When Google introduced Android XR late last year, I saw real potential in it. Designed to bring consistency to mixed reality (XR) headsets and smart glasses—essentially an “Android for XR”—the platform aims to address the fragmentation that has long hindered the category’s growth. After testing the first Android XR device, Samsung’s Galaxy XR, my cautious optimism grew. My colleagues felt the same, and both the Galaxy XR and Android XR earned a TechEx award for their promise.
Still, the Galaxy XR, with its Apple Vision Pro–style design, doesn’t show what Android XR can mean for smart glasses specifically. Now, Google has finally provided that clarity by unveiling two of its own smart-glasses development kits and pulling back the curtain on XReal’s Android XR–powered Project Aura. After trying all three, I’m more convinced than ever that Android XR could mark a major leap forward for smart glasses.
Seeing the Potential in Android XR
Google’s Android XR development kits are designed for developers and manufacturers seeking to create products and experiences that rival those of the Meta Ray-Ban Display and similar smart glasses. They use a color display that combines an embedded microprojector with a special pattern etched into the lens, known as a waveguide, that directs images into your eye. Waveguide displays are limited in terms of field of view and resolution, but they can be much smaller and lighter than other types of wearable displays, enabling smart glasses that aren’t much bulkier or heavier than ordinary specs.
One of the Android XR waveguide development kits (Credit: Will Greenwald)
The two Google development kits are completely wireless, running on their own batteries, and connect to an Android phone for all software processing. They’re nearly identical, with the only difference being that one has a monocular display that only shows a picture to the right eye, and the other has a binocular display that can show images to both eyes. The binocular version can produce stereoscopic 3D images that appear to have depth, but the monocular version is lighter, weighing just 1.73 ounces (49 grams). For what it’s worth, I didn’t feel much of a difference in weight between the two.
I got to try several Android XR activities on the Google smart glasses, giving me a good sense of how this type of device will work in the real world. To start, I tried YouTube Music on the monocular pair, which played audio into my ears and displayed a widget on the screen with track information and playback status. Tapping and swiping a touch strip on the right temple of the glasses let me play, pause, and skip tracks easily. The widget was sharp and easy to read, which is obviously vital for any smart glasses with a display. The music sounded fine as well, but I was indoors in a relatively quiet room. Of course, as development kits, their hardware components will likely differ from those in retail-ready products, so don’t read too much into the audio or video quality. The demo focused on the experience and features, as well as how Android XR, as a platform, can work on smart glasses.
The next demo was an incoming Google Meet video call. A Google rep called the phone number connected to the glasses, and I answered by tapping the touch strip. Her face appeared on the glasses display, in color, and I could see her talking, just as if I were on a video call on my laptop. She couldn’t see me since there wasn’t a camera pointed at my face, but I could share my own view through the glasses’ cameras with a swipe. Again, the call looked and sounded good, and I didn’t experience any hiccups.
Google Maps navigation in Android XR (Credit: Google)
Navigation through Google Maps is baked into Android XR, so I was shown how it can work on the glasses. I asked for a nearby store, and it provided me with a few options. After I chose one, I saw a directional arrow and distant measurements for turn-by-turn directions to that store. Looking downward, the arrow transformed into a full map of my surroundings. It seemed to work very well and tracked the direction I was facing, although I couldn’t exactly walk anywhere to see how accurately it followed my location. Having a video game-like minimap in reality has long been one of my dreams for smart glasses, and it appears we’re getting closer to that. I hope that the Android XR Google Maps app will allow me to configure when and how the map appears, so I don’t have to look at my feet for it, but I couldn’t confirm if those options will be available.
AI at Your Fingertips: Gemini in Action
Gemini identifying a bird on Android XR smart glasses (Credit: Google)
Google is pushing Gemini hard, and it’s no surprise that AI plays a significant role in Android XR. On waveguide smart glasses running Android XR, Gemini is always available with a button press and a wake word, ready to perform simple tasks like playing music or making a call, or do more complex analysis like answering questions or identifying what you’re looking at.
During the demo, I was invited to ask Gemini for recipe suggestions while viewing a pantry wall filled with ingredients. I stared at a few jars of pasta, and it provided instructions on making pasta salad. Gemini could see the foodstuffs I was looking at and not only successfully named the pastas but also correctly identified sweet potatoes, and even noted that they were likely American sweet potatoes rather than Japanese or Korean ones. That kind of machine vision processing is far more impressive to me than large language model (LLM) outputs of recipes.
