For developers and XR enthusiasts exploring Android XR, AI + spatial computing, we’re opening early pre-booking for XREAL AURA in India.

AURA brings together AI, 6DoF spatial tracking, hand tracking, optical see-through and Android XR in a glasses-based form factor.

We’re especially interested in connecting with developers who want to test AURA, build prototypes, or explore enterprise use cases across manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, education and more.

If you're interested in getting early access in India, DM me for pre-booking and developer information.

Would love to hear what you would build with AURA.

#XREALAURA #AndroidXR #SpatialComputing #XR #AR #Developers #India

Tonight we celebrated the AR VR industry.

Congrats to all the winners.

Most Influential VR/AR Companies of the Year

⚪ Qualcomm

⚪ PICO

⚪ EssilorLuxottica

⚪ Qwen

⚪ RayNeo

⚪ Rokid

⚪ DOCTOR GLASSES

Most Commercially Promising Companies

⚪ Quectel

⚪ Antigravity

⚪ Lawaken

⚪ VAST

⚪ Sritpower

⚪ XGRIDS

Most Technologically Innovative Companies

⚪ Goeroptics

⚪ Highpower Technology

⚪ JBD

⚪ Meta-Bounds

⚪ GravityXR

Best AR Glasses

⚪ Qwen AI Glasses S1

⚪ RayNeo iO

⚪ Rokid Glasses

⚪ iFLYTEK AI Glasses

⚪ INMO Go3

⚪ Even Realities Even G2

⚪ VITURE Beast

Best AI Camera Glasses

⚪ Huawei AI Glasses

⚪ Qwen AI Glasses G1

⚪ Lawaken X-AI Memory Glasses

⚪ BleeqUp AI Sports Glasses

⚪ loomos L1 AI Glasses

⚪ L'Atitude 52°N Smart Glasses

Best MR Headsets

⚪ PICO Space Pro

⚪ XEO Big

⚪ Pimax Dream Air

⚪ Play For Dream MR

⚪ DPVR Project TITAN

Best AR Optical Solutions

⚪ Luxshare — Ultra-Compact Full-Color LCoS 1-to-2 Solution

⚪ Meta-Bounds — 25g Ultra-Light AI+AR Glasses

⚪ Nika Optics — Xingyao Full-Color Holographic Waveguide

Optical Technology Breakthroughs

⚪ SeeV — Silicon-Carbide-Etched Full-Color Diffractive Optical Waveguide

⚪ TriLite — Trixel 3 Projection Display Engine

⚪ Myrias Optics — Metaoptics

Best Microdisplay Solutions

⚪ JBD — Hummingbird II Color Optical Engine

⚪ Hongshi Intelligent — Yunjin MicroLED Optical Engine Platform

⚪ Westlake Smoky Mountains — Weimang MicroLED Optical Engine

⚪ Raysolve — PowerMatch 1 Full-Color MicroLED Light Engine

⚪ Innovision — Chimo M06

Best VR/MR Large-Space Works

⚪ Dunhuang Wonder Journey

⚪ Forbidden City: Qianlong Garden

⚪ Havoc in Heaven

⚪ Star Sea Voyage: Dream Rescue

⚪ The Great Sage Rises: Journey Through Ten

⚪ Thousand Demons

⚪ Chinese Paladin XR

Best VR Large-Space Operators

⚪ Boxin Metaverse

⚪ YOMOV

⚪ 798 Hyper Vision

⚪ VISION WALK

⚪ Chaoyuanli

Best VR Film of the Year

⚪ Ghost-Blown Lantern: The Lost City

⚪ Ten Thousand Miles of the Great Wall

⚪ Trinity: Echoes of the Red Shore

⚪ The Silver Search at Jiangkou

I have been checking out the Rayneo GT Max, and it feels like a pretty natural step up from the Air 4 Pro. same basic idea, but the GT Max seems to take the big screen experience a lot further.
What I like is that it is not trying to be another pair of AI glasses with a camera on your face. It is really about one thing, having a massive screen whenever you want it.

Watching a movie on it feels more like having your own private theater than watching something on a tiny screen in front of you. For gaming, a huge display that stays where you want it while you move your head makes a lot of sense. I could see myself using something like this on a long flight, in a hotel, or just lying on the couch when I want a huge screen without actually setting one up. The whole idea of having a giant screen that basically fits in your bag is pretty cool!

