Xreal’s new gadget is a phone-sized Android tablet just for your AR glasses

Xreal has made a sanction for itself with immoderate amazingly nice-looking augmented world glasses, which enactment a show in beforehand of your eyes truthful you tin bash things similar ticker TV oregon play games connected a elephantine surface projected conscionable for you. But unlike, say, Apple’s Vision Pro oregon Meta’s Quest 3, Xreal has nary built-in bundle oregon content. It’s conscionable a surface successful your glasses. This is bully successful that you tin plug successful tons of different devices, but it does restrict the benignant of things those glasses tin do.

The caller Beam Pro is Xreal’s latest effort to span that gap. It’s a handheld instrumentality with the unsmooth dimensions of a smartphone, but Xreal thinks of it arsenic much of a companion to your glasses. It runs a customized mentation of Android 14 — Xreal calls it NebulaOS — and should beryllium capable to load astir apps onto your look screen. And connected the back, there’s a dual-lens camera you tin usage to instrumentality spatial and 3D videos for viewing successful your glasses. (Or your Vision Pro; Xreal says the Beam Pro’s footage volition enactment successful your Apple headset, too.)

The specs present are axenic smartphone: the Beam Pro has a 6.5-inch, 2400 x 1800 screen, runs connected a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (though it’s not wide which one), and has either 6GB oregon 8GB of RAM and either 128GB oregon 256GB of storage. The cheapest exemplary costs $199, though you astir apt won’t privation 1 unless you’re besides plunking down a fewer 100 bucks for a brace of Xreal glasses.

There are a mates of evident tells that this is nary mean Android phone, though. First are the dual 50-megapixel cameras, the likes of which we haven’t seen connected smartphones overmuch successful caller years. The Beam Pro besides has 2 USB-C ports, truthful you tin complaint the instrumentality and link it to your glasses simultaneously. The NebulaOS tweaks to Android are each astir AR, too; erstwhile you person your glasses plugged in, you tin usage the Beam’s surface arsenic a touchpad, and the instrumentality is besides designed to person 2 apps unfastened broadside by broadside successful your tract of view. When you archetypal plug successful the glasses, it’ll popular up a homescreen of your apps, which you tin unfastened and power utilizing the Beam Pro arsenic a remote.

The Beam Pro looks similar a large upgrade connected the Beam, which was fundamentally conscionable a distant power for your Xreal glasses. The Beam decidedly solved a problem for Xreal owners, but it had immoderate issues: a clump of reviewers and users recovered it was fiddly and unreliable, and Xreal had a hard clip explaining to users why it adjacent existed successful the archetypal place. The surface should marque the Pro overmuch easier to use, and the camera makes it much than conscionable a lesser smartphone replacement. You can, of course, inactive plug successful your Steam Deck oregon smartphone and usage Xreal’s glasses that way, but this feels similar a much integrated approach.

Xreal’s attack is overmuch less integrated than what we’re seeing from Apple and Meta, some of which are determined to enactment a full machine connected your face. But there’s thing clever astir Xreal’s way: it’s utilizing a wholly mature instrumentality class to bash each the hard enactment — and doing arsenic small connected your look arsenic possible. At slightest for now, it feels similar a astute strategy.