The SEQUEL to my FAVORITE Steam Deck Accessory | XREAL Air 2

hello everyone and welcome back to the channel today we're going over the latest version of one of my favorite steam deck accessories the xreal air AR glasses as well is some accessories to make the experience better if you're not familiar xreal is the new branding of the company formerly known as nreal and they specialize in AR glasses which are essentially a screen projected to the glasses lens themselves but before we get into that first a disclaimer the products that I'm reviewing in this video today have been sent to me by xreal as part of the sponsored content and as it is sponsored I will be paid as well xreal will have the ability to review the video before it goes live but as per usual on this Channel Zero changes are made to the video unless there is a factual inaccuracy the products that were sent to me by xra today are a a set of xreal air2 glasses in Black a set of xreal air2 glasses in red a set of xreal air2 pro glasses in Black a set of their Kido kit decals an iPhone HDMI adapter a USBC cable a USBC to HDMI cable an xreal beam unit a T-shirt and a few stickers i've used each product aside from the t-shirt and stickers to give an honest factual technical review of the glasses themselves as those are the focus of the video and without further Ado let's get into the video and see how the glasses themselves are first up let's cover what comes with a new set of xreal air 2s inside there is the necessary documentation three sets of interchangeable nose pieces of different heights a prescription lens frame a cleaning cloth a glasses case a USBC cable a set of what they call light dimmers and of course the glasses themselves the unboxing experience is pretty nice with a sort of origami outer shell and it's almost completely cardboard which I love to see the only thing that's different about the pro variant is the set of glasses included and all the accessories are identical moving on to a physical overview of the glasses themselves we can see that they're fairly inconspicuous aside from the large bar in the brow region the left arm has a speaker near the ear and the end of the arm has a single USBC Port the right arm has another speaker a small button and a larger rocker style button I also want to quickly show off the amazing new red color they're incredibly vibrant and even the cable and microfiber included are red if you're looking for a statement it's hard to imagine something that will state more than Crimson augmented reality glasses going back to the glasses in general The Standard air tws come in at 72 G and the pros weigh 75 G speaking of the pros they are identical physically to the standard airs but they do have a cool extra feature that we'll get into later compared to the original x-rail airs there are a few small differences physically first the glasses are about 10% thinner and lighter the nose pieces are slightly different and they can now be removed without any tools and the prescription lens frames no longer require tiny screws into your lenses aside from that the glasses are largely similar to the previous generation with some small color differences and a slightly different level of tint in the lenses the carrying case is different than the first generation as well with the old semi soft zipper close case making it way for an incredibly sturdy hard case I spent a lot of time with the airs and my backpack especially on the plane ride over and the old case definitely got squished a bit more than once so it's it's really nice to have the harder shell to protect them better another benefit of the hard case is that the interior has slightly more room so it's not quite as difficult to put your glasses and cable away if you're in a hurry moving on to tech specs the new glasses all rock a new Sony micro LED panel with a brightness up to 500 nits a resolution of 1080p a 120 HZ refresh rate and a 46° field of view the new panels in these also feature a contrast ratio of 100,000 to1 and a much better color accuracy certified by TUV rinlin the lenses themselves are a medium tint but include a blue light filter to reduce eye fatigue I wasn't able to find any info about the speakers themselves but I'll be testing them later in the video to compare them with the original x-rail airs going back to my mention of the prescription lenses you should know that the x-rail air 2s or Pros do not have any built-in myopia correction like some competitors do so if you have bad eyesight you'll likely need to get some prescription lenses from another vendor fortunately the lenses and the lens frames that I bought for my original set of xra airs are still 100% compatible with the new generation so all I had to do was move them to the new glasses as a point of reference I paid about $85 for my lenses with two different myopia and astigmatism prescriptions they would likely be much cheaper if your eyes were in better shape than mine I don't have any relationship with the store that I purchased the lenses from but I'll leave a link to them in the description below as they are excellent lenses that I got when back in Sweden and they ship from Germany with the prescription lenses equipped the glasses can be used independently of other glasses or contacts and I've actually tested them around the house for a few hours with no issues moving on to how the glasses look and feel you can see that they're relatively innocuous compared to a lot of the other competitors out there but they are still noticeably AR glasses especially with the big cable that comes down something that really helps the new generation out is the the inclusion of tinted light blockers rather than a solid piece of plastic like in the first generation with the old xrail Air 1s it was really obvious that you were wearing some kind of device when you put the light blockers on here so like if you're on a plane or something it's pretty obvious isn't it but on the newer glasses they upped their game a lot so now they just look like heavily tinted sunglasses which is a lot less conspicuous than the sheer black face plate that the old ones had on obviously they no longer block out 100% of the light but I didn't find that to be an issue at all during gameplay even when staring at a bright light a few feet away like the lights here in my studio on top of this the primary difference between the base model and the pros is the new electr chromic dimming feature with this you don't need to carry around any light dimmers if you don't want to as the glasses have three levels of dimming built right in on the lowest level they're pretty much identical to The Standard air 2s but with a different shade of tint on the highest level they're just shy of the light blockers with what xre says blocks out 99.9% of light but I'd say it seems closer to about 95% of light blocked out as I'm still able to see light sources clearly through it