This roundup of the week will be a bit different than the usual because it will mostly be about CES. I haven’t been there, but I have read the most important pieces of XR news coming from there, and I’m reporting them to you so you can stay up to date about what’s happened there. To be honest, it has not been a great CES for XR technologies, but still, we had some very interesting news that you should know about.
Top XR News From CES
Asus partnered with XREAL on gaming glasses
Asus partnered with XREAL to launch ROG XREAL R1, glasses that you can connect to your phone or gaming console to play games on a big virtual screen in front of you. The glasses feature dual 1,920 x 1,080 240Hz microOLED displays, a 57° field of view, 3DOF tracking, electrochromic tinting, and Sound by Bose audio. The 240Hz refresh rate is for sure impressive and will be appreciated by gamers.
More info (ROG XREAL R1 — Road To VR)
More info (ROG XREAL R1 — XREAL on X)
More info (ROG XREAL R1 — Tyriel Wood on X)
Google deepens its partnership with XREAL
Google has also announced to have deepened its partnership with XREAL. Details on this are pretty scarce, we just know that the collaboration “aligns XREAL’s long-term hardware roadmap with the Android XR platform”. This probably means that they are already working together for future XREAL glasses running on Google’s XR operating system.
More info (Google and XREAL partnership)
Meta releases features for the Ray-Ban Meta glasses but delays international availability
Meta has announced that two important features teased at Meta Connect are finally being rolled out to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The first feature is“conversation focus”, which allows the wearer to have an enhanced conversation with the person in front of him/her with all the background audio being toned down. The second is handwriting for the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which allows the user to write text on the glasses by just moving their hand on any surface. The last one in particular is a feature everyone of us is very curious about, so I am very happy it is being released. Other features are also being rolled out, like a teleprompter.
All these good pieces of news are counteracted by a pretty bad one, especially for us Europeans: Meta is delaying plans for international availability of Meta Ray-Ban Display: the meaning is, for now, these glasses are staying US-only. They say the reason is that the demand is too overwhelming and they can’t keep pace with it.
More info (Official Meta blog post with updates on Meta Ray-Ban glasses)
More info (Handwriting being released on Display glasses)
More info (Conversation Focus Early Access Release)
More info (Meta pauses international availability of Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses)
Lumus announces 70 degrees FOV waveguide
When I met Lumus at AWE US, they teased me that they could have announced at CES a geometric waveguide with 70° of FOV that employs standard materials and not exotic ones like the silicon carbide in Meta Orion. It seems the team at Lumus delivered it, and this means that future AR glasses and smartglasses may have 70 degrees of field of view, which begins to be usable. Early testers of it at CES said there were some distortions, but the system worked fairly well. This is huge.
More info (Lumus’s 70° waveguide)
More info (Engadget’s hands-on with Lumus’s 70° waveguide)
Play For Dream showcased an impressively small prototype
Play For Dream, the surprise of the past CES, was again at the show. This time was not showcasing any product, but it had a prototype of a future headset. This headset was not a standalone, and it worked only connected to a PC, so it will either be a PCVR device, or, most probably, something with an external computational unit. The peculiarity of this device was that it was incredibly lightweight and small: it was less than 100g, and it looked very good on the faces of people. I’m curious to see what this will lead to…
More info (Play For Dream prototype headset)
More info (Play For Dream prototype headset features a DisplayPort interface)
More info (VooDoo trying the Play For Dream prototype headset)
Pimax showcased Dream Air and Crystal Super headsets
Pimax had an important booth at CES again, andit showcased its Crystal Super and Dream Air headsets. The feedback on both devices has been rather good.
Pimax has also announced that it already begun shipping Dream Air in “small batches” before the end of the year for the purposes of external beta testing. The headset is shipping with a temporary head strap, though.
More info (Pimax’s booth at CES)
More info (MRTV giving early feedback on the Pimax Dream Air)
More info (Pimax shipping its Dream Air headset)
Goertek showcased a lightweight reference design
Goertek, which is the manufacturer of headsets for Meta and other companies, showcased at CES a very lightweight reference design for MR headsets. The company described it this way:
An Ultra-Lightweight MR Reference Design showcases system-level optimizations, reducing the weight of a 4K MR headset to approximately 100 grams. It delivers retinal-level clarity (38 PPD) within a 100-degree field of view, with Video See-Through (VST) and 6DoF (tracking).
From the size and the weight, it seems another system that requires an external battery and maybe also a computational unit. It is good to see headsets shrinking in size, though.
Goertek also showcased another interesting thing: electronically controlled Liquid Crystal Optics that can change focus from -3.00 to +3.00 degrees. May this be a hint that varifocal headsets may finally come in the future?