All of the demos described above felt very familiar, because I had similar experiences with the Meta Ray-Ban Display when I tried it out. In fact, asking an AI to produce a recipe based on the ingredients you’re looking at is a page straight out of Meta’s playbook, though my Android XR demos never failed as the on-stage Meta Connect presentation did. The functions are indeed very similar, but the difference lies in how the underlying systems are intended to be used. Android XR is a broad platform for third-party developers and manufacturers, featuring core features and elements that can be used directly or built upon, depending on the final product. The Meta Ray-Ban Display’s operating system is the final interface for a specific product. It doesn’t even have a public-facing name like Android XR or Apple’s visionOS. Android XR is a first step for an entire ecosystem, and Meta Ray-Ban Display might receive upgrades and iterations down the line, but it isn’t going to drive a field of non-Meta glasses.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display, which uses a unique wristband controller (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Also, the Meta Ray-Ban Display is monocular, which means Google’s binocular development kit could show me some new tricks with 3D. After putting on the binocular glasses, I was shown some 3D video on YouTube. It indeed looked nice and 3D, and was fairly watchable. The binocular glasses also provided a 3D view of the city when I brought up Google Maps. As I mentioned before, though, waveguide displays have a limited field of view, so even if the picture is fairly sharp and in full color, I’m not sure I’d rely on this type of glasses to watch a full show or movie. In fact, the reps noted that watching longer-form video content here wasn’t an intended use case, though being able to play shorter clips is certainly handy.
The 3D features are nice but not vital to the experience. They can make using the glasses feel more immersive, but they aren’t why I favor binocular smart glasses. I find having a display in only one eye slightly disorienting compared with being able to see the same picture through both eyes. While I can quickly get used to it with the display in my dominant right eye, people with dominant left eyes could possibly find it more awkward to use, or at least a bit less pleasant.
Making Waveguide Glasses Practical
These Android XR glasses feel like a significant step in making wireless, waveguide display smart glasses truly accessible to users. I’ve tested several, like the Rokid Glasses and the Even Realities G1 (and I’m currently testing its successor, the G2), and they’ve been very inconsistent and unpolished. Some, like the Rokid Glasses, have useful features and seem reliable enough if you get through the learning curve, but I haven’t been able to recommend any of them without major caveats. They also feature monochrome green displays rather than color, which has also been frustrating.
I haven’t fully tested the Meta Ray-Ban Display outside of supervised demos yet, but while they seem like some of the most refined waveguide smart glasses so far, they’re also purely Meta products, using a closed system with limited room for outside development or growth. Google’s development kits demonstrate how Android XR can be implemented consistently by multiple manufacturers, serving as templates for developers to create their own apps. It’s what smart glasses like these have sorely been needing, and what could push this particular sub-category past its current status as shaky early-adopter hardware.
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Project Aura: The Smartest Glasses Yet?
XReal’s Project Aura (Credit: XReal)
Then there’s XReal’s Project Aura, which has turned out to be a completely different beast and much closer to the Samsung Galaxy XR than Google’s waveguide development kits. XReal is another major manufacturer, besides Samsung, working with Google to introduce the first Android XR devices, and I got to try its Project Aura smart glasses along with the other devices.
Project Aura is a pair of smart display glasses that use bulkier prisms instead of a waveguide system, but offer an incredibly wide 70-degree field of view. It doesn’t fill up your entire vision with a picture (even the Galaxy XR, with its 109-degree field of view, doesn’t do that), but it still looks like a huge theater screen in front of you. On the virtue of its display alone, it’s more impressive than other prism smart glasses, and with a much wider view than my current top pick in that category, the 57-degree XReal One Pro.
Me trying the Galaxy XR, which is much bulkier than Project Aura (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The display isn’t the most interesting thing about Project Aura. Its claim to fame is that it’s an Android XR pair of smart glasses, and unlike the Google waveguide glasses, it’s fully self-contained. It connects through a wire to a phone-sized control box that runs Android XR as its own operating system. Inside that box is a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor, the same chip that drives the Galaxy XR. In other words, this pair of smart glasses has about the same processing power and capabilities as Samsung’s bigger, bulkier headset. Its picture isn’t as big or sharp, and it doesn’t have as many outward-facing cameras, but it has the same brain, the same interface, the same apps, and the same intuitive hand-tracking control.
