Nreal Air AR Glasses

3 Reviews for Nreal Air AR Glasses

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Timairee S. – October 9, 2022

   Update: I had an old pair of glasses with broken frames on hand. With those, I was able to remove the lenses from the frames and drill two holes into each lens to mount to the included frame Nreal sends for prescription glasses. Very surprised that I was able to do this without any equipment outside of an eyeglass repair kit. I used a small phillips head and flat head screwdriver from the kit interchangeably to drill the holes by hand. It took.. awhile. I was able to get the holes to line up well by removing the included lenses from the frames that Nreal sends to line up over the lens I was going to modify. I still need an updated prescription, but this is excellent until I get the new lenses and small text is MUCH clearer.I have had these things for about two days and already in love with them. It should also be noted that I wear glasses, although my vision isn’t so bad that I can’t enjoy these AR glasses without the prescription lenses. Next week, I have an eye appointment to replace my current prescription glasses so I’ll speak to them then about the included template and getting some prescription lenses in the frames Nreal provides. As it stands right now, I can play games and watch TV just fine on the glasses, but smaller text is blurry. Web browsing/using Discord/social media chats is not going to be easy for me until I get contacts or prescription lenses in those frames for the Airs. If I remember, I may mosey back around to this review to update it after I can actually see 20/20 with these on.They can get a little heavy after awhile, but the arms are adjustable and three sets of nosepads with varying heights came with the glasses. There is a tiny square of plastic that come with the glasses which make removing the nose pads easy if you notch it between the metal on the frame for the nosepads and the plastic of the glasses. You can use a little bit of leverage to loosen the nose pads so that you can pull them out of the frames. After some tinkering around, I found a combination of arm angle/nose padding that’s comfortable for me.The arms have three adjustable angles. My advice is to hold the glasses by the lenses to brace them, maybe put the shield on because fiNGeRpriNTS. The hinge for adjusting the arm angle is located in the silver segment between the plastic of the frames and plastic of each arm. Grab the arm you want to adjust in your hand not holding the lenses/frame and bend it up/down. I dunno what to tell you other than if DOWN doesn’t work then try UP, because I can’t recall what arm angle my Airs were shipped with (there’s high/middle/low). With that said, you will probably have to use more force than you’re comfortable with to get the hinge to snap into a new position. Once you’ve got it, you’ll hear a very snappy *click* that’ll let you know you haven’t just broken your $400 fun-goggles. It gets a lot easier from here. The scariest part for me was worrying that I’d break my glasses.The screen is so CRISP and vivid even without my glasses on. As another reviewer mentioned, there is some slight blurring at the edges of the screen, haloing around bright lettering on dark backgrounds, and it’s capped at 30 FPS in gaming mode on the Steam Deck. Like the other reviewer said, Nreal has been public about working on this and with Steam. I’m not too bothered about the cap, mostly I’ve been playing remastered PS2 titles where 30 frames is plenty.AR Space.It’s cool? I wish I could get it to work better or figure out how to add apps to the AR space aside from the ones which are provided. AR Space locks up and/or crashes sometimes. It’s not too frustrating to restart the app, but I haven’t delved into it much. My phone is an LG Thinq V60 5G, which is on the compatible phone devices listed provided by Nreal. I expect that future patches will improve the AR Space experience for me and more user experience with Nebula will bring familiarity that makes enjoying this feature a bit easier. If I could add apps like Netflix, Hulu, ect. and juggle windows without freezes or crashing then that would be a huge leap in that direction. As it stands right now, I’m not sure that there IS a feature to add your app shortcuts to the AR Space so don’t assume that just because I can’t that it can’t be done. But AR Space isn’t why I got these glasses and they still deserve 5 stars from me.They function as a portable monitor for TV and gaming. A couple of weeks ago, the TV in my personal space/home office went out. After checking out prices to fix it or replace the TV, I was fine tossing it to the curb. It had probably been busted for a month and I didn’t know, because I seldom turn it on anymore. This TV was 4-5 years old and didn’t get much use being in my office/personal space. My family mostly hangs in communal spaces and, if I’m in my office, then I’m either workin’ or gaming on my gaming PC (which hasn’t seen much gaming since the Steam Deck got here). We’ve already got a TV in the master bedroom and two in the living room for my family to game on. When I saw these glasses, they looked perfect for me and MUCH cheaper than replacing a television that I hardly use. Last night, my family was playing OW2 while I watched Hulu and played on the Steam Deck through these glasses. It was nice, because I had my own little space without having to claim any actual real estate or devices in the living room.I could still interact and engage with my fam. My attention span is very short so I typically let my loved ones enjoy their gaming sessions on the TVs/consoles ‘cos that’s their enrichment activity in the evenings. We had discussed putting THREE televisions in the living room for all of us to have our own, but that’s a lot of screens. With the Nreal Airs, I only take up as much space as ME and I can easily start or end whatever task I want to begin whether it be binging weird, rabbit hole documentaries on YT, playing on the Deck, or watching TV shows. I love that I can have my own introvert bubble to do boring me things while being near my family and still engaged with them. I don’t know if that’s a “selling point” for anyone but me, but this is what I really wanted from these glasses and they delivered.Not just that, I can wear these while doing mundane chores around the house. It takes a little adjusting to orient yourself to being in the real world with a screen on your face, but you can view through one lens or both with the light shield off and still interact with the actual world. I saw a YT reviewer point out that these would be great for self-taught musicians who learn from YT videos and I’m going to be working this into my lessons. Having the ability to see the screen, my fingers on the frets without having to look from one screen to my hand is HUGE. I’m really looking forward to using these for YT tutorials on crafting, cooking, music, ect.

