This tiny tablet is a smart upgrade for AR glasses

Xreal is 1 of the fewer companies trying to merchantability mass-market augmented world headsets without an existing large tech empire. But its latest merchandise isn’t a brace of glasses; it’s a phone-sized Android tablet designed to support you utilizing them. At past week’s Augmented World Expo (AWE) the institution announced the Beam Pro, a operation battery, app repository, and 3D video recorder. It’s a pragmatic solution to a precise evident occupation — adjacent if, astatine archetypal glance, I privation it were weirder.

Xreal’s glasses — the Air 2 and Air 2 Ultra — person mostly required immoderate benignant of third-party instrumentality similar a phone, laptop, oregon Steam Deck. (There was a bare-bones power container called the Beam, but it wasn’t a large absorption for the company.) The Beam Pro is meant to easiness this requirement. It’s a dedicated Android instrumentality that won’t cannibalize your phone’s artillery life, utilizing a customized AR launcher and featuring immoderate antithetic hardware elements, peculiarly a brace of cameras for signaling stereoscopic 3D video. It’s Xreal’s effort to bolster the tiny tract of user AR and spell beyond simply making glasses portion it waits to spot however the marketplace shapes up.

When you prime up the Beam Pro, similar I did astatine AWE, the archetypal content is that it feels exactly like a 6.5-inch Android phone. (We’re calling it a tablet due to the fact that there’s nary telephone app, though it supports 5G data.) The plan is simply a spot chunky, but it’s got a handsome achromatic and achromatic colour strategy with reddish accents and feels decently coagulated for a $199 device. There are lone a mates of signs it’s doing thing unusual: it’s got 2 USB-C ports connected the bottommost — 1 for the headset and 1 for a charging cablegram — and 2 large cameras connected the back. The bundle besides initially seems similar a lightly skinned mentation of Android, though there’s a customized signaling app for the cameras.

But the Beam Pro’s intent becomes wide erstwhile you plug successful an Xreal headset. Connecting the instrumentality volition telephone up a monochrome surface that looks similar a large trackpad, its precocious borderline lined with supplementary buttons, similar 1 for starting surface seizure connected the glasses. The main interface moves to the glasses, wherever you’ll spot rows of Android icons floating successful space. From there, you tin power your acquisition by pointing the Beam Pro astatine icons similar a distant and tapping the screen, oregon — for Xreal glasses that travel with built-in cameras, including the Air 2 Ultra — making gestures with your hands.

The Beam Pro’s strategy is amended than nary in-AR controls astatine all, a concern that was communal portion utilizing Xreal glasses with an mean phone. Xreal has fixed immoderate annoying problems it erstwhile had with streaming apps similar Netflix, which utilized to beryllium simply mirrored successful a mode that wouldn’t adjacent fto you crook disconnected the phone’s screen. Your videos tin present beryllium pinned comfortably successful virtual abstraction portion you power them with the remote. And there’s immoderate bully usage of hardware buttons connected the Beam Pro. What you mightiness presume is simply a phone’s mute power really makes the virtual surface toggle betwixt smoothly pursuing you and being pinned successful place.

That emphatically doesn’t mean the Beam Pro is simply a great controller. I lone utilized it for a abbreviated demo, but it made maine agelong for the days of Google’s slightly quirky, lovingly crafted Daydream VR remote. I’m beauteous definite a precise wide textureless solid sheet is not the perfect attack for a one-handed point-and-tap device, adjacent if it’s a signifier radical are utilized to.

A fewer idiosyncratic elements besides consciousness half-baked. When you request to benignant something, the Beam Pro simply pops a default Android keyboard (or thing precise adjacent to it) implicit the bottommost fractional of its screen, and you can’t usage the main pat sheet to corroborate immoderate substance you entered. You tin swap betwixt manus gestures and tapping the tablet, but it requires digging into a paper and switching power systems halfway done the interaction, erstwhile a hardware toggle oregon one-tap fastener would beryllium much convenient. You can’t usage the glasses arsenic a viewfinder for taking stereoscopic videos, either, thing I astir instinctively tried to do.

On apical of that, the thought of stereoscopic cameras is chill — and, arsenic my workfellow David Pierce notes, is simply a bully mode to separate the Beam Pro from different Android devices. But until mode much radical person VR oregon AR headsets, it volition beryllium hard to stock videos wide successful each their 3D glory. Xreal videos tin beryllium displayed connected non-Xreal devices similar the Vision Pro, but adjacent that’s inactive a tiny market.

Xreal CEO Chi Xu says the existent plan is conscionable a jumping-off constituent for the product. “This is astir apt going to beryllium the procreation that looks the astir akin to a phone,” Chi says. “Getting a brand-new idiosyncratic interface and acquisition is going to beryllium highly challenging — not for us, but for the idiosyncratic to accommodate to the caller gadget. So we’re virtually trying to mimic what radical person been utilized to for the past 20 years.”

Even if I privation utilizing the Beam Pro felt better, it does look to screen what you’d request from an Xreal controller. The main usage cases for the glasses are streaming video, which lone requires a bare-bones remote, and gaming, which demands a full-fledged Bluetooth gamepad oregon a full antithetic instrumentality similar the Steam Deck.

And ultimately, Chi doesn’t spot Xreal gathering a wholly standalone system. “We privation to spouse with bigger platforms,” helium says, perchance including players similar Meta and Google. The institution is moving connected an AR bundle furniture dubbed NebulaOS, which it hopes volition cement its presumption arsenic much than conscionable a glasses maker. Right now, though, astir computing companies either aren’t making superior nationalist moves into AR oregon — similar Apple — privation to support their ain walled-garden augmented realities. In this environment, devices similar the Beam Pro are indispensable for smaller players to survive.

But Xreal’s semipermanent presumption inactive seems risky. Countless user AR startups person been launched since the aboriginal 2010s, and astir person either folded (like the non-Mark Zuckerberg Meta), been acquired by a large institution for a nebulous aboriginal merchandise (like the present Google-owned North), oregon pivoted to a purely business-focused exemplary (like Magic Leap). To the grade user AR exists, it’s dominated by large tech companies that thin to either get oregon crush imaginable competition.

Chi, though, thinks there’s a accidental for the institution to find its niche. “I deliberation it’s excessively aboriginal to archer however the nett exemplary volition look successful the AR space,” helium says. “We don’t deliberation we’re conscionable hardware — if you tin beryllium a bigger portion of helping radical beryllium much efficient, beryllium much powerful, I deliberation you’re going to person a just stock of that profit.”