When I put on Project Aura, I was greeted with a tutorial I recognized from using the Galaxy XR. The glasses directed me to hold my hands in front of me and point at objects. I selected them by aiming with my finger and could click on them with pinching gestures or even grab and move them around. The same gestures applied to icons and app windows as well, allowing me to point and pinch to open new apps, resize them, and move them around. I could even bring up both the home screen and a quick menu by turning my palm to face me and making the pinch gesture. It felt exactly like the Galaxy XR, and I picked it up instantly.
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Android XR’s PC connection app (Credit: Cool)
Project Aura appears to be capable of nearly everything the Galaxy XR can do. I was able to open multiple apps, arranging Chrome, Google Maps, and YouTube around my view. I could play a game called Demio that projected a 3D tabletop RPG view in front of me. I could also connect to a nearby computer directly and play games through it with minimal lag.
Control and Interaction Reimagined
I hailed the Galaxy XR’s control system as the best I’ve used in a headset since the Apple Vision Pro, which I still consider the most advanced and intuitive mixed reality device I’ve reviewed. It requires no controller or touchpad—you just point and pinch. This control system is incredibly rare on headsets, but seeing it in a much smaller and lighter pair of smart glasses? I wasn’t expecting that.
Android XR’s app menu (Credit: Google)
Smart glasses, especially ones with a display, have struggled with controls. The waveguide models I’ve tested, as well as the Google development kits, all rely on voice controls or buttons and touch strips on the temples. The Meta Ray-Ban Display features the Neural Link Band, which tracks the micro-gestures of your hand, but I found it to be inconsistent when I tried it. Tethered prism display smart glasses rely entirely on the connected device for controls, with the exception of a basic button-based settings menu at best. Project Aura is a full, standalone Android XR device that supports hand-tracking and gestures, and it’s the most intuitive way to use smart glasses I’ve ever seen.
Since it’s a pair of smart glasses and not a full headset with a strap, Project Aura is much easier to put on and take off than the Galaxy XR, and it feels much more comfortable to wear. You can also see through it when the power is turned off, since its projection system relies on clear prism lenses. You shouldn’t use Project Aura while walking around as you would with waveguide display smart glasses, though; the prism lenses might be transparent, but they’re still thick enough to warp your outside vision enough to be uncomfortable at best and dangerous at worst. Prism-equipped smart glasses like these are best used when stationary or in a controlled space, such as a larger mixed reality headset, rather than when crossing the street or riding the subway.
Project Aura has a few disadvantages to go with its smaller, more convenient form factor. The display is the biggest part, since it’s noticeably narrower than the Galaxy XR’s. While the view is still huge for smart glasses, it isn’t as immersive as the headset’s, and its 1080p resolution isn’t nearly as sharp as the Galaxy XR’s 3,552 by 3,840 pixels per eye. Because it doesn’t have as many cameras, there’s a slightly smaller area where it can track your hands; I didn’t need to hold my hands directly in front of my face, but I couldn’t leave them in my lap like I can with the Galaxy XR or the Vision Pro. It also lacks internal cameras for eye tracking, so you must use hand movements instead of your gaze for control.
Even with its limitations, I found Project Aura to be incredibly exciting. I’ve been using prism-based smart glasses, particularly the XReal One Pro, for working away from my desk and watching videos and playing games on my phone, and they have been very useful for that. Those use cases all require connecting the glasses to a separate device, such as a phone or laptop, and controlling everything through that device’s touch-screen, controller, or mouse and keyboard. Project Aura works entirely on its own (and as an Android-driven device with Bluetooth, it can also work wirelessly with controllers and keyboards, if you want). The control box is technically still a separate device that connects to the glasses with a cable, but like with the Galaxy XR and Vision Pro, it can be slipped into a pocket and treated like a battery. Combining the convenience of prism smart glasses with the capabilities of a high-end XR headset makes Project Aura feel like the next big leap in smart glasses as a whole.
The Road Ahead for Android XR Smart Glasses
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get Project Aura any time soon. My close look at the glasses came with an important detail: It’s a development kit. When Project Aura launches next year, it will be targeting developers and won’t be available for general purchase. So, like with the Google development kits, unless you’re planning to work on Android XR apps, you probably won’t be getting your hands on Project Aura.
I didn’t hear anything about pricing, either, though considering it packs more impressive hardware than the Meta Ray-Ban Display, I wouldn’t be surprised if devs will be shelling out as much for it as they would for the $1,799 Galaxy XR. As for retail-ready Android XR smart glasses, don’t expect to see anything until late 2026 at the very earliest.
About Our Expert
Will Greenwald
Principal Writer, Consumer Electronics
Experience
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I’ve served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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