the middle level is where I'd probably keep these if I was outside and the high level is where I'd keep them when I wanted to ignore the world around me like on an airplane the low level is mostly used for seeing through the content or using them while eating or something as for how they feel they're very comfortable with the included nose pieces which are made out of a decent silicone material and have a bit of a cushion feel to that unfortunately I seem to have fallen into an in between category where the short nose piece is too short for my nose and the medium nose piece is too long when used with my prescription lenses it causes a bit more fatigue on my nose bridge but overall I can still use them in relative comfort for a few hours at a time although they aren't as comfortable as my normal glasses next let's take a look at how they present in front of your eyes with the glasses attached to a device directly they show you the equivalent of a 130 in screen at 120 HZ the image in this mode is just a direct projection onto the lens so there's no active processing being done and they feel very Snappy the image is also noticeably brighter than the previous generation and it's much less fuzzy around the edges too with a well- defined screen and less vignetting there are a few modes that are related to the xre beam which I'll cover in a bit that changes some of this but I would say this is the primary steam deck experience in my opinion in the last video I showed a simulated version of the glasses on screen so here I'll do the same as you can see the frames are quite prominent at first but you quickly forget about them the image itself is definitely clearer than the original airs and the glasses tint feels right for the content at any brightness when indoors the light blockers make the background much harder to see and this is what they look like and lastly the electric chromic dimming on maximum looks like this which as you can see is almost as dark as the light blockers in general the buttons are very high quality but I wish they had more buttons for the additional features since it can be confusing which combination of presses and holds do what on which buttons I've also found myself changing display brightness when I meant to change volume more than a few times which could be alleviated with another rocker switch next let's take a look at how we to use the glasses with various devices starting with our favorite the steam deck the steam deck is incredibly easy to use with the airs just plug the USBC cable into the deck and the glasses themselves there isn't much functionality beyond the usual for a display with the resolution going up to 1080P and the refresh rate being 120 HZ I'll do some input Lany testing later on in this video but this is about as simple as it gets the one major downside with this is that you cannot charge the deck while using the glasses I've tried four docks four hubs and several other adapters to get this to work but it was all to no avail in the previous video I mentioned a similar issue and many commenters recommended the red magic dock but I've been unable to find the one they're recommending and it's not included with these glasses regardless so I can't rate them on that as a result you're limited to the battery life of your deck if you want to play away without your deck docked if you don't mind playing chain to a dock then that's where the next product comes in the xreal beam and its most basic it acts as a chomecast airplay receiver and Battery bank for the glasses you can set it up connect it to Wi-Fi and then cast to it from the device of your choice it also allegedly increases the size of the projection from 130 in equivalent up to 330 in in my opinion it seems like 330 in screen is a bit further away so I'd say it's more like a 250 in equivalent at the same distance as the 130 in it also gives you the capability of body loocking the projection in space so if you turn your head it would stay behind like a regular TV it also has smooth follow which makes the image lag slightly behind your head movement and feels more natural than a normal projection and even side view mode where the content can be placed in a corner of your vision any of the floor and you can focus on something in the real world while having a small personal screen the beam is locked to a maximum of a 72 HZ which is a bit smoother than 60 but not as high as the 120 HZ natively supported by the a2s unfortunately the beam is still limited to 72 HZ in this mode even from the deck and the displays alternate rather than being at full speed but it's nice to not have to worry about the battery while playing that said if you're sensitive to flicker like I am then it could bother you over a long time period but I was able to play for just over an hour with no headaches or anything in addition even though it has a battery internally it still sucks power from my device to charge this battery while in use and there doesn't seem to be a way to disable that I would love for the beam to allow this as my steam deck still ends up powering the glasses despite the battery being in the middle as a workaround you can do what I hinted at earlier hook the deck up to a dock plug an HDMI to USBC into both the dock and the beam and then connect your glasses to the beam now you can play as long as you want as the dock will charge the deck and the beam obviously this has the caveat of you being chained to the dock while it's plugged into the wall but it does allow Perpetual play lastly for device testing I tried a few of my other devices the switch only provides HDMI through its USBC so it needs to be used with the beam but otherwise functions identically anything with display port through USB capabilities can be plugged directly into the glasses and I love using them with my MacBook Pro next I mentioned that I was sent the Kido kit as well essentially it's a set of high quality and soft touch stickers used to apply a splash of color to your glasses I applied mine in about 5 minutes and the finished is pretty good but it's pretty obvious that they're just decals from even a few feet away I spent a few minutes trying to get an edge to fray or a corner to peel but was unsuccessful so they're much higher quality than I was expecting which is good news I'm not sure what the pricing on these are but as long as you don't mind the skinned look the kaleido kit is a pretty good way of adding some color to any pair of Air toos now on to actual testing this section will be about testing input latency in total I tested five devices the steam deck internal screen the official steam deck dock the x-rail air On's the xra air 2s and the xra air Pros the testing was done by setting the screen refresh to the highest available uncapping the frame rate booting up Celeste disabling vsync and recording at 240 frames per second in game I stood in one place then pressed the jump button 