What that you must know
- The XREAL Air 2 Extremely was introduced at CES 2024 and ships in March 2024 for $699.
- Designed for builders, it provides 3D atmosphere sensors for the primary time, supporting handtracking and 3D mesh creation.
- It sports activities full HD decision per eye, 120Hz refresh fee, and a 52º FOV, with the next PPD rating than the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
- The glasses weigh 80g, heavier than commonplace glasses however considerably lighter than your typical mixed-reality headset.
XREAL plans to launch a brand new, high-end pair of augmented actuality glasses this March, focused at builders. With the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional set to launch first and seize all of the headlines, XREAL is advertising and marketing its Air 2 Extremely glasses because the reasonably priced, hand-tracking featherweight to Apple’s $3,500 heavyweight.
Just like the XREAL Air 2 launched late final 12 months, the Air 2 Extremely has a conventional glasses type issue as a substitute of the huge mixed-reality headset design of the Imaginative and prescient Professional and Meta Quest 3.
That limits the potential discipline of view (FoV) to 52º, about half what a conventional MR headset can ship. However XREAL notes that the precise pixels per diploma (PPD) is 42, nicely above the Quest 3 (25) and “anticipated to be greater than Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional” and its 23 million pixels.
You are still getting a dense digital show in your imaginative and prescient, in different phrases, and not using a pound of weight in your head and neck. At 80g, the XREAL Air 2 Extremely is about 30g heavier than Meta Ray-Ban sensible glasses — as a result of the entire spatial computing tech packed inside. However for builders who want an all-day work system, a 2.8oz pair of glasses sounds feather-light in lieu of to a one-pound MR headset.
In comparison with the $399 Air 2, the $699 Air 2 Extremely has the identical 500 nits of brightness, 120Hz refresh fee, and FHD decision. The important thing spec distinction is the additional 6 levels of FoV, sufficient to ship a 154-inch digital show for a film theater-level streaming expertise.
The larger distinction is, after all, the brand new 3D atmosphere sensors catered to builders. The glasses can “present simultaneous location and mapping” of your atmosphere, together with “hand-tracking, 3D mesh creation, semantic scene understanding,” and imprecise “future AI capabilities.”
Operating off of Unity and XREAL’s personal SDK, the Air 2 Extremely is supposed to assist builders construct AR experiences and 3D variations of 2D apps, then check them utilizing their hand-tracking capabilities. The glasses can sync with Android, iOS, Home windows, and Mac.
The glasses additionally help the brand new spatial video format from the iPhone 15 Professional, which means you’ll be able to movie them together with your cellphone after which watch them on the Air 2 Extremely “with out the necessity for an costly Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.”
The XREAL Air 2 Extremely launches in March 2024 for $699, which sounds costly till you place Apple’s $3,500 price ticket subsequent to it for context. That is why we’re not shocked XREAL selected to select a combat with Apple in its press launch.
General, the Air 2 Extremely has us excited, even when it is overkill for non-developers like us. The truth that XREAL managed to pack hand-tracking tech into this transportable type issue offers us hope that sensible glasses will proceed to evolve past their present limitations.
