Extended Reality

Extended reality is a form of media consumption that overlays reality with computer-generated graphics, combining the two into one coherent experience, or so the intention goes. There are a number of ways to incorporate this, and one of the methods that I will be going over will be through prescription-like XR glasses, which generally, but not solely, act as a floating personal display that overlays your surroundings.

To date, I have owned four such devices:

• Rokid Air by Rokid
• Rokid Max by Rokid
• Viture One XR by Viture
• XREAL Air 2 Pro by XREAL (nReal)

All of these seem to solve each other's shortcomings, making it particularly difficult to favour one over the others.

Rokid Air

These were the first set of AR glasses I owned. These were primarily meant as a stopgap solution to tide me over until the then-upcoming Viture One XR set. At the time of writing, these currently retail for $319.99 USD and are readily available at retailers such as Amazon.

They do support three degrees of freedom (3DoF) via the Rokid app, but this is only when paired with a smartphone. 3DoF cannot be activated when the device is being used as a simple AV passthrough. I don't currently own these as they were accidentally left on a bus, so I can't make any detailed comparisons in real time. The only issues I really had were the visor feeling floppy and receiving a nice dosage of screen burn-in of the Windows taskbar within two weeks of owning them. The speakers are by and large the best out of the three examples here, both in terms of clarity and volume. But I would never expect to be taken seriously if I wore these in public.

Rokid Max

Compared to Rokid Air, I might even be able to pull off using these in public?

Due to this, I opted to upgrade to the company's upcoming set which was incidentally due for imminent release. From the time of ordering to delivery, it took ten days to arrive, after placing the order on Rokid's site in May. At the time of writing, these currently retail for $439.99 USD and are readily available at retailers such as Amazon.

The aesthetic design have heavily improved from the visor-like aesthetic of the Rokid Air set, now resembling the concept of a contemporary set of prescription glasses as explained by one blind Martian to another.

These have a number of improvements over the Rokid Air set; improved color accuracy, an alternative 120fps mode, and native 3D SBS mode are generally the more notable ones. And to date, this color accuracy and picture clarity is unrivaled by any other set I've used. I am, in fact, opting to use the Rokid Max to write this page while using my physical screen for monitoring emails and messages from work and Discord. In other words, to look busy to others keeping up with real-time content while being in my own world on this second display, in reality. Another addition to the Rokid Max is a proximity sensor on the right stem, which will undoubtedly improve the longevity of the glasses while they aren't being worn - harkening back to the Rokid Air burn-in scenario. Of course, while taking photos through the glasses, this posed to be an issue, and the feature is not configurable. For general usage, this should be a non-issue for any practical purpose.

Out of the box, the glasses also are paired with a lens cover, USB-C to USB-C cable, hard-shell protective case, and three extra nosepiece sizes in addition to the pre-installed set. While results vary for everyone, I don't actually require or prefer the nosepieces at all, as they cause the glasses to seat too high so as to appear odd to anyone looking at me. I don't have any discomfort forgoing the nosepiece bracket entirely and it feels more or less identical to having it on.

As for the case, they have an unsegregated compartment for accessories, which will usually be the USB-C to USB-C cable that these glasses come with.

As it stands, Rokid Max still has no operating system or battery on its own and exists solely as an audio/video passthrough; 3DoF is available only through the Rokid app. Luckily, 3D mode is available at any time on supported devices by holding the short key for ~3 seconds, and 120hz mode is available on supported devices by holding Vol+ for ~3 seconds.

The speakers seem to be noticeably quieter than the Air, but it still offers the same punchiness and quality. Specifically within Samsung DeX, however, the speaker volume was barely unusable. And it seems that in a recent Samsung update, the option to select audio routing is missing, implying that audio will only come out via the phone unless you are using connected earbuds. Your results may vary.