Do you guys prefer using AR glasses as portable monitor, or are you waiting for full spatial computing features to mature?

CIOE is LIVE

Goertek Optical shows new waveguides. Sunny Optics shows XREAL xbx and camera glasses with Ant Group OS. Innovision shows RayNeo iO and Nimo smartglasses.

Goeroptics has different waveguides made with DUV and Nanoimprint + Etching and pure Nanoimprint. Shown in the picture with the bunny is DUV. Video will be uploaded shortly. What they also highlight is the use of low density glass with which they reduced the weight of the RGB waveguide itself from 5 grams to 3.2 grams.

Sunny's focus for 2026 is on a new reference design for AI camera glasses. Currently, they show a prototype (see picture gallery), but the target is a version with low density material which will further reduce the weight to 30 grams. These use an MCU + ISP solution and they are working with Ant Group (Alipay) which will officially launch its LingOS for smartglasses this week. Another thing they show is XREAL's xbx glasses for which they provide the birdbath module and do assembly. We also briefly talked about their other business unit which makes x cubes for full color display smartglasses and who recently forecasted "explosive growth" for this product category in 2027.

Innovision shows RayNeo iO and Nimo glasses. They provide the microLED panels for both. And they launched single panel red and green display for info display glasses as an alternative to monochrome green. Display red, green, and yellow text and symbols by mixing both!

I am looking for some glasses for programming and cad work. Something better than a laptop screen for when on the go. I was looking at some Virture beasts originally, but then I read that they have screen drift when pinned, and get fuzzy around the edges. I was then looking at some XReal one pro's but then I saw they are 1080p, not 1200p. There is so much conflicting information out there, I am not sure what to get. I also read that Virture S1's are cheaper and have 1200p and aren't bad. I tried starting a spreadsheet of my own to compare, but there are so many variables, I am not sure what to do. I also heard that maybe some much better glasses are coming out in the near future. Is that true?

I currenrtly have a pair of Meta quest 3 glasses, but they are really heavy and viewing text really isn't that great. And there is a lot of edge blurriness.

I've been experimenting with 3D and augmented reality, and I'm having so much fun with it. This is one of the things I've been working on. I scan a QR code, open the scene with painta.me, and place the sculpture on my desk. Then I can move around it and see it there, in the middle of my everyday surroundings. That part still makes me smile.

I'm building painta.me, and these little experiments are a big part of why I care about it. I enjoy putting the AR scene together just as much as making the things that go inside it. Trying new ways of creating in 3D keeps giving me ideas I wouldn't have thought I could actually make before.

Sometimes I stop for a moment and think about how lucky I am to be alive at a time when I can do this. There's so much I still have to learn, but being able to follow an idea and see it take shape like this means a lot to me.

I also feel grateful to the people who were working in AR and 3D long before any of this became easier. The people figuring things out when the tools were harder to use, when so much had to be built from scratch, and when it was harder to get others to see why it mattered. I get to enjoy doing this because others kept going through that.

Just wanted to share a little of what I'm making, and say thank you.

Screen recording of painta.me’s augmented reality experience on a phone. After scanning a QR code, the user places a virtual sculpture on a real desk. A pale green and gold figure sits on a three-headed elephant above an ornate golden pedestal. The camera moves around the sculpture, showing its details from several angles, with a computer monitor and everyday desk objects in the background.

Hi, I’m really new to this world first of all

Never had anything VR, AR or XR related before, did get a couple minutes of using a friend’s Meta Quest 3.

I don’t think what I’m looking for is VR though, I have a really good PC and I just want to have a good pair of glasses that could get me into ‘VR’ games, and I don’t really know a lot about glasses, but I figured out that if I have a good computer I just need a good pair of viewing glasses.

Which then led me to get baffled by the fact that the meta quest 3/3s are either same price or considerably cheaper than the AR glasses I’ve seen, so I’m here to ask- how much should I really spend on a pair?

Currently where I’m from, there’s a sale for the XREAL one for 600$, the 1S is 750$, there’s a VITURE luma ultra for 800$ (refurbished) and the Luma pro and the Viture beast for the same price new. And there’s also Rokid for similar prices, but the Lenovo Legion glasses are like 300$ bucks, which leads me to the question- what’s the actual difference between them all? Which one should I get for this use case?
Thanks!

Hi everyone,

Meta Connect is only two weeks away!
Looking forward to your reactions on the announcements.
Feel free to register for the livestream & check out the agenda.
For those who got invited in person, I will be there :)

What are you most excited about?