10 times at odd intervals I then took the footage and counted the frames from the fully depressed button to the action on screen the point where the button was fully depressed was measured both visually and using the wave form of the audio unsurprisingly the new x-rail Air 2s did the best especially since they were at 120 HZ but they weren't anywhere near the single frame timing at 120 HZ the ideal response time would be about 8 .33 milliseconds but I'm guessing that the display port conversion is taking a little longer than that's a process still an input latency under a single 60 HZ frame is very good especially considering very few games could run at the speed at all on the deck so I'll consider it a win moving on to the speakers they sound much better than the air ons especially at high volume they're also directional so they don't bleed as much audio to the surrounding environment I did some testing for the speakers with the same test methodology as my previous video and if come up with a comparison of the original xra airs and the new xra Air 2s the recording is taken from about 3 cimet away with the glasses flipped upside down it's not a perfect test but it's a good approximation of what I hear when using [Music] them [Music] last for testing I wanted to test the battery drain on Deck as the glasses do consume measurable power the battery life on deck went from about an hour and 20 minutes when running Elden ring on Ultra down to an hour and 15 minutes while using the twos and 1 hour and 13 minutes while using the pros with maximum electrochromic dimming enabled something I want touch on really quickly is motion sickness while VR goggles give me motion sickness at all times these have never given me any my wife who is incredibly prone to motion sickness to the point of having trouble with first-person content at all has only mentioned one instance of sickness and that was when watching the TV through a game she was playing overall i' rate these as unlikely to give you motion sickness during normal use cases but not impossible if you're highly sensitive so who are these glasses for as a techie who until very recently had a desk job who grew up in a house with four other children I can see four primary use cases for these one you sit at a desk all day and you either need to sit or lay down somewhere comfortable to rest your back and neck two you have to share the TV with your family your housemates and you want your own personal screen while still being in the same faces them three you have neck or back issues and can't easily look down for long periods of time even if you can normally sit up or four you just like cool things and you want a Tinker all of these are completely viable ways to enjoy the glasses and I fit in all but the third category and now to the Crux of the matter pricing the price for the xra air 2s are $399 the pros are $449 and the xra beam is $119 for the market segment which I'll categorize as someone who falls in one of the categories I mentioned before I think that the pricing for both sets of glasses is fair especially when comparing to the features of competitors the x-rail beam is a little pricey in my opinion but the fact that the glasses are potentially limited without it makes it an easy purchase for someone who wants to get a little more mileage out of the glasses themselves all of that said these are clearly a premium product meant for enhancing the experience you already have for example the air 2s are the cost of the base model of steam deck FL out but if you want your experience to be that much better then they are definitely worth it last for my review I wanted to list all of my thoughts about the xra air 2s the two pros and the beam both positive and negative starting with the Positive they are thinner and lighter than the air ones it is less obvious that you're wearing a device than almost any competitor out there it is brighter and a more color accurate projection which I found great the light blocker is much easier to attach when in use than the first generation you don't have to bagle with it anymore or accidentally full finger your lens the pro version completely removes the need to carry around the light blocker at all the hard case is much higher quality and much higher protection the prescription lens frame from the first generation is still compatible which is fantastic and it has good pricing for the market segment and lastly the nose piece switching on the twos is actually toolless you no longer need that little tool to wiggle it out which is great when you want to show the glasses to your friends or something that brings us to the next segment the negative the beam isn't included which limits functionality out of the box especially with devices that aren't a steam deck or a Macbook or something at $120 it's a large additional investment despite the utility you can't charge and play at the same time without a beam or another specialized adapter the Kido kit has clearly visible White Lines after application making it appear a bit cheap in my opinion there aren't enough buttons for all the features which cause a lot of incorrect inputs and a little bit of frustration in the middle of gameplay and using them with only an HDMI output requires an extra cable that's sold separately in addition to the beam and lastly a few thoughts that aren't really positive or negative but our holdovers for my previous review it would have been nice if the longer cable was included in case you want to use them from more than about a meter away and two having either longer arms or adjustable length arms would go a long way to making these more comfortable on larger heads with all of that said would I recommend the xreal Air 2 or xreal Air 2 Pro glasses at the current price of $399 and $449 on Amazon I'd say that if you can think of a good reason to use them you can afford them and you can also afford prescription lenses if you need them then yes I've had my first generation xra airs for about five months of consistent usage tried the vure glasses and now these and I can confidently say that these are my favorite yet and I will be using them even more than the prior pair because they fixed a lot of of issues that I had with those all right everyone that's about it for this video as always thank you to all my patrons YouTube members and super thanks donators and of course xreal for making this video possible I'm really happy to have been contacted by xreal again and being able to use the new pairs of glasses as I still use my old ones regularly has been awesome and with that I'm going to go play some Starfield on the new Air Pros so as always thank you all for watching and have a great great [Music] day

Channel: CryoByte33

Views: 14,653

Keywords: xreal, nreal, augmented reality, ar, glasses, steam deck

Id: Nj8Yecoqbow

Length: 22min 44sec (1364 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2023