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Comment by tylervigen | Hacker News Reader

My favorite purchase of 2026 was my pair of Xreal One Pro glasses, which I use as an external display while traveling or on the couch at home. These are not AR glasses; the category doesn’t yet have a well known, accurate, catchy name (Screen-in glasses? Facially mounted display? Spatial glasses?)

I agree with the article that AR glasses are not a great future, but I think [ e-display eyewear / screen spectacles / whatever we call them ] that are dumb and just display what you feed them, are great!

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I second this. I have the same glasses, and it does exactly what I need: a portable traditional screen.

AR is a step too far. I don't actually need anything augmented. It's useful enough to just have a surface that I can put some status windows on while I walk around the house.

What statuses do you need persistent real time updates for around the house?

Various system health graphs, alerts. Prices of things. You can shrink the virtual screen so that it only takes up a corner.

Then you can go about your day and only zoom it in if something happens.

You can even exercise with them on.

A phone, watch, or ring with vibration isn't sufficient?

Particularly for exercise, a pair of glasses feels like too much, until baked in to prescription frames with no added weight

Those are all pretty small screens. You can get the Xreal with prescription if you want.

"ring with vibration"

I don't want to learn morse code to know what price my ring has found for me. Glasses displaying a price, please.

>> Various system health graphs, alerts. Prices of things. You can shrink the virtual screen so that it only takes up a corner.

So you want a HUD like in Oblivion or Skyrim? On you head? Telling you how healthy you are and when you need to eat? Will it play boss music when the police pull you over for speeding?

How do you know how many HP left you have before you need to drink your health potion?

I think the term you're looking for is HMD (Head Mounted Display).

Display glasses are the term I hear most frequently; as evidence you're the only one using that term but display glasses has already been used by others in this thread.

Talk to a fighter pilot.

Displays in a helmet aren't "display glasses" because they're not glasses.

Display glasses are a subset of HMD's, a more specific term. The "display" part of it implies that they're monitor replacements -- both in their interface (DisplayPort alt-mode) and an FOV suitable for monitor replacement.

Finally, being a monitor replacement implies a mostly-2D view, in contrast to XR/VR/AR which implies 3D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-mounted_display

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=display+glass&ti...

I guess more like EyeMD, considering it's just glasses rather than whole helmet that fighter pilots have

Curious about your experience - been mulling it over for a while. A few questions to anyone who has these:

How much did you pay - what do you think about the price?

Do you use prescription glasses?

Uses - HDR high res video (4k/8k big screen equivalent)?

Design? Color accuracy?

Programming/writing and reading - precieved dpi and contrast? (Print, eink, retina, OLED, 1080p lcd?

I don't need all of the best from the above - but would like to know...

They are good for gaming and movies. Not too great to read text though. You can use them to work (read/write code), but it’s not a great experience imho. The resolution isn’t good enough to feel that I want to work with them.

Best steam deck experience I’ve ever had though. Sekiro and Elden Ring with a giant virtual display is fantastic

I find them awesome for reading text, but I generally plug them into my phone, It's usually displaying much larger fonts than you'd use on a computer.

As a rule of thumb, you probably want a font size similar to what you'd use on a 12 or 14 inch screen. People code quite well on 12 - 14 inch displays but it's not the advertised "57 inch screen equivalent" if you're displaying text.

I paid $600; it's a little steep but I use them plenty to justify it (probably wear them 3-4 hours a week on average).

Yes, there are prescription inserts that you get with the glasses.

I only use one setting, and it isn't ultra-wide screen or anything.

Visually the text is worse than looking at text on a laptop screen (or any other screen); the advantage is in the neck. It's so much better not having to look down.

All I want from smart glasses is the possibility to get notifications above my field-of-vision instead of below. Not having to constantly look down at my phone would do wonders for my posture. No camera, no microphone, no XR - just a line or two of text.

I have an earlier device from this category ("Viture Pro XR") and find them very handy.

These little wearable dumb displays can be a great alternative to lugging around a laptop. The only problem right now is that the software ecosystem on smartphones is decidedly half baked. Desktop mode on the Pixel series is OK, but it's still janky and a lot of apps don't scale correctly.

definitely I'm looking forward to Meta VR glasses because they will let me do what I'm doing right now on A Vision Pro. Typing this using a VM running Debian 13. I'm running a Picobot agent and chatting with it about Neuromancer. I can do this because I run Anjin Virtual Computer. There are two software issues in VR, breadth and depth. Running Linux at least gives a lot more software. In time people will fill in the deep experiences that full 3D UX needs but for now its been helpful to run mobile apps and other OS's. On Quest and GXR I can run Windows XP.

I bought a pair of Xreal XBX a01+, and they are unbearably bad. It is impossible for me to see the virtual screen fully sharp at any given time. I can see part of the screen sharp with an eye closed.

I do not wear prescription glasses, I have used VR glasses and do FPV drone on regular basis. So it is not just me.

I would strongly advice against buying such a product without trying them first! Because at this moment it clearly does not seem to be suitable for everyone.

Oh and the AR aspect, Claude told me this construction with a prism only lets 20% of exterior light reaching the eye.

they have bad vertical FOV too. Meta VR Glasses will be much better for this.

Yes! I bought the VITURE pro 2 and was similarly disappointed. I think at least 1400P and 70 degree is needed before it’s useful for work.

I got a pair of original Nreal's back in the day. They're just bordering on being usable to replace my laptop screen. Some of the newer models might already be there, but I'm waiting for 4k models.

