Stuff Verdict
A wonderfully bright, vibrant and clear pair of wearable display specs with some neat (if not always necessary) extra features. The Xreal 1 Pro+ works best for movies and games but can also help you g
Pros
- Bright, colourful visuals with great all-round clarity
- Lightweight and comfortable to wear for hours at a time
- Electrochromatic dimming abilities are handy
Cons
- 3D upscaling not entirely free of visual artifacts
- Optional camera accessory’s gesture controls are inconsistent
Introduction
Xreal’s definition of smart glasses is very different to Meta’s: the 1 Pro+ is more a wearable display than a vessel for a smart assistant, plugging into a smartphone, laptop, tablet or gaming handheld to put a 170in screen mere millimetres from your eyeballs.
The firm’s $599/£599 new flagship keeps the head tracking and clever electrochromic lenses of the regular Xreal 1 Pro but improves comfort, adds faster 2D-to-3D conversion and boosts brightness to give your games and movies extra impact, whether at home or while travelling. A camera accessory can also bring gesture controls into the mix.
After trying one out for the past week, I can absolutely see the appeal for big screen gaming and in-flight entertainment – but probably won’t be giving up my computer monitor for home working just yet.
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Has the Xreal 1 Pro+ changed its design at all?
The 1 Pro+ subscribes to the “if it ain’t broke” approach to styling, keeping virtually everything unchanged from the 1 Pro. It still looks convincingly like a pair of sunglasses, in matte black with a flash of silver. You’ll spot the same Bose-branded speaker grilles and same handful of buttons built into the temples. The USB-C port is still stealthily placed at temple tip. You’ve still got to work hard to avoid it picking up fingerprint smudges and smears.
About the only tweak is to the nose pad, which was done in the name of comfort. I didn’t have access to the old version to compare, but had no complaints about how the pressure is distributed now. They also keep the optics aligned, so I didn’t have to regularly reposition the frames. Being able to tilt the temples slightly also helps on that front.
You do still need the glasses pressed quite close to your face for the most secure fit, which can leave a sweat line where the bridge contacts your forehead, but comfort is still next level compared to something like Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset, on account of the light weight (less than 90g) and the fact you wear them like a pair of regular glasses rather than needing a head strap.
Inserts are needed if you wear corrective lenses; I opted to wear contact lenses for testing, as my prescription is especially strong and I didn’t want to wait for a third party to knock me up a pair. Clipping the inserts in looks easy enough though.
The Pro+ arrives in a hard-shell carry case with just enough room for both the glasses and the USB-C cable, though a way to neatly separate the two would’ve been nice.
What features make the Xreal 1 Pro+ stand out?
Being a wired unit with very little onboard processing, the Pro+ is refreshingly simple. You plug it into your gadget of choice – I largely tested with a MacBook Air, Steam Deck and an Android smartphone – and it boots up, with an image appearing in the prisms a few seconds later. This went more smoothly on a Pixel 10 Pro XL than it did an Oppo Find X10 Pro Max, with the latter asking for permission to mirror the phone’s screen every time it went into standby.
The four buttons on the right temple control volume, navigate the on-screen menus, and let you assign shortcuts to a single-, long- or double-press. I made one to quickly dim the electrochromatic lenses, which makes visibility much easier in bright environments and is something you won’t find on rival wearable display specs. A shortcut that turned everything fully transparent, disabling the screens temporarily so you can see your surroundings without taking the glasses off – albeit with the prisms still obscuring at least part of your view – was also very useful.
Those buttons are also how you get the $99/£99 Xreal Eye camera attachment to snap 12MP photos or record short Full HD video clips. It has 2GB of on-board memory and you must manually transfer them to another device. The camera itself plugs into the bottom of the bridge but is small enough it didn’t butt up against my nose. Given the Xreal 1 Pro+ only functions while tethered to another device you’re not at risk of being accused of using pervert glasses – and besides, the real reason to consider picking up the Xreal Eye is to add gesture controls for using your connected kit hands-free.
It adds six degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) tracking, up from the 3DoF baked into the glasses themselves. So instead of just matching your head movements so the screen is always visible, or anchor it to a specific point in space, you can use your hand like a mouse cursor and pinch to click. This is very much still in beta, with scroll motions proving especially tricky for me. I could see it coming in handy for quickly skipping to the next video in a playlist but it’s nowhere near as accurate as the prototype Meta VR Glasses I tried in September. I would sooner reach for my phone and use its touchscreen instead. Being able to anchor the screen in virtual space and walk around it is another neat trick, but one I rarely used.
How easy is the Xreal 1 Pro+’s interface to get around?
