{"id":904246,"date":"2026-09-24T22:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904246\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T22:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:36:15","slug":"in-the-race-for-the-dorkiest-ar-glasses-only-one-seems-built-for-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904246\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Race for the Dorkiest AR Glasses, Only One Seems Built for Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one fact of life that we just have to accept about today\u2019s XR glasses: nobody looks cool in them<\/a>. So if we\u2019re going to compare devices like the Snap Specs<\/a> and the Xreal Aura<\/a>, we\u2019re not ranking them on dorkiness. It\u2019s a case of pure usability, not pure innovation, that will determine which one will be put in front of your eyes.<\/p>\n

Collectively, Gizmodo\u2019s consumer tech team has spent way too much time sitting with wearable screens inches from our eyes. Meta\u2019s VR Glasses<\/a>, announced Wednesday, are promising yet another realm of more-portable AR. We\u2019ve already talked extensively about both Xreal\u2019s Aura<\/a> and Snap Specs<\/a>, so we don\u2019t need to sit here and rehash everything. At Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon Summit, I used both, one after the other, and there\u2019s only one that feels built for the current moment.<\/p>\n

\"SnapYes, waveguide lenses are cool, but you\u2019re not going to walk around with these overly large Specs, not unless you want somebody to slap them off your face. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019ll want to know is what Xreal told me about the battery life for Aura. With the connected compute and battery puck at full charge, the company told me they can get around four hours of use with typical passive or active experiences, whether that\u2019s watching video or running various Android apps. They may get as much as five hours with simple productivity work, and potentially more if you\u2019re only mirroring a screen from your laptop or gaming device like a Steam Deck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Snap promised<\/a> a similar battery life on its Specs of around four hours with mixed use. I don\u2019t have the capacity to test either for as long as I would need to. Aura necessitates you stick a phone-sized compute puck in your pocket, whereas the Specs offer the full freedom of traditional (though oversized) spectacles. There may actually be a benefit to this puck, with the ability to charge while in use thanks to its two USB-C ports. You can use these same ports to hook up another device and use it as a secondary screen.<\/p>\n

\"XrealThere are many select experiences Snap and Xreal want to sell you on, but what matters more is how much use you\u2019ll get out of your regular everyday apps. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

I went through several apps in Specs, including a golf putting helper, a round of augmented reality chess, and a few other AR-specific experiences. No, I\u2019m not all that interested in using AR Snapchat. Despite a few finicky moments when the hand tracking didn\u2019t recognize my inputs, it was certainly cool. Novelty will eventually fade, but for now their 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) capabilities are wild to see running wholly within a pair of glasses.<\/p>\n

Aura is simpler. It\u2019s running Android XR, Google\u2019s new Android-based operating system that lets you access all your regular media apps, like YouTube. AR games like Oh My Galaxy! ran without any issue. Then Xreal took me through an enterprise app built for medical professionals. The app let you stick a model of somebody\u2019s head in AR space, then look through the skull as if analyzing a CT scan in 3D. Again, it\u2019s a unique experience, and it may be useful for a very select kind of medical professional. But one thing Aura has that Snap doesn\u2019t is the entire Android ecosystem behind it, with the promise of using all your typical phone apps in AR.<\/p>\n

Xreal\u2019s glasses are less compact and aren\u2019t as novel as the Specs, though they feel like they\u2019re made more for the moment, not some idealized future where glasses replace our phones. The main distinction is a simple one: FOV\u2014aka field of view. Snap Specs present a 51-degree FOV in front of your eyes, while Xreal can get 70 degrees. The difference is immediate if you use both pairs of smart glasses back-to-back. In Snap Specs, I sometimes couldn\u2019t fit entire windows inside the narrow alley of the screen. Aura by comparison was large enough to have at least one large window open and\u2014maybe\u2014enough for two smaller windows to become your best productivity robot.<\/p>\n

\"XrealThere are other benefits to having a puck, other than the weight on your face. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

In terms of power, there\u2019s essentially no way to compare each. Snap said its Specs are using two Qualcomm Snapdragon XR chips, though the company is not very forthcoming with full specifications. Aura is powered by the Qualcomm Reality Elite<\/a> processor, and based on my experience with the only other Android XR device available, the Samsung Galaxy XR<\/a>, the new chip is making the whole system run so much smoother.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be frank, you\u2019ll probably only wear any of these XR glasses at home or as in-flight entertainment. It\u2019s not just the fact you\u2019ll look like the most comical \u201cglasshole.\u201d The Snap Specs are not light enough to treat them like your typical sunglasses. They also cost $2,195. Xreal has praised its pair, which will come in under $1,500, though we\u2019ll have to see what happens when it hits the scene later this year.<\/p>\n

(Full disclosure: travel and lodging were paid by Qualcomm, and Gizmodo did not guarantee any coverage as a condition of accepting the trip.)\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s one fact of life that we just have to accept about today\u2019s XR glasses: nobody looks cool…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[472360,1332,64,63,12247,1774,9336,105,176537],"class_list":["post-904246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-adnroid","tag-ar-glasses","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hands-on","tag-smart-glasses","tag-snap","tag-technology","tag-xreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}