2. 

   Alayna H. – February 21, 2023

   As far as quality goes, the packaging is okay, the product vastly over priced and incompatible with most devices, including iPhone, if you wish to use earphones. When I say most, I mean about 3 phones are supported, all high end expensive ones to boot.The field of view is very limited, unless you have space for a 103 inch screen infront of you, it will not display 103 inch screen, so forget using these on planes and transport etc.The privacy policy is extremely invasive and you are not able to even switch the device on without signing away your browser data and all other personal information. So ever video you watch, they will collect your data. Product support is also non existent.I used to have an old pair of glasses like this back in the 90s, and they were better. They really were.You are also only able to freeze the position of the screen, when using their absolutely terrible app ui, and not when mirroring a phone.I’ve faced nothing but opposition when attempting to return these and from my communications with the seller, doubt if I ever manage to send them back, would not find some issue, to prevent refunding me.I’m not the sort of person to give poor reviews, but I do not want others to make the same mistake I have, and purchase this product. It is truly a waste of time and money.

3. 

   Ryan – February 24, 2023

   pretty fun to use, but the problem was they stopped working a week after using them,i tested the power going through the adapter i was using and worked completely fine, turns out there was no power going through the glasses they don’t work. i don’t know if it was the way these were shipped but they would cut out on me all the time, i’ve tried different adaptors and still nothing works

4. 