More info (Goertek reference design for MR headsets)
More info (Liquid Crystal Optics that change focus)
Lenovo unveiled concept AI glasses
Lenovo revealed a new smartglasses concept design at CES 2026. Called “Lenovo AI Glasses Concept”, it is a prototype of AI-powered glasses the company may launch in the future. The glasses work by being wirelessly connected to the phone, weigh just 45 grams, and the battery lasts eight hours. The AI platform they are connected with is Lenovo’s proprietary Qira AI.
RayNeo launches Air 4 Pro glasses
RayNeo has announced new glasses that are meant for gaming and media consumption. Called “RayNeo Air 4 Pro”, these glasses feature 1920×1080 screen resolution, a special chip with 10-bit color, and 1200 nits of brightness.
RayNeo teases glasses with e-SIM
RayNeo has also announced to have got a big investment from a leading Chinese telco operator. Thanks to this investment, it unveiled the “RayNeo X3 Pro — Project eSIM”, a prototype headset featuring embedded 4G eSIM technology. Thanks to this, the smartglasses can integrate features like phone calls and music streaming without the need for a connected smartphone. This can be a game-changer because almost all the headsets and glasses out there have no independent connectivity and work only through Wi-Fi. RayNeo may finally change this.
More info (RayNeo X3 Pro — Project eSIM)
XREAL launched 1S glasses
You thought the news about XREAL was finished, and instead, I have another one. The Chinese manufacturer has announced the XREAL 1S, media viewing glasses that are an evolution of the XREAL One. The Xreal 1S brings a handful of important upgrades, including brighter screens (now 700 nits, up from 600 nits on the Xreal One), higher resolution (was 1080, now 1200), and a slightly wider field of view (was 50-degree, now 52-degree FoV). The glasses are now available to order in the US and UK for $449 / £399. The feedback about them has been pretty positive.
PetaRay and Quanta Computer partnered on an AR headset featuring arbitrary focal depth
PetaRay and Quanta Computer announced to have partnered to produce an AR headset featuring an “arbitrary focal depth” thanks to the use of lightfield technology. The HMD combines PetaRay’s patented LiFiD light field technology with Quanta’s integrated engineering and high-volume production capabilities to support the expanding next-generation AR market.
I haven’t seen any lightfield-powered AR glasses yet, so I guess for now this is still a prototype.
More info (PetaRay and Quanta Computer’s AR headset)
The Las Vegas Sphere showed Android XR
Google paid a shitload of money to have an animation related to Android XR showcased on the Las Vegas Sphere during CES. It was pretty cool, and it is even cooler that this proves that Google is still committed to Android XR.
More info (Android XR on The Sphere)
Other roundups of news about CES
The pieces of news I mentioned above are only what I found to be the most relevant ones about CES this year. But there were many other companies showcasing XR devices, like dozens of Chinese companies proposing smartglasses, or Viture, Breylon, and bHaptics. For this reason, I link to you below some other roundups of XR news at CES, so you can read even more XR stories from CES!
More info (VRAR World’s big roundup of XR technologies at CES)
More info (TechRadar’s review of glasses at CES)
More info (Tyriel Wood’s best of XR at CES)
News not from CES worth a mention
LA Lakers games are being broadcast on Vision Pro
The NBA announced that some basketball games of the LA Lakers will be streamed live as immersive videos on the Apple Vision Pro. The streams feature camera angles that let the viewers feel like they are really close to the action. The first game already went live on January 9th, and many people commented enthusiastically about it on social media (some even defined it as the “killer app” for MR).
More info (Lakers games on the AVP)
More info (A user commenting about it on X)
Meta releases opensource language learning app
Meta released a free app on the store called “Spatial Lingo: Language Practice”, whose purpose is to help you in learning new languages in mixed reality. By using AI, the headset can detect the objects around you and teach you how to call them in a foreign language.
To be honest, I don’t find it super useful to learn a new language, but the cool thing about this app is that it is fully opensource. This means that it can teach developers how to quickly build a mixed reality app powered by AI for Meta headsets.
Meta introduces “Meta Spatial Simulator”
Meta has launched a new tool for all developers that want to build native Android apps with mixed reality features. Called “Meta Spatial Simulator”, it is an emulator that lets developers test native mixed reality apps inside Android Studio without using any headset.
Hands-on XR content
Upload went hands-on with ArtQuest VR and found it to have an interesting way to propose a virtual museum in XR.
Discover FM DUO camera!
Meet the FM DUO, a VR camera that is capable of filming up to 12K @30fps, and 8K @60fps. With built-in RTMP live streaming and 5G connectivity, the FM·DUO will immerse your viewers in real time! The FM·DUO features 2 full-frame CMOS sensors, with 6000 x 6000 pixels each. This allows for high-resolution zooming capabilities. Not only can you narrow in on one subject, but you can also focus on singular details of the subject’s facial expressions, clothing textures, and a multitude of other small details, enabling a much more immersive experience of VR video.
Visit Product Website
Some XR fun
I admit I thought it was a VR headset…
Funny link
The saddest news from CES
Funny link
Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate to my blog, but to the poor people who are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
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