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Adam Savage’s Tested
XREAL Aura Augmented Reality Glasses Hands-On Impressions!
⏱ 29 min video · 3 min read16 Jun 2026Worth watching
TL;DR
Norm from Tested gives hands-on impressions of XREAL's Project Aura, the company's first true augmented reality glasses running Android XR, showcased at Augmented World Expo. The video covers the hardware specs, a CEO interview with Chi (XREAL CEO), and real-world usage impressions of the optical pass-through experience.
Key points
1
XREAL Aura uses prism optics with a 70-degree field of view (up from 57 degrees), 1920x1200 per-eye micro OLED displays, and runs Android XR — making it XREAL's first true AR glasses with world mapping, hand tracking, and up to five floating windows.
2
A separate Compute Puck (worn on belt or across body) houses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 3 chip and battery, while the glasses themselves run XREAL's own X1S chip — latency-sensitive tasks stay on the glasses, heavier compute goes to the puck.
3
Because Aura uses optical pass-through rather than video pass-through (like Apple Vision Pro or Samsung Galaxy XR), it saves significant processing power and lets users see the real world directly through the prism, with electrochromic tinting for a VR-style lockout mode.
4
Aura still works like previous XREAL glasses — plug directly into a phone, laptop, Steam Deck, or game console via USB-C — and the puck has its own USB-C port, allowing a connected device to appear as a floating window within the Android XR interface simultaneously.
5
A consumer version of Project Aura with identical hardware is planned for launch later in 2025; developer units are available now via XREAL's Catalyst program, and XREAL pulled the Neo product due to battery safety and certification concerns.
Key takeaways
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If you already own XREAL One-series glasses for display use, Aura represents a meaningful leap — 70-degree FOV feels edge-to-edge within the prism and text remains readable despite lower pixel density spread across the wider field.
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The Compute Puck is optional: without it you get the same six-degrees-of-freedom experience and the extra cameras; with it you get full Android XR multitasking, Gemini voice interaction, and the ability to layer a tethered device feed as a floating window.
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Higher-resolution panels (2.5K or 4K) are not yet possible in this form factor because no micro OLED panel small enough exists yet — XREAL says it is actively working with suppliers and will likely be among the first to ship when such panels become available.
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XREAL builds roughly two-thirds of its bill-of-materials in-house or via fully custom components, giving it supply chain flexibility to iterate faster than competitors assembling from off-the-shelf parts.
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No eye tracking is present on Aura; input relies on hand gesture ray-casting and the touchpad on the puck — a gyro is present in the puck and XREAL may enable pointer aiming in a future software update.
Notable quotes
“70 is not the end.”
“We are confident because optical see-through, we are a leader in this category, and right now we are actually showing Aura to give people hope — wow, this actually can deliver 80% of the Vision Pro experience at only 20% of their cost.”
“Two-thirds of the BOM cost is made either in-house or fully customized by us — so this is not something you can easily reassemble off the shelf.”
Worth watching?
✅
Worth watching the full video?
Watch if you want to see the physical form factor and hear the CEO explain the architecture firsthand — the key specs and impressions are all captured here, but the visual demo of the prism optics and floating windows adds useful context.
Saved you some time? The creator still deserves a like.
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