And as a side note: I was already impressed with the brightness of these over the Viture One XR, and the Rokid Max were only at its 80% brightness level here. Without using a cover or electrochromic glass layer, the resulting image is essentially opaque in a brightly-lit office environment. However, these glasses do flex their microOLED capabilities, and while they do have a high dynamic range (by dictionary definition; Rokid Max does not support HDR content), content that has dark or black shadows will appear nearly invisible, as the glasses cannot make blacks deeper than the environment outside of the viewable area. However, these black areas still appear vibrant and with texture and detail without being artificially brightened. On the topic of brightness, an unfortunate downfall of the Rokid Max is an enforced blue-light filter on its lowest brightness setting. Luckily, there are other brightness settings to choose from to bypass this.

All in all, these will likely be the set of glasses I stay with due to the picture quality alone. It doesn't have the ecosystem or case of the Viture One XR, but superior core performance of the device will always triumph over niceties. I wish the Viture dock was compatible with these. They unfortunately fail to output any image when connected to this dock.

Viture One XR

Slightly more normal...

Shortly after the delivery of the Rokid Max set, these nearly immediately followed. To be truthful, though these are the third XR glasses I've owned, these were the first ones on my radar. The only issue was that these would take 4-5 months to ship following my initial exposure to them on YouTube.

Out of the three glasses owned during this period, Viture, by far, has the most cohesive ecosystem of accessories and software support.

• Instead of a dongle that requires an external permanent power supply, Viture's dock triples as a battery, as well as a means to enable a Viture One-donning friend to share the joy with you.
• Unlike Rokid's offerings, Viture One XR offers native 3DoF at any time, simply by holding the side key for three seconds.
• Instead of needing an extra accessory that may or may not come in the box, Viture graciously incorporates electrochromic filters on each lens to block out ambient light, simply at the press of a button.

The running theme here is simplicity. Instead of having to go through a shoddy application to demo 3DoF, it just works. Instead of needing to remember to pack-in a lens shade, the glasses can block ambient light on its own. It just works. Instead of needing to find a power supply that you can try to tether to your Rokid Hub dongle, Viture's is self-sufficient as it supplies its own power.

The case is another great point for Viture, since it has a dedicated compartment for the cable to sit without scratching the glasses. It's also much smaller than Rokid Max's and thereby more portable. Speaking of the cable, I do have mixed feelings; it is easy to connect the USB-C side to the host device, and to simply place the glasses on and vaguely waggle the magnetic end to the glasses stem to connect the device. It's certainly much faster than manually inserting a USB-C cable into both ends. But it's not so fun when my ear causes the connection to physically break when I so much as lift up the glasses to talk to someone or look around, thereby causing either Samsung DeX to fully initialise, or the windows on my PC to move to a single screen.

Left: Viture One Right: Rokid Max

So why do I prefer the Rokid Max overall? There's really nothing that doesn't work. The niceties are all there. Unfortunately, it's the biggest factor of them all; the factor that you (yes, you!) will be examining for the entire duration of the usage of these glasses -- the display. It's something that I can only describe on Viture's end as serviceable. The Viture works fine, and it's something I doubt I would ever take an issue with if I never looked through the Rokid Max. But given the active choice between a perfectly crisp, color-calibrated display that potentially surpasses the sRGB color gamut over a noticeably smaller, dimmer, softer, and overall more lifeless quality of the display -- I know what I would choose. And as with everything else, this is really your preference. Just keep in mind that for actual use, the image will take up your entire field of view, so image quality is something that I consider a high priority.

On Viture, I can tell I am looking at an image on a display. On Rokid Max, it feels as if I am looking at a physical poster of this keyart. Even if the colors seem oversaturated on Rokid's end in this example image, details within the display remain discernable and the colors look more realistic and natural, when viewing through the glasses themselves.

I prefer the Viture One XR for every individual point that isn't screen quality. But if you don't care about screen quality, one may be able to consider the Viture One XR glasses as perfection.

I ended up returning these.

XREAL Air 2 Pro

I stayed with the Rokid Max for about a year. I took them on business trips, on the plane, on the bus, and in bars. But something was missing...

They are hard to see with any kind of bright background. The audio also isn't the best, and either is the software support.

So I looked into replacing them, or at least testing out how competitors fare. Formerly known as Nreal, XREAL has had the market by storm ever since the Nreal Air glasses, one of the original XR glasses. To cut to the chase, the XREAL have screens similar, but not as good as, the Rokid Air.