Donning a pair of AR glasses lets you carry a massive virtual screen anywhere you go, and after trying the new RayNeo GT Max, I could easily see myself wearing them for hours.
I’ve been wearing a pair of the best smart glasses from both Xreal and Viture while traveling and at home for almost a year now. Doing so has made a huge difference, as I no longer need to haul a portable monitor around when I want a larger display. However, after wearing them for hours at a time, comfort always becomes an issue.
After trying RayNeo’s new GT Max AR glasses at IFA 2026, I was completely taken aback by just how comfortable they were. At 78 grams, they’re not the lightest on paper — the Viture Pro 2 at 63 grams still wins there — but by ditching the traditional birdbath optical design, they don’t feel front-heavy on your face at all.
Here’s what it was like trying out the RayNeo GT Max, and why they might be the perfect display glasses for long sessions.
Curved in all the right places
With a launch price of $399, the RayNeo GT Max are somewhat more expensive than budget options like the $299 Viture Pro 2 or the $299 Xreal XBX a01, but you’re getting a lot of premium features you often have to pay extra for.
For instance, you get built-in three Degrees of Freedom thanks to their dedicated Zone 360 3DoF Chip. As such, the glasses track rotational movement like pitch (tilting up and down), yaw (swiveling left and right), and roll (tilting side to side). This lets you pin the GT Max’s screen in place or set it to follow your line of sight as you move around. There’s also a Steady mode that follows you with a slight delay, which I found to be much more comfortable — especially if you’re prone to motion sickness while wearing one of the best VR headsets.
Just like with other AR glasses, you get built-in audio on the GT Max. Tuned by Bang & Olufsen, the four-speaker system delivered great sound during my time wearing them. However, RayNeo also includes Whisper Mode 2.0 for low-volume private listening. There’s even an optional accessory called Sound Tubes that clip onto the frame to focus the audio straight toward your ears for a more private, headphone-like experience.
While you have dedicated volume and brightness controls on the left temple arm, there’s an orange Mode Button on the right to toggle between spatial tracking modes. Switching between them was fast, and I really liked how clean all of the on-screen menus looked.
One major element that sets the RayNeo GT Max apart from the competition is its wider field of view. While the Viture Pro 2 and Xreal XBX cap out at 50 degrees, the GT Max pushes all the way up to 59 degrees. Just like their balanced weight distribution, this comes down to their prism architecture. While birdbath optics beam light down off an angled mirror into your eye, prism optics pass light through a solid, thin piece of glass that sits flush against the frame.
I’ll admit that the optics on the GT Max looked a bit different to me at first, given that all the AR glasses I’ve tried up until now use birdbath setups. However, once I had them on my face and was watching a movie, everything clicked. I didn’t feel the frame weighing down on the bridge of my nose, and they were light enough that I could easily see myself wearing them for long stretches. Of course, I’ll need to get a pair in for testing at home to see how they perform beyond a brief run on the IFA show floor.
Peering through a prism
When it comes to AR glasses — or more accurately, display glasses — we’re still very early on in their evolution. In fact, this current wave of consumer-focused glasses didn’t really start hitting the mainstream until around 2022. In the brief time since, we’ve seen dramatically thinner and lighter designs, wider fields of view, and more recently, onboard spatial tracking powered by dedicated chips inside their frames.
The RayNeo GT Max feels like a standout entry point for anyone looking to get into display glasses. While they are a bit more expensive than some of the other recent budget options, you’re getting a stack of premium features that genuinely elevate the day-to-day experience.
At the end of the day, if you want to use a pair of glasses like these for more than just watching a movie on a long flight, comfort is king. Having used both the original Viture Pro glasses and the upgraded Pro 2s, shaving off extra weight makes a world of difference. Yet compared to the GT Max, I was genuinely impressed by how RayNeo’s glasses managed to feel lighter on my face despite technically being heavier on paper.
If you haven't tried a pair of AR glasses yet, there’s never been a better time to dive in now that we have both solid budget choices and feature-packed premium models to pick from. The RayNeo GT Max hits that sweet spot between capability and everyday wearability, and I can’t wait to spend more time testing them out beyond the show floor.
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