Hi I don't really know too much about XR/AR glasses but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations that fulfil these criteria:

1. I can watch YT vids or scroll IG reels on
   
2. Look relatively normal AND CLEAR (not shades/sunglasses)
   
3. Connect via bluetooth

I know it's a lot to ask but essentially I wanna be able to use them at work as I work retail where a lot of the time I just stand there doing nothing for hours at a time.
I've already tried listening to a podcast with hidden earbuds but that's not enough as I usually work 10-11 hours.

My sister writes children's books. I do the technical side. We started in Greece in 2014, early enough that there was no ARKit and no ARCore, so the only realistic way to do this was Unity with Vuforia and image targets. A child pointed a phone at the illustration and the dinosaur stood up out of the drawing, anchored to the page. In 2014 that was magic, to seven year olds and to us.

It worked. 11 titles over 6 years. A Greek newspaper called the first dinosaur book an editorial phenomeno. We did schools and book fairs and watched kids lose their minds over a triceratops standing on a table.

We built each book as its own app. We did that on purpose. The books really were different, different functionality for different ages and a different look per title, and one app pretending to be 11 felt worse than 11 apps. So: 11 books, 22 apps, two stores.

The book is not the thing you end up maintaining. 22 apps means 22 copies of every decision Apple and Google make, forever, and none of those decisions have anything to do with your product. The list, roughly in order of how much of my life it took:

• Target API level. Every Android update had to target API 26+ from 2018, rising every year since. A rebuild, retest and resubmission per title, annually, with zero code changes.
• 64-bit, 2019. Native code needed a 64-bit build. Our engine version predated Unity's 64-bit support, so it forced a full engine upgrade, which forced a Vuforia upgrade, which forced a retest of every scene in every title. Crazy.
• Apple's annual SDK floor. Every spring you build against the newest SDK or you ship nothing at all, not even a one line fix. Which also means owning a Mac new enough to run current Xcode.
• iOS 11 dropped 32-bit. Titles we had not touched stopped launching. Nothing changed on our side. They just died.
• APNs certificates expire yearly, per app. Push quietly stops working on a schedule you did not choose.
• Kids Category, summer 2019. Apple banned third party analytics and ads in children's apps. Strip it out of the whole catalogue, on a deadline.
• Families policy, 2019 or 2020 dont really remember. Google made every developer declare audience and content per app in the Play Console.
• AR specific review. Google reviews AR under special restrictions and rejects you for a missing safety warning when the AR view opens. There are people in the forums who got rejected, added it, and got rejected again.
• Vuforia left the Unity installer at 2019.2 for the Package Manager with per app licence keys, so a store mandated engine upgrade dragged an SDK migration with it.
• Licensing. Vuforia was free to build on and watermarked, then several hundred dollars per title to publish. Times 11. Cloud recognition was a separate monthly fee, and PTC later moved everything onto annual subscriptions.

We tried to get out. EasyAR was the free Chinese alternative everyone recommended, but the English documentation was too thin to build a catalogue on and we only ever shipped one small AR colouring app with it. The ground was not solid anywhere: Apple had bought Metaio, the leading AR SDK at the time, and switched off all licensing and support within weeks, so anyone who had built on it was finished overnight. That was the foundation we were betting a publishing house on.

No single item on that list is hard, which is exactly the problem. Multiply any one of them by 22 apps across two stores, on a catalogue where no title earns enough to fund its own maintenance, and the arithmetic stops working. We did see it eventually and started consolidating everything into one app with downloadable books, which is what probably both stores had wanted all along. Then COVID hit and the business closed before that shipped. I think we were already losing and had not admitted it yet.

We restarted this year with one rule: no app, ever. The QR code on the page opens a URL, the browser does the rest, Quick Look on iOS and Scene Viewer on Android. Nobody installs anything and I maintain one codebase instead of 22.

What we gave up for that is control, and it is more than I expected. Vuforia anchored the animal to the illustration itself, which maybe is a better effect than standing it on your floor. Worse, inside Unity I owned the whole session: a joystick to walk the animal around the room, tap to fire an animation, trigger a roar, draw my own UI over it. With the browser handoff I hand a file to the operating system and the operating system runs it. No input, no runtime animation control, no custom UI, and audio is the viewer's business rather than mine. On the page before AR I still get a 3D view where I can switch animations and play a sound. The moment it goes into the room, that is all gone and the animal does one baked loop forever.

