XREAL Air 2 Review: 120Hz Gaming Glasses!

[Music] hey everybody this is restal gamecore today we're going to be reviewing the new xre air2 glasses now these were just announced today but I've had them for a couple weeks now and I've been doing a bunch of testing this also is not my first time using glasses like this this company was previously called nreal and I did a whole video about those previous glasses as well they've now rebranded to become xreal now in addition to having these new numbers on the glasses there are a couple new features number one is that we have different color options so this is the red color option right here same price and same features but you know with this nicer red color in addition we now have a pro model so this one has an additional feature which will go over here in this review it is actually pretty neat now in addition to having these new colorways in the pro model we do have some extra features number one 120 HZ refresh rate on all of these models which is going to be really great when you're plugging that directly into the steam deck or the RG Ally in addition we also have the fact that they're more lightweight so these are just a little bit lighter than before and they're more balanced and then also the screen is brighter and probably the most important thing for me at least is the fact that the audio has been significantly improved that was one of my main complaints about the previous model so we got a lot to talk about here in this video just seeing whether or not these glasses are going to be good fit for you and whether or not they justify the $400 or $450 price point depending on the model that you get and so without any further delay let's go ahead and get these off and start the [Music] review okay as we get started here just a couple disclaimers number one these were sent to me free for review but no money was exchanged in any sort of way and of course all opinions are my own and they're not seeing this ahead of time and what I want to do here in the beginning is just really talk about what these glasses are and whether or not they would even be a good fit for you in your own use case so let's go ahead and unbox all three of these models to get an idea of what we're working with now the contents of all these glasses are going to be the same and they do have these additional prescription lenses so if you wear glasses you would have to get these change to your prescription and then add them to the glasses themselves in addition it comes with a couple extra nose pads in case yours wear out over time these seem to be the exact same size across the ones that are already on the glasses and these two extra ones here and the glasses themselves will come in a hard shell case like this and this one's unique in that it doesn't have a zipper around it like the previous model this one just has a really strong hinge to hold it into place the cable itself is braided and it's pretty high quality and also about 4 F feet and length altogether and I think that's an ideal length to be able to plug it into a handheld gaming device or maybe your phone or a tablet now taking a look at the glasses one of the major changes I've seen between the old one and the new is the fact that the front cover actually has this reflective glasses kind of texture to it on the previous model this was completely matte across the board now the glasses themselves look very similar to the previous model they have that way fairer kind of design but the major difference with the cover is that we have this light guard on the bottom and we'll talk about that more when we actually start to test the glasses but other than than that the design seems very similar to the previous glasses they released we have these down firing speakers here that are supposed to go directly into your ears and the connection cable is going to connect to the left side as you can see now on the right side we do have a little bit of IO on the leftmost side we have a small microphone hole and then we also have a button which will function as either a sleep or an additional feature we'll talk about later with the pro and then finally we have a brightness rocker that will go up and down you can also use this to adjust the volume depending on the device that you're using it with also on the inside we have a small sensor that'll know whether or not you actually have the glasses on or off your body and the way this works is they have two micro OED projectors here within the glasses and so this will project a full 1080p resolution which looks pretty impressive and this is what the glasses will look like from the front when you don't have the cover on I think it still looks pretty sharp now one unique thing about the xra glasses that you can adjust the angle and you adjust these by moving the arms of the glasses it's going to take a little bit of force to move them but don't worry you're not going to break them and we have three settings Al together when one thing of note is that I worried that the front was going to be really smudgy but it turns out it wasn't too bad it still would definitely pick up fingerprints but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting anyway as you can imagine the unboxing experience is going to be identical for the other models although the red one is a lot more red it's got a red carrying case a red cable and then also the entire frame is made out of red as well and I think it looks pretty good but it is a little bit bold for my own tastes now the covering is still black just like the other one and so when you put this on it actually mutes some of that red coloring so if you do want to have red glasses but not quite as bold you can kind of mute that a little bit by putting on these covers and then finally we have the pro model which honestly from a hardware perspective is absolutely the same as the other two models just in a black color I think it's a couple grams heavier but honestly there's no way you're going to notice that and so here's a look at what the glasses look like both of the cover off and the cover on and honestly when you're looking at them dead on like this it doesn't look that abnormal and I also find them to be lightweight in the sense that I've never felt like I was getting a headache or they were too too heavy even after prolonged use now the big distinction between these and regular glasses are going to be when you actually look at it from a side profile here you can see because of those rather large nose pads the glasses themselves will stick out pretty far from your face and this is deliberate because if you had it too close you wouldn't be able to see the full image on the screen the way they describe it is that it's the