At first I found it a little confusing having two menus – one icon-based with just a few key features like transparency, screen size, brightness and volume, the other text-based with more in-depth options – but once I’d consigned the button combination to wake each one to muscle memory it made more sense.
The simpler menu got more use, as I’d regularly adjust the brightness and strength of the electrochromatic dimming. The more detailed one was still useful, though, with options to enable 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide modes that are a boon for work. Connected to my MacBook and set to extend rather than mirror, I could have multiple windows open at once without having to minimise all the time. It was genuinely handy when away from home, but not something I’d reach for when a regular computer monitor is available.
There’s also a side mode that puts a 16:9 picture in the top left or right corner of your vision. This is meant to let you do things in the ‘real world’ with a picture-in-picture, but the lenses can’t fully undim so it still feels like you’re looking through sunglasses. Fine if you’re outdoors, less useful if you’re sat in front of a computer.
Dig deeper and you’ll find a choice of three display modes, a colour temperature slider and two image upscaling options: one that boosts standard dynamic range content to HDR, and another that converts 2D footage to 3D. More on those below.
Does the Xreal 1 Pro+ impress on image quality?
With a 57-degree field of view, the 1 Pro+’s prism lenses are among the widest in its class. They let the 1920×1080-per-eye micro-OLED displays fill a generous amount of your vision, to the equivalent of a 171in cinema screen. General clarity is fantastic, with clear text and enough fine detail on display to make the most of Full HD content. I didn’t notice the ‘screen door’ effect like on headsets where you’re looking directly at the display panels, and only saw a small amount of shimmer in very fine text elements. Refresh rate tops out at 120fps, ensuring smooth scrolling and motion. Gaming is an absolute joy.
Brightness has seen a big step up from the original model, now peaking at 1200 nits. Visuals now have a serious amount of oomph, even in the Standard mode. Colours are rich and contrast is great. Black levels aren’t going to worry an OLED TV unless you’re sat in total darkness – the electrochromatic dimming can only be so effective – but even during the day I had few reasons to grumble, even while watching dimly-lit scenes.
The AI HDR option boosts colours and brightness rather effectively, without going OTT on saturation. The trailer for the new Jumanji: Open World movie saw its highlights made more impactful and everything just looks more vibrant across the board. Native HDR support on devices using DisplayPort over USB-C is flakey at best so I appreciate Xreal including the option. I left it enabled pretty much all of the time.
3D upscaling wasn’t quite as convincing, though it has definitely improved between generations. The previous version could only convert at 30fps, but here you’re getting a much smoother 60fps presentation. In some videos it separated objects and people with convincing depth and minimal artifacting, if not quite to the same level of content originally shot in 3D. Other content I tried saw visible shimmering around object edges, which could prove distracting. AI HDR is also disabled while in this mode. It’s a fun addition, just not one I reached for on the regular.
I was more impressed by the onboard audio, which has been given the thumbs up by Bose. There’s a reasonable amount of volume on offer – I largely stuck to around 80% of maximum while at home – and tonal balance is decent for an open air design. Bass is minimal, unsurprisingly, and sound definitely leaks so I had to be more conscious when using the glasses around others. I didn’t feel the need to supply my own earphones for the most part, but would definitely pack a pair with noise cancelling before using these for air travel.
Xreal 1 Pro+ verdict
For go-anywhere big screen entertainment, the Xreal 1 Pro+ is hard to fault. It’s comfy to wear for long periods and delivers top notch visuals, thanks largely to the dramatic brightness boost over the version that came before it. They’re also handy for getting serious work done when not at your desk; though they won’t be replacing my desktop monitor any time soon, I could absolutely see myself finding room for a pair in my carry-on for my next long-haul flight.
While the price means they’re hardly an impulse buy, the fact they haven’t shot up over the regular 1 Pro is a bonus.
The 3D upscaling feels more novelty than necessity and the Xreal Eye’s gesture controls leave room for improvement to the point I’m not sure I’d buy the add-on right now, but in all other respects the firm continues to set the pace for wearable display glasses.
Stuff Says…
A wonderfully bright, vibrant and clear pair of wearable display specs with some neat (if not always necessary) extra features. The Xreal 1 Pro+ works best for movies and games but can also help you get work done too.
Pros
Bright, colourful visuals with great all-round clarity
Lightweight and comfortable to wear for hours at a time
Electrochromatic dimming abilities are handy
Cons
3D upscaling not entirely free of visual artifacts
Optional camera accessory’s gesture controls are inconsistent
Xreal 1 Pro+ technical specifications
| Screen | 1920×1080, 120Hz prism micro-OLED |
| Field of view | 57 degrees |
| Connectivity | USB-C |
| Cameras | 12MP (optional) |
| Weight | 87g |
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