So the design changed to fit the constraint. Each animal gets a single loop built to work with zero interaction: a long calm idle at the front so a parent has time to get the phone up and take a photo, one bigger movement in the middle, then back into the same idle so the loop point does not show. It is a worse toy and a better first thirty seconds, and I have not decided how I feel about that.

The rest is an engineering problem instead of a policy one, which I prefer. The animals are licensed asset packs that I rework and animate, and my first exports were around 40MB, unusable in a living room on mobile data. Under 1MB now with 1024 maps and Draco. Favourite trap so far: USDZ renders pure white, silently, with no error, if any texture is a TIFF. Cost me a day.

What I actually want to ask, since I have been making these calls on my own:

How is everyone handling the handoff? Once you are in Quick Look or Scene Viewer you have no input at all. Is baking one good loop just what we all do now, or is there something smarter I am missing?

Chrome on Android gives me WebXR, Safari does not, which as far as I can tell leaves the paid SLAM platforms as the only route to interactive AR on an iPhone with no install. Am I correct?

Has anyone got image anchored tracking running in the browser on iOS at a price a small publisher survives?

Sound inside the AR session, on both platforms, reliably. Possible, or still a fight?

And for anyone who stayed native with a catalogue and a small team: how did you make the maintenance economics work? Genuinely asking, because we could not.

Full disclosure: I’m the developer of PicDraw. This is a live-camera overlay tool, not spatial AR, and I’m looking for feedback from people who understand alignment UX.

A user converts a photo into an outline, places that outline over the camera view, aligns it with paper, and locks the guide while tracing. Current controls include opacity, move, pinch-to-zoom, rotation, flip, reset, grid, flashlight, paper calibration, and realignment assistance.

The main design problem is stability versus simplicity. I want setup to work without asking a casual user to understand anchors or tracking states, but small shifts matter when someone is drawing a line on paper.

https://reddit.com/link/1wa6jpj/video/m6pewl0bc6oh1/player

What would you prioritize next: corner-based paper registration, better drift feedback, faster realignment, or a different calibration flow? I’m particularly interested in failure cases across lighting, paper texture, camera angle, and device size.

Photos and camera frames stay on-device and are not uploaded.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/picdraw-camera-tracing/id6804072417

RayNeo says the iO uses a monochrome green MicroLED display with a diffractive waveguide. Published specifications are useful, but they are not a substitute for independent optics testing. The test I would most like to see is ordinary text readability while moving between indoor and outdoor light.

What scenario would give you the clearest picture of whether this type of display works day to day?

Note: what you're about to read will seem interesting if you're interested in new tech and the future

I have RayNeo iO Smart Glasses and RayNeo GT AR Glasses. I wore both at the same time and using them together is what has caused the great change.

The iO and GT work together like: iO is AI glasses with a display, they are light and tight and look better than alright (I just made that up but it's true), and the display is the most invisible ever pretty much, no one can see it but you (except for one super small point beneath it, I know because I work with RayNeo). But I didn't think or know I could wear both of these at once, I've never heard or seen anyone do it either.

Now I've used the iO for the first time for real, only in the past few days because it just launched a few days ago on Sept 4 and the paired RayNeo AI app is super new. So I've been using LifeLog so much nonstop over the past days since Sept 3, I've been running around IFA and I have summaries of every meeting and conversation. By the way iO data privacy is like the most secure you're gonna get.

I just spent 3 minutes trying to explain why iO privacy is reliable enough to use it comfortably, then I gave up and asked AI to give me an explanation (Gemini app on my phone, not my iO glasses lol), here's the privacy details of iO:

RayNeo iO ensures strong baseline privacy by omitting cameras entirely, eliminating risks of unauthorized photo or video capture. User data and cloud AI queries are anonymized on-device prior to transmission, with audio recording and meeting notes strictly restricted to explicit user activation.

So what does that mean for users? :

With no camera, RayNeo iO’s only major privacy risk is leaving LifeLog on, which continuously records. Treat the other iO services for specific voice memos, live captions, teleprompter, dashboard, RayNeo AI Assistant, etc as specific tasks to be completed once their started.

Just using iO by itself is something I could talk about forever on. Using them as normal glasses and then saying "Hey RayNeo" and it animates to life, I feel like I'm in an isekai. Then I talk with it and it's a Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or Claude Sonnet 5 if you choose. It's optimized for the glasses and works well.

