I flew over 10,000 miles with Asus ROG Xreal R1 smart glasses — here are 2 things I love about them (and 3 I don’t)

Asus ROG Xreal R1 AR Glasses — (Image credit: Future)

The $849 Asus ROG Xreal R1 smart glasses are finally here, and I’ve been testing them for a while. So why am I not scoring them? Well, life comes at you fast and I’ve been traveling over 10,000 miles to Google I/O and back.

That means while I am able to put these specs through their paces in a portable state, I’ve not been able to really test the biggest feature of them — the dock allowing for lightning fast 240Hz gameplay. That’s a world’s first for smart glasses…but it wasn’t available during the time I (and other tech journalists) have been testing them.

But there’s enough here that I can give you some in depth first impressions of using these for hours on end. Let’s get into it.

👎 Not quite ready for primetime

I’ll get this one sorted right off the bat. The hardware is finished, but the software isn’t quite done yet. This shouldn’t be something you face, but it is highly recommended that you get the firmware updated for both the glasses and dock before you properly try them out.

Out-of-the-box, the Frame Rate Boost mode that gives you 240Hz is not available, and with the update literally coming out mere days ago, I can’t in good conscience give you a scored review until I’ve put them properly through their paces.

Plus, it doesn’t help that I’m testing them while out here at Google I/O (far away from my gaming tower and the dock). The following is my experience of the portable setup — stand by for my time replacing my gaming monitors with this set of specs!

👍 Comfortable wearability

The aesthetic may be more Matrix than modern (it won’t be for everyone), but the end result is nice weight distribution across the glasses with pressure-absorbent nose pads that give you a nice wearability for hours on end.

It’s a larger pair of glasses on the face, but still comfortable enough for long flights, along with well-placed buttons for custom controls of the screen tweaks and the X1 chip-enabled feature set.

👍 Crispy picture, versatile customizability

It’s a 1080p picture, but with the prism display tech over bird bath, it’s an impressively sharp 1080p. That comes down to the clarity of the optics here, which does make plugging these into your phone for watching the finale of “The Boys” a nice experience.

On top of that, I’ve always said Xreal’s the way to go for a productivity focus, and these deliver when connected to a laptop — the 32:9 ultrawide panel activated entirely with the on-device chip (no software needed) is a nice touch.

For a better mix of a vivid color palette, something like the Viture Beast is a better pick here. However, Xreal is on the comeback with a customizable color palette. Still not as colorful, but getting closer!

👎 Some edge blurs and screen tearing at higher refresh rates

But while the Xreal One Pro image quality is well and truly here, that comes with some of the drawbacks I saw while testing these — namely the edge blurriness. These prisms are being stretched here by the micro OLEDs within them, and that means you’ll have to tweak the screen distance to be either smaller or further away from you.

Also, rather frustratingly, once connected to the dock, the buttons on the glasses themselves do nothing. While I can understand that in this deskbound situation, you’ll be more likely to use a dock to control them (and the joystick/button layout is easy enough to use), I did find myself often going for the glasses buttons to no avail.

Forza Horizon 6 — (Image credit: Future)

And the big final part here is the screen tearing when using the dock. In all the games I played (particularly any with Nvidia’s DLSS turned on), it was a visible distraction of tears and artifacting that would pose a competitive disadvantage.

Of course, this is without the firmware update, so this could be swiftly resolved, but I’m only here to tell you the immediate experience I’ve had with them.

👎 $849 is a steep price

But that’s when I get to the big issue here — that is a hefty price tag. I know premium AR glasses will cost more, but $849 is a large chunk of change to say the least. You need to be either a serious PC player or a refresh rate purist to really want to spend this much.

Make no mistake about it. This is prime for a specific kind of audience, but even at that rate, you’re getting a crispy, colorful experience that’s more than enough at way cheaper prices. The Xreal 1S — for example — are a great pair of gaming glasses, and while they’re not 240Hz, you get more than enough of a silky frame rate for handheld play (honestly the place where you’d use the Xreal R1s most of the time anyway).

Outlook

Obviously, it’s too early to call on a lot of these features. Maybe the firmware update fixes the screen tearing and these could be the 240Hz wonder glasses that could replace your gaming monitor.

But in my first 10,000 miles, you can tell Asus and Xreal are onto something mightily interesting here, which is a bit of a diamond in the rough at the moment. Time will tell whether these issues are fixed (which you kind of hope they do for $849), and my full review once the full updates are applied will be coming early next week!

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Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.