Top 5 AR Eyewear Manufacturers

AR smart glasses are wearable computers that add information alongside or onto what you see. This technology can help museums and theaters offer instant subtitling, while drone pilots can view real-time speed and power indicators.

Xiaomi’s new XiaoMi augmented reality (AR) glasses are built with comfort in mind. They have a cover that snaps around the lenses to block out light and boost immersion.

The Rokid Air AR Glasses

Rokid has been one of the more reliable AR glasses manufacturers to turn to when looking for a pair. And the company’s latest pair, the Rokid Air, is no exception.

These lightweight glasses are capable of projecting a virtual screen that can mirror your smartphone, PC or Mac, and offer an immersive experience at home, in the office, on the road or while playing games. They feature a high-resolution Micro OLED display and 120Hz refresh ar eyeglasses rate for great image quality. They’re also TUV Rheinland-certified for low blue light, so you can wear them for longer periods without damaging your eyes.

The Rokid Air is also designed with your comfort in mind, featuring memory metal nose pads, flexible hinges and padded temple tips. It also has a 0.00 to -6.00D diopter adjustment for near-sighted users. And the glasses are equipped with HD directional speakers, noise-canceling microphones and AI voice control, making them easy to use.

The Rokid Air also supports HDCP, allowing it to be used with a variety of streaming services. And it has a front light leakage reduction of 90 percent, so you can enjoy your entertainment in privacy and peace. This is a good set of smart glasses that is a great value for anyone who’s interested in trying out AR. It’s not as feature-packed as the nReal Air, but it’s a good option for anyone who wants to take their first steps into the world of AR.

The Nreal Air AR Glasses

Nreal is one of the few AR makers to still be standing from the first wave of the technology and these second-generation glasses are big improvements on their predecessors. They’re incredibly light and have spatial speakers that are positioned so they sit near your ears. This allows them to produce a sound quality that’s actually pretty good, which is impressive considering the minuscule size of the hardware.

The Nreal Air are also less expensive than many other AR headsets and can be used unofficially with a lot of other USB-C devices, like the OPPO Find X3 Pro that we tested them with. However, they do have a limited experience that isn’t suited for every use case and need to be tethered by a cable.

Once you’re ready to go, you connect the Nreal Air to a compatible smartphone using a USB-C cable and then start up the Nebula app, which acts as the bridge between the phone and the AR experience. Once you’re inside MR Space, there’s a range of apps that you can choose from in virtual windows.

The Nreal Air have a very comfortable fit and can be worn for long periods of time. They’re also much lighter than other AR and VR headsets and look less like a pair of spectacles. This makes them a great choice for commuters or people without a large TV to watch movies and play games on.

The Vuzix Blade AR Glasses

Vuzix has always been a company focused on the enterprise, selling its smart glasses to everything from warehousing staff to remote workers. Its latest offerings, including the Blade 2 augmented reality glasses, continue that trend. These ANSI Z87.1 certified eyewear are designed to give frontline workers hands-free heads-up access to data and remote expertise, all in a sleek form factor that keeps the user safe from distractions and vision occlusion.

The Blade 2 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 635 processor, has a 480×853 display with waveguide optics, a 20-degree field of view and brightness of up to 2000 nits. The display also supports a range of inputs, including multilingual voice control, a capacitive touch interface, motion sensors and haptic motors for vibrating alerts. All of this is controlled via a companion app on iOS and Android that can be used to remotely configure and manage the device as well as integrate with MDM tools for hardware management.

The Blade 2 has a handful of apps available now, with more on the way. You can download weather, turn-by-turn walking directions, Uber and Alexa, among others. There’s no support for Netflix or Hulu, though, a limitation shared by most other AR headsets. It also ar eyeglasses doesn’t have built-in speakers, so you’ll need to use a pair of Bluetooth headphones or connect it to a speaker.

The North Focals AR Glasses

While checking email on a smartwatch and walking around with true wireless earbuds can feel relatively normal, there’s something still odd about wearing visible technology on your face. That stigma could be the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of AR glasses. But Kitchener, Ontario-based startup North is hoping to cure that with its Focals line of consumer AR specs.

These snazzy sunglasses look just like regular eyeglasses, save for a small projector near the right lens. It’s a small and discreet design that might be overlooked by people looking at you, unless they were looking for something in particular.

North’s Focals pair with your phone via Bluetooth and show notifications, can call an Uber and offer a few other handy features. They also have built-in Alexa and support hands-free commands such as “Hey, Google Fit,” to check your steps or “Hey, Facebook, take a picture.” You control the Focals using a small ring-like device called Loop that doubles as a four-directional joystick.

You can get fitted for Focals at one of North’s Brooklyn or Toronto stores and at a few pop-up showrooms, as well as through the company’s Showroom iOS app (which also lets you upload your prescription). Pricing starts at $999 without lenses and includes a hard shell protective case that plugs into the power button on the ring to charge.