equivalent of looking at a 130in screen I'm not sure how they come up with those numbers but I will say that yeah it'll fill up your full field of view when you're looking straight ahead so the glasses themselves are not supernal looking but I will say that with the cover they look even more unnatural and a lot of that has to do with the light blocking guard that they have here on the bottom of the covers now the nice thing about the covers is that they will black out the light and will make things a lot easier to see especially in a brightly lit condition however that's where that new feature from the air2 pro actually comes into play if you press the side button it'll actually toggle through what they're calling electrochromic dimming and there's three levels here they're 0% like the other glasses and then there's a 35% effect which will basically allow you to still see things things but it'll be much darker and then there's a 100% effect which is very similar to actually having the covers on in fact it's kind of magical how dark it'll actually get with that 100% setting to me it's to the point where I don't feel like I need to have the covers on to be able to see things more clearly now at this point the main advantage of the covers is going to be that bottom light guard but I also found this is kind of a double-edged sword number one I'm not a huge fan of the look of that bottom guard for me it makes the glasses look a little bit more Awkward like to the point where you absolutely know this is a tech product without them you can kind of get away with actually having them on your head I wouldn't want to walk around like a mall with them but all the same I like it a lot better without the covers than with them and to be honest from a practical standpoint the bottom covers do not block a lot of the light that really bothers me when I'm trying to use this in a brightly lit environment in fact most of the light that bothers me comes from the sides and not the bottom at all so if anything if I really wanted to try to block out the light and have a more immersive experience that's where I would want to have the light actually being blocked not on the bottom but on the sides so when it comes down to it I definitely see the value of getting the pro glasses in the fact that you can dim down that screen but then you don't have to use the covers either it'll make the glasses both lighter but then also a little bit more natural looking and of course it'll be up to you whether or not you think that that $50 distinction is going to be worth it but for me if I was going to be buying these glasses I think it definitely would now when it came to my own testing and use case I definitely played it mostly with gaming and I mostly prefer to use it with handheld gaming systems you know things like the r Ally and the steam deck and like I mentioned before these glasses now support a 120 HZ refresh and both the Alli and the steam deck have an external monitor option to be able to do 1080p and 120 HZ now obviously you can't do 120 HZ with AAA games on these machines but you know you can play lightweight things like Hades and it's actually a lot of fun to play it in 120 htz and I definitely saw the distinction in smoothness between 60 HZ and 120 so I do think that is a pretty significant upgrade now unfortunately I don't really have a camera setup that'll show you how good the screen will actually look when you're looking into them so in that regard you may have to just kind of trust me in the fact that yes it looks really good if anything it reminds me a lot of taking a tablet and then putting it very close to your face where you basically have that as your full field of view it's like that but with glasses so you don't have to hold something up at the same time and honestly there's a few advantages of playing games like this number one is the fact that you don't have to tilt your head down to look at the screen and so you're not going to get any sort of neck wear over time and these glasses are also brighter than the previous ones they go up to a 500 nits of brightness the previous ones were up to 400 NS so we're looking at a 25% increase in brightness and you can definitely tell the difference between the two the other thing I like about it is you don't have to hold the handheld up to actually meet your eyes instead you can kind of just rest it on your lap and so in that regard it becomes a very comfortable experience where you can look wherever you would like but then also you can hold the device itself wherever you would like as well and of course in addition to playing games you can use it for media consumption so you can plug it into your phone or your tablet depending on whether or not you have the connection and I found that to be a very nice experience just like how it was on the other glasses so you know laying around in the bed or maybe on a couch watching a TV or a movie without disturbing someone else but having a really big screen and nice audio Yeah that's a pretty good experience now I want to talk about the old glasses and some of the differences between the two in case you have some of those older ones and you're thinking about upgrading and whether or not it's going to be worth it number one the case is different between the two the older one is larger and also had a zipper however there was one thing I liked about the older one is that it had a flap where you could put your cable and then the glasses on top I don't think it's a totally necessary thing but I did like the fact that I could distinguish between the two little compartments the other major difference between the two are the front covers like I mentioned before the old one on the left here was completely matte which did look a little bit weird when you're walking around the house with this basically blocked out now you could argue that having the reflective part of the glasses like this is a little bit weird as well because it's not actually doing anything but all the same it does actually make it a little bit more natural when you have it on your face now in terms of design everything else looks just about the same if you handed me one of these glasses without the case or the cover on top of it I would have a really hard time distinguishing between the two but there are some slight differences for example with the cover on the old glasses were 93 G and the new ones are a little bit lighter they are 86 G altogether and of course with the covers off it gets even lighter so the new ones are 76 G with the covers off compared to the older ones which were 82 G without the covers now for me the biggest distinction between the two is the improved audio quality like I mentioned this was the biggest complaint