   Paul – March 3, 2023

   I’ve owned these glasses for a week now and think as long as you know and understand the limitations, there is no better product for the price. These are NOT VR glasses, AR with these seems mostly like a gimmick at this point in time. They work great as a giant screen on your face. Putting them on the first time felt like I was just thrown into the future.I work in tech and am also a tech enthusiast. I’ve used these glasses so far with a steam deck, iPad, Macbook, and Samsung Galaxy s20 ultra. I’m keeping them mainly to use with my Macbook, S20, and steam deck. All for slightly different reasons. I’ve used the glasses for about 20 hours total over the last week.Starting with the glasses themselves, I mainly bought them to use as a giant screen on my face, and they excel at that. The FOV is narrower than i’m used to with VR headsets, but in this case it works in Nreal’s favor since the lower FOV means a higher pixel density and things are very clear. Much clearer than I thought 1080p screens would be. Text is totally readable and there is no screen door effect like with my Quest 2 VR headset. The only part of the screen that gets a little weird is the top of the screen if the glasses sit too low on my nose or the bottom outside corners of the screen if it sits too high. My IPD is 69, so i’m a little on the wider side but when I get the glasses situated on my face correctly, I can see the entire screen. The colors are very vibrant (more so in dark rooms rather during the day but even during the day its bright enough to see just fine)Comfort wise, the nose pads aren’t bad for short sessions, but anything longer than an hour or so and it makes me wish they were a little softer or some sort of memory foam or something other than tiny silicon pads. The glasses themselves are also a little short on the ear bars so the curve on the ear bars don’t wrap around my ears like they really should, the clamping pressure is also a little tight for my head but not bad enough to cause me headaches or anything like that. Just a little sore after a few hours. I do wish the glasses were overall a little bigger, i think they would be a lot more comfortable (at least for me)The included shade works really well, I wish the glasses themselves didn’t have tint so if I want to use it with my macbook its not like i’m looking through sunglasses to my macbook. I’d rather have clear lenses and the option to put on the shade to black it out if I want to only use the Nreal glasses as my screen.I do like the glasses do not have any battery in them and pulls power off of the device you plug into. Makes the glasses light and extremely portable.iPad use – basically acts like you just plugged in an external monitor, it mirrors the screen and if you go to watch a video it’ll throw the video to the glasses. Nothing super amazing and I don’t like that I can’t turn the iPad screen off. Thats not Nreal’s fault though, thats on apple.Steam deck use – These work really well with the steam deck. The steam deck screen turns off and you get a big screen in front of you. Its great. Battery life on the steam deck seems about the same using the glasses vs using the screen on the steam deck. Its really comfortable to not have to look down at the screen.Macbook Pro m1 – This is where Nreal’s Nebula software really shines. Basically it tricks your Macbook into putting 3 virtual screens in space above your actual Macbook. The middle screen is the same as your Macbook screen but you can look left and right and see the other two screens. Very nice for productivity and I see myself using this extensively while working. I just wish the glasses themselves had clear lenses so if the shade wasn’t I could still see my Macbook screen clearly.Samsung S20 Ultra – This is where these really shine IMO. There are a couple ways you can use the glasses with android phones. Mirroring the screen (pretty much the same experience as the iPad, functional but not great), the Nebula app (Feels like a gimmick, the software maturity isn’t there to be useful yet IMO), or in Samsung Dex mode.Dex mode is the best mode for this. Basically gives you a full size desktop screen in the glasses like you are on a computer and all your android apps work within it in windowed or full screen mode. Pairing an xbox controller to the phone and then using xbox gamepass, or steam link to stream games from my gaming PC is really amazing that something so portable can give you such a great experience. Put the phone on a wireless charger and you can basically play games as long as you want. Watching TV from hulu, netflix, plex, etc also just works. I can see this being amazing for flying, long car rides, train rides, in bed while sick, etc.These are expensive but this is the first piece of technology i’ve used in a while where i’ve felt this amazed and excited for what the future holds for this kind of product. I think its worth the price of entry, but its much more an accessory to devices you may already have rather than a main device so my recommendation is to look at what you have and if you would benefit with your current devices or not. For me, it does but I can understand where it wouldn’t for a lot of people at this point in time.

5. 