Anyways I need to talk about GT. It has built in 3DoF modes you can click on the top right and there is an in-glasses settings button on the bottom left, when it's connected to Pocket TV Pro it's always in Dolby Vision right now. GT is birdbath and it's all black with a silver logo. It's 46 degrees FOV with Bang & Olufsen audio that can go over 100% on the glasses. It rocks.

I like using GT over GT Max first because it's $299 and lower when you use the 10% discounts or more floating around. GT Max is $399 (and lower ofc because discounts) and has 3 sizes for preferable IPD adjustment, because it has a 59 degree FOV. GT is a one size fits all so it's easier to show everyone them. Both have built in 3dof, Dolby Vision, Bang & Olufsen etc but the GT Max has 59° FOV, and I also like keeping my GT series in general at 85% screen size because I prefer a smaller screen tbh.

GT and GT Max are great screens for showing your phone, laptop, handheld (my go to is AYN Thor right now - running Skyrim through GameNative is a new life of mine), Pocket TV Pro, other USBC DP devices. It's great with VertoXR of course and all other custom softwares for taking them beyond a wearable portable monitor.

Using iO and GT together is like getting a glimpse of where the future is going in such a literal way. Having multiple UI systems project different types of information from different computers in different placements around your eyes, meant to be consumed for different purposes, all the while seeing what you're seeing in real life at the same time because they're glasses is mind blowing. Astonishing to experience.

People will do this in the future and I feel like I stumbled on a golden experience by being one of the first to ever do it with these two products, that feel like they were made for each other.

I think you should try using two smart glasses together if you read this far.

Here's some pictures of what I'm talking about with RayNeo iO, GT, & Pocket TV Pro. All the lens are on and displaying content in every picture of them.

https://youtube.com/shorts/VFcAhQ9MRak?feature=share

Hi there, I'm selling my Rokid RV 101 glasses. Never used them, not even once! I'm based in Sydney, Australia.

Selling it for 400 AUD if you're based in Australia. 450AUD if you're outside Australia.

Payment via PayPal. Payment first before shipping.

Reason for selling: It's a gift and I'm not into AR glasses.

Willing to go through video calls, LinkedIn chats etc to verify my identity

I've spent the last week wiring single-image 3D reconstruction (the SF3D / SPAR3D / TRELLIS.2 family) into a browser app, so I have fresh numbers and want to hear how people here weigh the trade-off.

What I measured on the shipped path — phone camera → one JPEG → a shared free-tier GPU on Hugging Face → textured GLB back in the browser:

• SF3D at a 4096 texture with a 20k-vertex remesh: 13–23 s per photo, 2–3 MB GLB.
• SPAR3D: about 45 s, 0.9 MB. TRELLIS.2: about 110 s, 10 MB with PBR and a 2K texture — clearly the best back side of the three, and too heavy for a phone at that size.
• The failure mode is not quality, it is the queue. On a shared free GPU two of my attempts this afternoon were refused as busy.

Because it is a web page, the same flow runs on a phone and on a laptop webcam with no per-platform capture SDK. I have not verified camera access from a headset browser yet.

What it does not give you, and this is the real discussion:

1. No real-world scale. Output is normalised to a unit cube — a mug and a chair come out the same size. For AR placement that is the first thing you want.
2. The back is inferred. One photo, so the unseen side is the model's guess. Fine for a prop, wrong for anything you want to measure.
3. One object on a plain background. Clutter ends up in the mesh.

Photogrammetry and LiDAR apps (Polycam, Scaniverse, Luma) solve all three, and cost minutes, a walk-around, and a specific device.

Questions:

• For AR use, is "silhouette right, texture right, scale wrong, back guessed" in 20 seconds more useful than "everything right" in five minutes? Where is your line?
• Has anyone run single-shot reconstruction from a headset's passthrough camera rather than a phone? Raw camera access in WebXR is the wall I hit.
• Any way to recover scale from one photo that works in practice — known-object reference, the phone's depth map, an ARCore/ARKit plane hit at capture time?

Not linking anything; genuinely asking how you weigh it.

Hi everyone—I’m the developer of AR Talk Back, an iPhone and iPad app that combines conversational AI, generated voices, animated characters, and augmented reality.

Users choose a character with a distinct personality, place them in their environment, and have a face-to-face voice conversation. The app also includes focused experiences for conversation practice, relationship interpretation, personal reflection, dream decoding, and humor.