I had about the original glasses and that they felt really muffled and then also I had to turn the volume lot to be able to hear dialogue and my complaint was that I had to turn it up so much that other people could hear me listening to things just so I could hear dialogue myself and so often I would use them with bluetooth earbuds just because that made it a little bit better of an experience but it was also kind of a pain in the butt to have to make sure that my earphones were also charged it was just another layer of things that I had to manage thankfully with the new ones the audio is way improved let me go ahead and give you some testing right here we're going to start with the old versions first we're playing these at 100% volume [Music] now let's take a listen to the new [Music] [Music] ones [Music] so for me that's a night and day difference when it comes to Clarity and just kind of that more cinematic feel and so I really like these sound on the new ones it's definitely to the point where I don't feel like I need any sort of Bluetooth earphones which is a great move now when it comes to compatibility when plugging into a game system you need something that has display port out this means you can plug that USBC cable directly in and it'll provide both the video and the audio through that cable so this means that most of those modern hand handheld PCS are going to work fine you know things like the steam deck as well as the RG Ally and many Android devices if they have video out through USBC are going to work as well you know something like the Odin or the Odin 2 now when it comes to video out on a phone or a tablet it's really going to depend on what you have if you're using an Android based device and it has video out then obviously it's going to work and also if you have one of the more modern iPads those with the USBC out that's also going to work fine now when it comes to iPhone if you have the new hotness you know the iPhone 15 or whatever that has the USBC plug yes that'll work just fine that's what I have here and yeah it was a plug-and-play experience with a single cable however if you're still using an iPhone or a tablet that has a lightning cable you'll have to use this adapter and we'll also have to use a new accessory from xreal that's called The Beam I think this has been out for a while but I just got it with these glasses so it's new to me and this thing retails for $120 so it's not super cheap but it does have some pretty neat functionality and there's two major things that it does number one it increases the compatibility with certain systems essentially you're not going to need a display port input it'll take an HDMI input instead the beam itself is actually pretty nice it reminds me a lot of like an iPod classic we have a little navigation wheel on the front as well as a confirm button and then we have a mode button on the left side and a volume button on the right and then up top on the right side it's kind of hard to see right here but that's a power button as well underneath we have our connections one is going to be the video in and then the video out going to the glasses and it also has a little lanyard thing if that is something that's important to you overall I think it's a pretty nice solution in the fact that it's not super heavy it's actually the exact same weight as the Mi Mini Plus not only that it's pocketable and the battery life is pretty good it lasts about 3 and 1/ half hours altogether now $120 is pretty steep for an accessories let's go over what this will actually get you number one like I mentioned it'll allow you to use an HDMI input so for example here with my Xbox series S I have a cable that's going from HDMI to USBC I've plugged that in as my video in and then it's going directly to the glasses and so this will allow me to play Home console systems you know the Xbox to the PlayStation while plugging it into the xra beam however there are a couple things worth noting number one is that the frame rate is going to cap out at 72 frames per second so generally you're going to be playing at 60 frames per second this way in addition this process does introduce a little bit of latency not to the point where I actually noticed it but it is something that they mentioned in their marketing materials so if you are playing something competitively where you want a high frame rate or you want to have very low latency this may not be a very great fit and it'll be a similar process with one of those older iPhones you'll use the Lightning to HDMI adapter then the HDMI thing into the xre beam and then from there you can watch your movies and whatnot that's a lot of accessories to be able to do that so I'm not really sure it's going to be worth it for you now in addition to in Home console with HDMI it'll also work directly with a Nintendo switch via USBC however one thing to make note of is when you plug it in like this it actually makes the Nintendo switch think that it's stocked and so as a result the controls that are actually on the switch itself won't actually work at all and that's because the device thinks it's docked and that does disable those controls so instead if you want to play Nintendo switch games you have to remove those joycons you know set the tablet itself down and then play with the controll that way or of course you could use a Bluetooth controller if that's going to be a better fit for you so that's one of the two advantages of the xreal beam is that it will improve compatibility with things that may not work out of the box now the other advantage of the xra beam is actually more significant to me and that it has three different display modes which I found to be pretty great the first one is called the body anchor and what this will do is it'll suspend your image wherever you actually want it to be and it won't move around so as you're moving your head around the image itself will stay where it is and that's very similar to when you're using using a virtual reality thing you know like you're watching a movie and it's like a fake couch or whatever it's similar to that in the sense that you can move your head around and the image itself is going to stay stationary and I think that's really great in particular I found this to be a really great fit with more fast-paced or firstperson shooter games as you can imagine if it's just moving around with your eyes as you start to like kind of move around it's just kind of naturally as you're playing one of those more high-end games I found that it gives me a little bit of motion sickness with the body anchor thing it doesn't happen instead I can see exactly where it is and then I can kind of like move my head and eyes around as I naturally will do and