I’ve tested every pair of AR glasses since 2022 — most are junk, but these five actually replaced my monitor

AR Glasses Amazon Spring Sale deals
(Image credit: Future)

As you may already know about me — seeing me donning specs of all sizes — I'm the smart glasses guy on the Tom's Guide team. And I'm adamant that a good pair of AR glasses is the single biggest upgrade you can make to your portable tech setup.

The reasons span so much further than just saving your neck while playing Nintendo Switch 2 on long-haul flights (the thing we all end up saying). With new software introduced on such a regular basis to take advantage of that higher resolution and wider field of view, these are becoming a new low-profile dimension into spatial computing.

Top picks for all of us

So you're brand new to AR glasses and want to take the plunge — welcome to the family! Here are the three pairs you should go for based on my testing. There are pro-level features for sure, but these are the ones that work the best right out of the box.

Top picks for the pros

Ah, so I see you're already in the AR glasses universe and looking for an upgrade! This is where we get into some more advanced features like better optics for a wider field of view without fringing around the edges and 6 DoF tracking to anchor a picture in front of you.


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Jason England
Managing Editor — Computing

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.

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