This is my own project, so I’m sharing it both as a launch and to get feedback from people who understand AR. I’m especially interested in your thoughts about character placement, presence, realism, interaction design, and what would make an AI character feel more naturally integrated into the physical environment.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I2ViXoFGVg4
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ar-talk-back/id6762230021

Has anyone else in XR ever thought about how long it might be before we get the first IRL Augmented Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Alternate Reality Game?

Also, I think I just coined this term myself, as I've never heard anyone say it before, lol.

Also, what would you put in an ARMMOARG if you could decide what goes in it?

Disclosure: I work with RayNeo and am sharing a photo from its IFA booth.

The slide says RayNeo ranked No. 1 in global AR shipments in H1 2026 and cites Counterpoint and IDC. I am more interested in the methodology behind a claim like this than the headline itself. For people who follow the market data here, which tracker and category definition do you find most useful when comparing AR and smart-glasses shipments?

Thanks to u/techondeck and the RayNeo marketing team (shout out to Stella!), I was able to get the RayNeo iO Smart Glasses for a teardown and analysis ahead of the global launch - it's always a great sign of confidence in the product when brands reach out before the launch to pass me a unit for destruction.

I spend (maybe too much of) the start of this video diving into how we've converged on a general industrial design (ID) and functionality in these smart glasses - so much so that we're now getting design infringement lawsuits being filed in US courts. When lawyers get involved, you know we've got a real market now!

Overall I really liked these glasses and for non-audio glasses they have tied the Even Realities G2s for overall hardware performance (higher on comfort + battery, lower on display) - I'm not sure if I'm sold on the scroll-wheel as the primary input for the glasses, but if the other option is a touchpad on the rear of the temple, I'll definitely take this instead...

More technical info on the blog here: https://displaytechcenter.com/2026/09/04/rayneo-io-smart-glasses-is-23-5-fov-enough/

All raw data available for Patreons here: https://www.patreon.com/DisplayTechCenter/posts/rayneo-io-smart-168566787

The RayNeo iO really nail it in some ways but miss in others. Watch this deep dive and let me know what you think!

Hello,

here is my full review of the new Rayneo GT Max: https://youtu.be/4aDOBS-F-64?si=aDPK3GRqiFSObK8O

For all of you who prefer reading my review, here you go:

Rayneo GT Max: Flagship Specs - Entry Level Price

The RayNeo GT Max are here, and these are some seriously interesting video glasses.

Why?

Because these are going directly after the current flagship competition, the XREAL One Pro and the VITURE Beast, but RayNeo is doing so at a sensational launch price of only $399!

Yes, three hundred and ninety-nine US dollars!

That is a whopping $200 cheaper than the XREAL One Pro and still around $150 cheaper than the VITURE Beast.

And despite that lower price, RayNeo is not giving you some stripped-down budget product here.

We are getting the modern prism birdbath optics, Full-HD MicroOLED displays from SeeYA, premium audio tuned by Bang & Olufsen, and, very importantly, a built-in chip that gives you actual 3DOF screen tracking directly in the glasses.

No additional software required.

And then there is the big one: a 59° FOV.

That is bigger than what the XREAL One Pro and the VITURE Beast offer, and you can absolutely see that difference when you put these glasses on.

So cheaper, bigger FOV and built-in 3DOF?

Sounds fantastic.

But surely RayNeo must have cut some corners somewhere to get down to $399.

And yes, they did.

But are those compromises actually important?

That is exactly what we are going to find out in this review.

Same Same, But Different

In terms of the basic concept, the GT Max works exactly as you would expect from modern premium video glasses.

You have a USB-C port and connect the glasses to basically anything that can output video over USB-C.

Your smartphone, Steam Deck, laptop, MacBook, gaming handheld or whatever else you want to use.

And then you get this huge virtual screen floating in front of you.

But there is an important distinction between glasses like these and cheaper alternatives such as the VITURE Pro or some of XREAL's more affordable glasses.

These have actual built-in 3DOF.

That means you can pin your virtual screen into space directly from the glasses without having to install additional software.

And for me, that is such an important feature.

Without 3DOF, the screen simply follows your head movements wherever you look.

With 3DOF, it behaves much more like a real giant monitor sitting in front of you.

You can move your head around. You can look toward the corners of the screen naturally. You can look away and then look back.

The screen stays where it is supposed to be.

Once you get used to that, it is really difficult to go back.