   Rated 3 out of 5

   M. Durkin – March 7, 2023

   Let me start this review by confirming that there is nothing misrepresented or misstated by the manufacturer with regards to the product. It does work as advertised. My reason for rating this a 3 is more about what is not communicated than what is. If your use case for this is as a second (extended) phone screen, this review is probably not for you. If you use case is for a second or extended desktop for your computer, this review applies to you.I should also mention that I suspected some of the limitations would be the case before I bought it and I bought it anyway. I am planning on keeping it despite the limitations because I do see some value in the device.I am not a novice to AR or Virtual workspaces. I have used Oculus with Horizon workrooms and ImmersedVr for about 18 months. I love those, they work very well in general, but there are some problems that I was hoping to address with these glasses. The first problem was that I didn’t want to have to have my device on the same wireless network to have virtual monitors. The second was the size for travel. Depending upon how I am traveling, I was hoping to not bring my oculus headsets, they take up too much space. Also, the requirement for Oculus to have a ‘space’ makes it sometimes difficult to use (you have to set up a stationary area or desk). Anyway, I thought this would be easier to use for plane travel and to not have to set up a desk, and that is true. The other thing was the lighting. Oculus requires just the right amount of light. Not too much, not too little. Sometimes that is hard to achieve. Particularly when I am traveling and working outside at a campground. I have an elaborate set-up to make sure that the lighting is right and it is a lot to travel with and control throughout the day. I wanted to get away from that. These also do that pretty well.So far, I haven’t really give a reason to rate it a 3, bear with me, I am about to. I knew that when I bought these that there is also a lighting requirement, though I reasoned that they would be somewhat better than the Oculus (less sensitive to lighting). They pretty much are, but there is still a problem. In my home office, I can absolutely control the light (I have smart lights, can adjust the colors, brightness, the ‘temperature’ (hue, warmth etc) of the lights, so not really a problem here. But when you are traveling, you can not generally do that. nReal has a solution for that though, and here is where the problem is. You can black out the screen by putting the shade over the lenses, those will completely black out the screen and your monitors are vivid and easy to see. Unfortunately, you lose the AR aspect of this completely. You can not see your keyboard at all, this makes sense right? I mean you completely covered up your glasses. I was worried about this, but hoped that the nReal would be less sensitive to the light. Hopefully NReal will offer the ability for virtual keyboards in the future like you can with Oculus (you have to have supported virtual keyboards, which I do).There are some other things that I didn’t like about using this as virtual monitor. I do have the M1 MAC with Apple Silicon (the only supported computer for nReal desktop), which is the ONLY reason that I purchased this. with this app, you can launch up to three virtual monitors. That is similar to Oculus Horizon Workrooms and two less than you can get with ImmersedVr. I got the desktop to work after activating my glasses with my android phone, it is a pretty basic app. You can adjust the distance, size and angle of the monitors, but that is it. You can not adjust the arc of the displays, which looks very amateurish in the glasses. The screens are flat, even when you change the angle. You can not make the screens curved, which is a more natural view. Hopefully this will come in a future update. You can not adjust the resolution of your monitors (you can’t in Horizon workroom either, but you can in ImmersedVr).I wear glasses, which I can’t with these glasses. They do provide you with a pair of half spectacles that I suppose you can get a prescription in, but I have yet to figure that out. It should be noted that the half glasses are more for reading things that are AR (not the virtual monitors) and would be useless if you have the blackout covers on the glasses. That aside, I was able to see the screens pretty clearly by adjusting the size of the virtual screens and the distance from my view in the nReal desktop app for Apple silicon. That brings the next problem. To make it readable, I needed to make the screen larger and move it closer to my face. When I did that, I could only see a portion of the screen. It’s kind of like if you are reading something with a magnifying glass. You have to pan the magnifying glass across the thing that you are reading and you get an exploded view of what you are reading, but the other part is not readable. It’s kind of like that. I appreciate that it is adjustable, but there is a-lot of work that needs to be done here to make this a viable product for computer AR glasses.Other things that were annoying… There is light coming in from the sides of the glasses, this is very distracting. it would be better if there were some kind of side blocking that reduced or eliminated the side light. Oculus makes a much more immersive environment.The tethered cable is short. I wish it were about three feet longer. My computer is normally on a stand about 2 feet from me. I have to more or less sit with my stomach right up to the desk to use this with my computer on it’s stand. I have to move the computer to make this comfortable.When I made my virtual desktop (citrix) full screen, it locked up the glasses and the only way to recover was to shut them off and reconnect them. The first time it happened I thought it might have been coincidence, so I tested it three times. All three times the glasses locked up. This is a bit of a problem because when you make the virtual desktop full screen, it changes the screen resolution to that monitor that you make it full screen on. This makes is much easier to read small fonts, which I have to deal with when programming during my daily work. I can get around this by adjusting the individual application fonts, but that is annoying and not something that I have to do with Horizon workroom or ImmersedVR. You should be able to full-screen an app without locking up the glasses.Also, when you move your head, the screen moves with you, but it can be very awkward with the motion tracking. Sometimes it doesn’t track well. You can adjust the height of the screens in your view as well as the right to left placement, but not the tilt (or at least I do not see how). There is very little instruction on how to use this device and the documentation is poor. I understand the virtual desktop app (Nebula for Mac) is in beta. It has been in beta for over a year and doesn’t seem to have gotten any better from what I can tell.All in all, these are OK, but need a-lot of work. If you are using this to extend your android phone, it does that fairly well. If you are wanting to use these as a virtual workspace for your MAC M1 with Apple silicon, this is definitely a lacking product for that.

6. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Tyler wickenheiser – March 25, 2023

   Product works great as long as its compatible with your device

7. 