it doesn't really mess me up at all and so I really do like that but of course bear in mind that it is going to have a couple disadvantages like these 72 frames per second and there will be that minimum latency which again I didn't notice but you may now the second video mode is called Smooth follow and I know it's really hard because I'm just describing it I can't actually show it but this one's pretty neat as well this one's kind of a hybrid between the other two what this will do is it'll stay relatively stationary but then as you move your head it'll move with it but it's slowly like it'll go like at a little bit of a delay and so what this means is if you're playing somewhere where you're moving around a lot say for example if you're in a car and you're watching a movie it won't be as jarring instead it'll stay kind of stable and it'll move along with the motion and so as a result if you do have issues with motion sickness like I do this can kind of be a nice solution as well and finally the third one is called side view this is basically a picture and picture function so instead of it taking up the whole screen you can have it just take up one of the four corners and so now you can kind of inter interact with others or maybe you know watch something else or do something else while you're still watching something in one corner I didn't really use this one that much just because I don't really like walking around with these glasses on but I don't know maybe that's something you would want to do so if you're comfortable with walking around like this and you want to have just a little bit thing like here on the left or whatever this is how you would have it set up and you could totally do that personally it's just a little bit awkward for me to walk around like this but it might suit you and so that is a neat option as well now another component of the xra beam that not in the regular glasses is the fact that it has a larger screen it'll blow things up instead of having the 130in like display that you have it's 330 instead now I personally found that that goes beyond what I can actually see like the glasses are actually being cut off at the corners but what you can do is when you have it in stationary mode you can kind of just move your head around and see those if you need to so I can see where that would be a good advantage in some use cases but not in others honestly I you can actually change it in the xre beam settings where you can just move it down to 120 in instead and so it's that normal viewing angle and that's honestly what I did for most of the games that I was playing so I think it's really going to be up to you whether or not you think that the xre beam is going to be worth that additional $120 the way I see it if I just had my regular xreal glasses then this might be something I would consider but if I'm paying $400 for new glasses this is something that I think that I would not get initially and then just use them as they are and then over time I would decide whether or not I want to spend that additional 100 $20 to get those additional features as it stands right now that's kind of how I feel about it yes if I had the old ones only and I wanted to upgrade instead of getting the glasses I would just get this instead but if you're going to be buying the new glasses from scratch then I don't know maybe wait and see and see if maybe the glasses on their own are going to be worth it now as we start wrapping up you're probably wondering whether or not I think that the xreal Air 2 glasses are going to be worth it just at that price point $400 for the regular ones 450 for the pros and I have to say that off the bat that's a lot of money just to be able to watch something you know obviously if you're going to buy a TV it's going to be around that same price as well and so this is kind of a TV you can put in your pocket but I'm not really sure if that's going to be a use case that will directly correlate to what you want to do for me I kind of think of them as an accessory to the other electronics I already have and so I'm not really sure for me personally it's going to be worth that upgraded price and there are some features of the Air 2 that are pretty neat number one is that refresh rate 120 Herz if you play games at that refresh rate is going to be pretty great in addition it's brighter now 25% more and then also it's a little bit lighter so they've got the technology a little bit better as well number one I think that the best factor to it is the improved audio in the sense that I no longer feel like I need Bluetooth earphones so that's pretty great too so the way I see it if you are now just jumping into the whole glasses thing you want to pick up a pair of glasses you're not sure which ones to get then yeah I think that the xreal air 2s are probably the best out there right now and that's even considering all the other brands and everything that I've tested at $400 I think that if I was in the budget to get one of these these are the ones I would get but I would probably get the $450 pro model instead I really like the fact that they will darken so you don't have to use those covers if you don't want this will make it more lightweight and also a little bit more natural feeling as well so that's what I would do I would get the $450 pro model now of course whether or not you're in the market for glasses going to be up to you maybe you're just curious about them in the first place and I will say that over the past year we've seen a big increase in the features from the Air1 the air 2s and that leads me to think that maybe the air 3s are going to be coming out next year so it's one of those things like with anything else when it comes to technology the longer you wait the better it might be and so if you're hankering for them glasses right now then yeah these might be the best ones but if you're patient and want to see how they will go in the future then I think that waiting is going to be in your best interest anyway that's about all I have to say about the xreal Air 2 glasses I think they are probably some of the best that are out there right now it's really going to come down to whether or not you're in the market to buy them in the first place let me know what you think in the comments Down Below have you bought any of these glasses before and how was that experience and are you looking to up to the xreal Air 2 as always thank you for watching and be sure to like And subscribe if you found this helpful and we will see you next time happy [Music] gaming

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 155,040

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Id: 8j1w4Zth7og

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023