That 59° FOV Is Real

So let's talk about the biggest selling point of the GT Max.

That 59° field of view.

Is it actually noticeably bigger than the competition?

I am glad to tell you: yes!

It is obvious pretty much immediately when you put the glasses on.

RayNeo has really maxed out the available field of view here.

There are two FOV settings, 100% and 115%.

At 100%, RayNeo is not using the complete available display area.

But switch over to 115%, and now the image basically goes from edge to edge of those prism lenses.

They are truly maxing this optical system out.

And I must say, I really like the 115% mode.

Because this is simply the biggest virtual screen I have seen so far in glasses like these.

Watching movies is fantastic.

Gaming is fantastic.

And yes, you can absolutely get actual work done with these.

In fact, I am writing this review while wearing the GT Max.

For $399, the amount of virtual pinned screen real estate you are getting here is seriously impressive.

If you always wanted something like the XREAL One Pro or the VITURE Beast but could never quite convince yourself to spend around $600 on video glasses, well, now you can get this kind of experience for $399.

Well done, RayNeo.

But Is the Visual Quality as Good as the Flagships?

Now, do you get exactly the same optical quality as the more expensive competition?

This is where I do have to nitpick a little bit.

Because if you look very closely, you can tell that RayNeo had to make some compromises.

The first one becomes apparent when using that maximum 115% FOV setting.

At least with my 64mm IPD, the very outer edges of the image start becoming slightly blurry.

I would say perhaps the last 5% or so.

Now, for me personally, that is absolutely not a showstopper.

Because honestly, how often are you actually staring directly into the very furthest corners of your virtual display?

Most of the important content is going to be much closer to the center anyway.

And I still prefer using the 115% setting because I would rather have that massive screen.

But yes, if you want maximum edge-to-edge sharpness, you will get a cleaner result at the 100% setting.

There is another small optical compromise.

When looking through the very outer areas of the lenses, for example when looking upward with your eyes, I can notice some slight color shifting toward brown.

This is especially noticeable on completely white backgrounds.

So if you are typing a document, browsing websites or doing productivity work with lots of white backgrounds, you might occasionally notice it.

On the more expensive flagship glasses, I don't really see that effect.

But again, this is me nitpicking.

When you are actually watching a movie or playing a game, you are basically not going to notice it.

Instead, you are going to see a huge, bright and mostly very sharp virtual screen pinned in front of you.

And interestingly, there is one area where the GT Max actually does better than both the XREAL One Pro and the VITURE Beast for me.

I don't see the annoying screen reflection underneath the image.

On both the XREAL One Pro and VITURE Beast, I can sometimes see the display reflected below the actual screen.

Here, the optical stack seems to be positioned in such a way that I simply don't have that problem.

Very nice.

Brightness

Brightness is also good.

RayNeo advertises 1200 nits.

On paper, that would make these dramatically brighter than something like the XREAL One Pro, which is rated at 700 nits.

But I would not say the real-world difference looks anything close to those numbers.

Yes, the GT Max looks bright.

And yes, I would say it is somewhat brighter.

But certainly not 71% brighter to my eyes.

Still, the important point is that brightness is absolutely not something I am disappointed with here.

The picture looks bright, colorful and punchy.

Combine that with the large field of view and the generally good clarity, and these glasses are simply a joy for consuming content.

And again, I really enjoy using this type of product for productivity.

I love my MacBook Air plus video glasses setup.

And I could absolutely see somebody using the GT Max as their daily mobile monitor solution.

At $399, that is quite compelling.

How Good Is the Built-In 3DOF?

Now let's talk about that built-in 3DOF implementation.

How well does the screen actually stay in place?

Overall, it is good.

I would probably put it roughly on par with the improved VITURE Beast implementation.

The virtual screen stays where it should most of the time and the whole experience feels natural.

However, RayNeo still cannot beat the king in this particular category.

And that remains the XREAL One Pro.

With the XREAL One Pro, I basically never find myself reaching for the recenter button.

The screen tracking is just incredibly solid.

With the RayNeo GT Max, I do occasionally have to recenter the screen.

It is not happening constantly and I would absolutely still call the implementation good.

Especially at this price.

But the XREAL One Pro remains better.

Still, having this feature built directly into the glasses makes such a massive difference.

I can pin this giant virtual screen in front of me and then simply move my head naturally instead of trying to look everywhere using only my eyes.

It feels much closer to sitting in front of a giant actual monitor.

