Xreal opens preorders for Aura glasses from $1,279 — The Verge

Xreal has opened preorders for the transparent Aura glasses, created in partnership with Google and built on the Android XR platform. The base version of the device with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage costs $1,279, The Verge reports. The model with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage is priced at $1,499.

Competition with Meta

The base Xreal Aura is priced $20 below Meta's VR glasses. Two weeks earlier, journalists in the San Francisco Bay Area had the opportunity to try both devices. Both models weigh about 100 grams and allow virtual objects and desktops to be overlaid onto the real world.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite chips and batteries are housed in a separate computing module connected to the glasses by a cable. Aura's module runs Android XR, while Meta's device runs Horizon OS. In both cases, the user sees a grid of floating app icons.

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Transparent lenses and controls

The key difference of Aura is its transparent lenses, while Meta's glasses use image passthrough from cameras, providing greater immersion. Aura's diagonal field of view is 70 degrees — one of the largest among transparent glasses, but smaller than that of Meta's device.

Meta's glasses support eye tracking: the user can select items by looking at them and pinching their fingers together. Aura has a touch panel on the computing module and a hand-tracking system that allows users to control virtual pointers.