I have the Viture Pro which is similar, but the trouble I've always had with display glasses like that is that having the display fixed to the center of your field of view feels very unnatural. They have all the sensors to support 3DoF tracking, but you need some (usually proprietary) software on the host device to enable that.

Still, if support for that becomes more standardized and the FoV gets better, I do think this category of displays is pretty exciting. I've found them useful despite those drawbacks!

That's one big advantage of the XReal's. They can pin to an external point without external software, and they have a "follow" mode which is pinned to a specific location on your field of view (which may or may not be the center) but with damping so that it's much more fluid. It works very well.

I'm curious:

- do you use these in 'ultrawide' mode (3840x1080)?

- if so, do you find the head tracking works well (i.e. it just works)?

- do you notice the lack of vertical resolution?

(I don't own a pair of these or similar, and like the idea. But a portable monitor gives me a second screen in addition to my MBP. AIUI the glasses would mean I would no longer be able to see my MBP screen, so the glasses would be a substitute, not a complement.)

I guess it depends on your view of what portable is. Lugging around a tablet size thing seems a bit odd when glasses solve both in one device. My aim is one pair of glasses that have enough grunt to run Linux on the device. Most likely candidate is Meta VR glasses right now but perhaps Apple might do something late in 2027 (I hope)

how's the screen quality, on a scale from 1 to my 42" oled display that's sitting in front of me

It's an HD 55" OLED display in front of you, effectively.

Do you need to move them up and down the bridge of you nose to focus them?

No, they're always in focus, more or less. The edges aren't comfortable to look at, which is uncomfortable when you're on Slack or chat apps, where lots of the action is on the edge, but they're fantastic for games, movies, webpages, etc.

I've got the Viture Luma pros and the quality is great apart from blurriness in the corners, but the perception is more like holding a tablet inches from your face rather than sitting in a cinema

Well you hold a micro tablet an inch from your retina, don't you.

There is something about distance which we can't fool our brains about (yet), I can watch something on 42" screen 1m from me or on 75" screen 4m from me, that big screen, despite visibly smaller makes somehow more 'wholesome' experience.

I have the xbx a01+. It's still OLED but the color to me feels more like a traditional LCD panel, not as vibrant as a typical TV with cranked up saturation etc. I won't say it's "washed out" but the dynamic range is not as high. It's perfectly usable and sharp enough for regular work though IMO. With mine being 1080p I can see the individual pixels though.

In The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson used the term 'phantascope'.

The Xreal one pro indeed seems to be AR glasses (their marketing page says "AR for all"), compared to something like the Xreal air which is more of a screen-in glasses.

Same here. I’m fully display glasses pilled now and once we get 4k micro oleds I doubt I will main a physical monitor ever again

Would be a cool combo with an EliteBoard G1a.

My fear is that as usual if they become popular, they’ll just be yet another device used for more invasion of privacy and spying. They won’t stay dumb for long. There will be mandatory apps, phoning home, the works. Look what happened with TVs lol

They can't. They're just a display. If you're worried about the glasses, you should be worried about your computer monitor too.

Right, just a display. Like a TV.

Like a monitor. They don't have anything smart, like TVs do.

Right, like a monitor. https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/07/17/lg-monitors-ca...

This is the result of a stupid Windows feature that automatically installs software without prompting, which has nothing to do with hardware beyond a mechanism for the OS to identify it (in this case, through EDID).

The solution here is to not use Windows, or to disable this auto-install feature if you do, not to avoid all external hardware the OS is capable of identifying (read: every device connected through any modern bus or I/O interface).

Monitors have abused hdmi to get internet access, too.

No they haven't, there was never any consumer hardware shipped that routed anything onto HDMI Ethernet.

TVs didn't use to have anything smart in them either. That's why 'Forgeties79' said:

  My fear is that as usual if they become popular, they’ll just be yet another device used for more invasion of privacy and spying. They won’t stay dumb for long. ... Look what happened with TVs lol

EDIT: Also consider this monstrosity <https://www.samsung.com/us/monitors/smart/32-inch-smart-moni...>

Vote with your wallet and don't buy spyware!

We have strayed far from the original point. No one is saying buy spyware.

Do I really need to explain what I meant? I feel like it’s pretty clear, everyone responding to you seems to get it.

I really hate how prescriptive comments have to be on HN sometimes.

Here: at present they are dumb and are generally not being used for spying or paired with invasive apps. However, if they become more popular, that is likely to change, which is something I am not looking forward to. It would mean you’d have to use older, inferior hardware, which is fine for basic laptops and Linux and such but displays get noticeably better every few years. I’d rather not have to use dated hardware for something my eyes have to stare at for long periods just because companies are greedy about data. Or I have to learn how to disable all that stuff, and I spend a lot of time as it is modding/breaking/getting around these things. I am not looking forward to yet another domain of tech/hardware where I have to constantly worry about what is going on under the hood because it’s exhausting and I just want to buy a product and be done with the interaction.

Is that clear enough?

Aren't they usually marketed as XR glasses?

XR glasses are 3d glasses. Display glasses emulate a 2D screen.

They are 3d glasses though? They're perfectly capable of doing 3d. The specific model mentioned even supports 6DoF with a camera attachment, it also has onboard processing to convert 2d video streams into 3d.

The 6DOF tracking is to be able to accurately position the 2D screen in 3D space. This works very well. The camera attachment is an optional thing that just passes the video through to your phone or PC; it's used for recording not for XR. The 3D conversion is a gimmick that doesn't work well.

This strikes me as a distinct negative about tech that only bothers with the display and needs and external processor. I guess the MetaVRGlasses must be sending that down the optical channel too.

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