The Xreals Air 2 glasses put a big screen on your face and will ship in the US next month

Xreal is taking pre-orders for the latest generation of its augmented reality glasses, the Xreal Air 2 and Air 2 Pro, for release in November in the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy. These glasses are a sequel to the first generation of Air glasses that were released last year under the former name of Nreal. Starting at $399, they connect to phones, computers and a variety of gaming devices to display the display through a pair of sunglasses.

The Air 2 glasses are an iterative upgrade from the original $379 Air. They use Micro OLED displays to flash a 1920 x 1080 pixel display in front of your eyes, the same resolution as the original Air. But they promise a brighter image than their predecessors (500 nits compared to 400 nits in air) and about 10 percent thinner and lighter than the first-gen version, which weighed 79 grams. (This makes them slightly heavier than the 50-gram Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which have a camera but no built-in display.) Xreal says it’s improved the temple and nose pads to provide a more comfortable fit, too. It promises to reengineer the sound system to deliver sound directly to your ears without leaking into the rest of the room.

The Air 2 Pro, which starts at $449, gives you one big extra feature: Light Control, an option that uses electrochromic glass to control how much light is allowed through the glass, from full transparency to muted tint. Both models are scheduled to ship in mid-to-late November in the US and UK, and will appear in the rest of Europe in December. They have already been launched in China and Japan.

Unlike many augmented reality glasses, including Xreals first-generation Lite glasses, the Air 2 and Air 2 Pro lack cameras that can track or record the user’s surroundings. This means they can’t do some of the things people often associate with AR glasses, like sticking virtual objects to walls or floors. Instead of a drastic combination of physical and virtual, they are designed to be used as a large screen that floats in front of your face. While the concept is far from new, Xreals makes it unusually stylish, easy to use, and (by AR glasses standards) pretty normal looking. It also gives you a real view of the outside world instead of a fleeting video feed like Apple or Meta. The downside is that even with that boosted brightness, you’ll usually have some image clarity in anything but a very dark room.

The Air 2 uses a USB-C cable with a USB-C or HDMI output to connect to a wide range of supported devices. Xreal supports Valve Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Nintendo Switch, along with Xbox and PlayStation consoles, iOS, and iOS. Android devices and PCs and Macs. (This long list makes sense because it’s basically an external monitor that you should be able to attach to almost anything!) Buyers can choose between graphite gray or carmine red glass, and an optional adhesive skin available in six colors: blue Add navy, royal blue. , Verdigris, Dogwood Dale, Jonquil and Dartmouth Green.