   Sam – April 2, 2023

   Experience on a Samsung Note 8Samsung Note 8 is NOT is the list of supported phones, but I tried to install the Nebula app through the play store anyway.It took over 3 tries to get the Nebula app to install on my Samsung Note 8. I’m not sure if it was a phone space issue as I had over 1GB free, but after removing some apps and trying to reinstall twice, I was pleasantly surprised when it managed to install.I’m not sure if I needed the app as connecting the glasses to the Note 8 was recognized by the Samsung. I think this is because Samsung Note 8 has support for Samsung DEX. And it work well with the glasses. I now have a fuller desktop experience from my phone without a monitor. I never used Samsung DEX until I got the glasses. The phone can be used as a track pad, but some juggling is required if you need to type with the phone as you’ll need to move the glass or look below or above the glasses to see what you’re typing.The other mode that worked for me was mirroring the phone screen on the glasses. This works on the Note 8 app also without the Nebula app but the app maybe needed for other phone that do not have native support. The AR feature on the Nebula app was disabled on app but Casting feature was enabled. The casting feature seems to work like the native Note 8 screen share, so I don’t have a use for the app on the Note 8.The ScreenThe screen is gorgeous as OLED technology is great for rich colors and dark blacks. Better experience than most monitor not factoring the lower resolution of the glasses. The resolution is just good enough. Any lower I think I would have issues as I do think a 1920×1080 screen is the lowest resolution I would comfortably use for a device.Nebula App on the Mac.The Mac M1 App is still in beta as of 12/6/2022 (time of this review).I was really nicely surprised when this worked. I thought since the AR feature on the Nebula phone app was disabled, I would not be able to experience this, but it works on the Mac M1 app.I think there’s a gyroscope that can detect when I’m looking straight vs when my headed is turned. The application allows three screens to be created (there’s an option for 2 screens also). For the three screens, can put an application in front of me and two to the side that I can turn my head to glance at. I think this would be good for portable multiscreen setup without carrying additional monitors.Sometimes, the app doesn’t work and there’s some tinkering to get it to work. But once working, it seems to be stable enough for me to use it in the future.Also videos from Amazon Prime did not display in the Nebula app but worked outside of it. I could get multiple youtube streams to play but not sure if that’s of much use. I think the Nebula app acts as a intermediary layer to create the multiple screens and maybe Amazon’s content protection can’t get past it. I’m not sure.Single screen setup where the glasses is an mirroring or extending the MAC display without the Nebula seems to work fine.Chromebooks and LaptopsI tried the glasses on 2 Chromebook and 2 laptops.I have a higher end 4K Chromebook that supports a 4K screen and the glasses works well with it and displays in the glasses’ full HD resolution.I have another lower end 1388×768 Chromebook and the glasses works, but only displays at 1388×768. This is a limitation on the Chromebook video hardware or driver.I have a Asus Zephyrus ZG14 gaming laptop a couple of years old with a RTX 2080 video card and the glasses work with that laptop. I don’t think there’s a windows Nebula app. Playing games on the glasses is doable. I only tried Cyberpunk 2077 and Flight Simulator 2020.The Cyberpunk 2077 worked fine but I’m not really gamer. I just ran it to see how the game would run on the glasses. There’s no Nebula App on windows (I don’t believe) but it would be amazing for Flight Sim to work with he glasses with 3 screens. With just one screen, flight sim works fine as the glasses is just another monitor.There’s one odd experience with the glasses however, when the plane is turning, I typically tilt my head to keep my view aligned with the ground. This work for a fixed monitor, but the glasses turn with your head. This was disorienting and make flight sim not so useable with the glasses.For the above, 3 I just connected the cable just connects USB-C to the USB-C port on the laptops. No HDMI cable needed. I think the USB-C port needs to have display capability.My work laptop should have worked with the glasses but connecting the glasses did nothing. It’s a later model laptop also with full USB-C charging and supports 2 external monitors at work. I’m able to use a graphics tablet/display with the usb-c port so I’m not sure why the glasses would not work with the laptop.I think another good use of the glasses is for drone piloting, but I’m not sure if this will work unless your setup has a separate HDMI setup. The usb-c plug of the drone controller is connected to the phone so there’s not a way to connect the glasses to the phone for the HDMI out. There is an adapter for iPhones, but I’m not sure if this would work with my setup.Hope this helps someone looking into getting these glasses.Good enough me for to keep.