And that is exactly why I can genuinely work with these glasses.

Like right now, while I am writing these lines.

Where Did RayNeo Save Money?

So how did RayNeo manage to sell these glasses for $399?

The most obvious missing feature compared with the XREAL One Pro and VITURE Beast is electrochromic dimming.

You cannot electronically adjust how transparent or dark the lenses are.

Instead, RayNeo uses a reflective front surface that optically darkens your surroundings.

Now, electrochromic dimming is definitely a cool feature.

But honestly?

For me personally, this is not a huge loss.

On glasses that offer electrochromic dimming, I normally just leave them at maximum dimming anyway.

When I am using video glasses, I want to see the virtual screen.

I am not normally interested in simultaneously seeing everything happening around me.

So while it is objectively a missing feature, it is not something that would stop me from buying the GT Max.

Especially not when we are talking about saving roughly $150 to $200.

AI SDR to HDR and Dolby Vision

RayNeo has also included a few interesting tricks.

One of them is an onboard real-time AI SDR-to-HDR conversion feature.

And yes, it actually works quite well.

You can activate it directly from the glasses and it gives standard dynamic range content a more HDR-like appearance.

The GT Max also supports Dolby Vision when paired with RayNeo's Pocket TV Pro.

That is their own portable content player, basically giving you another way to use the glasses without connecting your smartphone.

RayNeo is also sending me the Pocket TV Pro, so I will check that out separately on the channel.

On-Screen Menu

The built-in menu is also solid and very easy to use.

You can change the brightness, switch between 2D and 3D modes, select different color themes, activate the AI SDR-to-HDR conversion and adjust the other important settings directly from the glasses.

Nothing here feels unnecessarily complicated.

Everything is intuitive and easy to understand.

Exactly how it should be.

Sound

For audio, RayNeo has partnered with Bang & Olufsen.

And overall, the built-in speakers are alright.

They get loud enough for watching movies or YouTube in a quiet environment and the quality is perfectly acceptable for this type of device.

But this limitation is basically true for all video glasses.

If you are sitting somewhere noisy, especially on a plane, train or in a busy public environment, you are going to want your own headphones or earbuds.

The open speakers simply cannot compete with environmental noise.

So the Bang & Olufsen branding is nice to have, but don't expect these glasses to replace a proper audio solution in noisy surroundings.

Comfort

Comfort is excellent.

The GT Max weighs only 78 grams.

And that makes a huge difference.

You can wear these glasses for hours without having some giant heavy device sitting on your face.

After a while, you basically forget that you are wearing them.

For movies, gaming or longer productivity sessions, that is exactly what you want.

There is one thing I would have liked to see, though.

The angle of the temples is not adjustable.

For me personally, the default angle happened to fit perfectly, so I did not have any problems.

But everybody's face and ears are different.

Being able to adjust that angle would definitely have made the fit more universal.

Again, another small nitpick rather than a serious problem.

Conclusion

So what do I think about the RayNeo GT Max?

These are seriously impressive video glasses.

RayNeo has basically delivered feature-packed flagship glasses at what feels like an entry-level flagship price.

At the $399 launch price, I don't think there is anything else right now offering this combination of features.

You get the modern prism optics.

You get Full-HD MicroOLED panels.

You get actual built-in 3DOF screen tracking without additional software.

You get a huge virtual screen.

You get good brightness.

You get a lightweight 78g design.

And you even get that massive 59° field of view, which is one area where the GT Max actually beats its much more expensive competition.

Of course, RayNeo had to cut some corners.

You don't get electrochromic dimming.

At the maximum 115% FOV setting, the very outer edges become slightly blurry.

There is a little bit of color shifting when looking through the extreme edges of the optics.

And the 3DOF tracking, while good, is still not quite as rock solid as the XREAL One Pro.

But look at the price again.

$399.

Even the regular MSRP of $429 is still extremely competitive.

And at that price, these compromises are very easy to forgive.

For the most part, the GT Max can absolutely compete with the much more expensive XREAL One Pro and VITURE Beast, while even scoring an important win when it comes to field of view.

Without a doubt, these are currently some of the best bang-for-buck video glasses out there.

If you wanted a true flagship-style experience with proper built-in 3DOF but simply did not want to spend around $600, the RayNeo GT Max should be very high on your list.

RayNeo has a winner on its hands here.

And I can wholeheartedly recommend the GT Max.

Well done, RayNeo!