous RayNeo X2 glasses were bulky, had limited battery life and were heavier (4.3 ounces compared with 3 ounces on the X3 Pro). According to reviewers, they also had a very narrow field of view, limiting the bright displays to a tiny floating window.
Will the X3 Pros be better and more reliable? CNET will hopefully get to demo them soon, so we’ll know more. These glasses also don’t seem to be part of Google’s upcoming AR- and AI-focused Android XR right now, although at some point it would make sense for them to be.
The RayNeo Air X3 display glasses are similar to ones made by Xreal and others, with promised audio and video improvements.
RayNeo’s other new glasses follow familiar forms: the X3 Air are display glasses, similar to what’s available from Xreal and others. RayNeo promises a 200,000:1 contrast ratio, a 201-inch equivalent virtual display and better audio, but they don’t seem to be able to auto-anchor displays like the new Xreal One glasses can – and there are no specifics on field of view or display type. The V3, meanwhile, are camera-equipped glasses with audio, similar to Meta’s Ray-Bans. All of these glasses look like they’re arriving toward the second half of this year, but again, with no prices available yet.
What stands out to me, though, is how much smaller the X3 Pro glasses are. AR glasses approaching the type of stuff Meta’s promising are starting to arrive, although RayNeo’s field of view is undoubtedly far smaller…and its software services are still a relative unknown.
Source: CNET
