XReal One Pro Plus Review

Design

• Near-identical design to the One Pro
• Lightweight at just 87g
• Redesigned nose pads

If the design of the XReal One Pro Plus looks familiar, it should; it’s almost a carbon copy of the One Pro specs that came before it. It sports the same overall shape and appearance, the same control layout, the same everything – basically, if you liked the look of the One Pro, you’ll be happy here. If not, well…

As far as these display-enabled smart glasses go, XReal’s pair feel pretty solid, despite being made mainly from plastic. The all-black specs feature glossy lenses that protrude slightly from the overall frame – I’m not sure if it’s for a technical reason or stylistic ones, but I like it – with a smattering of metallic silver hinges to keep everything feeling solid.

The lenses may look transparent when powered off, but when powered, the electrochromic tech comes into play, essentially letting you increase or decrease the level of tint based on what you’re up to with the glasses. It’s both a pretty cool party trick and something that genuinely comes in useful, but more on that a little later.

There is a smattering of controls on the right arm, with rocker buttons and an action button on the underside and an additional one on top, while the left arm sports a USB-C port at the end to connect to your smartphone, tablet or other device.

The included braided USB-C cable is angled at one end to support this use, and it’s just long enough to, say, slip a phone into your pocket while connected. It does mean it’s not as easy to use with computers, where you may be slightly further from the source – but any decent USB-C cable should do the job.

They’re also surprisingly lightweight considering the tech on offer, measuring in at just 87g – much lighter than traditional VR and MR headsets, and among the lightest of their kind on the market.

That said, you’d get all of this with the previous-gen One Pro glasses. The only small change available with the Plus model is the introduction of redesigned nose pads – though without having the older One Pro specs to hand to compare, I can’t say just how much of a difference they make.

They’re perfectly comfortable in my experience, especially with how surprisingly flexible the arms are, though I would find they’d occasionally slip down my nose, nudging the screens beyond the ‘sweet spot’. And there’s no getting around the fact that the specs are still very much a bit of tech and not a fashion accessory, making me feel more than a little self-conscious when wearing them on a train or plane. Initially, anyway.

Display and audio

• 1200nit peak brightness, up from 700nits
• AI HDR mode makes SDR content pop
• Bose-tuned speakers lack bass

When it comes to the core optics, the One Pro Plus is basically identical to the One Pro. Both sport a Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate and 57-degree field of view, which may not sound like much, but is actually one of the widest angles in the current crop of prism display glasses.

Instead, the main difference comes in the brightness department; the One Pro Plus offers up to 1200nits of brightness, almost double that of the One Pro’s 700nits. It’s arguably one of the One Pro’s biggest weaknesses, as cheaper display glasses offer brighter panels. That’s technically still true with the One Pro Plus, though the difference between 1200 and 1600nits is much harder to perceive.

Though I don’t have the One Pro specs to hand to directly compare, I can confidently say that they’re very bright indeed – so much so that I had no bleed through even when used in bright environments like on planes and trains when paired with the electrochromic lens tech, and more so when the AI-powered HDR mode is enabled.

Another key addition of the Plus model, the AI HDR mode does what you’d expect – tries to turn SDR content into HDR content with better contrast, brighter images and wider colour ranges – and does so pretty damn well.

It makes SDR content like mobile games and YouTube videos look way brighter and more vivid on the headset, a difference you notice instantly when enabling the feature – even if it isn’t technically true HDR support as you’d get on the RayNeo Air 4 Pro.

That’s paired with Bose-certified speakers in each arm, and they perform much like those in most other smart glasses; they’re great in quiet environments with clear mids and highs tuned for music and sound effects, but there’s a lack of bass. The open nature of the design also means sound leakage is an issue, though you can just as easily pair them with Bluetooth earbuds as I did.

All this ties together to deliver a surprisingly crisp, bright and vivid virtual screen experience that’s great for movies and gaming, and detailed enough for actual work – and one that’s comfortable enough for use for hours at a time, as I did on recent flights to and from northern Norway.

Smart features

• Works with most USB-C devices, but not the Switch
• Anchored 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide modes
• 2D-to-3D conversion now runs at 60Hz

Like all display-focused smart glasses on the market right now, the XReal One Pro Plus needs a physical connection to a device for both power and video input. The good news is that it uses a DisplayPort-over-USB-C connection, which means it’s compatible with most phones and tablets – including iPhone and iPad – along with PCs, Macs, laptops and most handheld gaming devices.

There is a catch though; you can’t use the glasses with the Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2. Those systems use a proprietary USB-C dock connection, so it’s very much a Nintendo-specific issue, not something from XReal’s side – but still worth knowing if you wanted to play the Ocarina of Time remake on a virtual big screen.

That is the only limitation I’ve noticed during my time with the specs though; I’ve plugged them into an iPhone 18 Pro, an iPad Pro, the RedMagic Astra 2, the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and the Motorola Signature 27, as well as my Honor MagicBook Art 14 laptop, and can report no big issues compatibility-wise – it’s just plug and play.

Under the hood, the One Pro Plus features the same spatial computing chipset as the regular One Pro specs, which means its feature set is largely similar – though with one or two upgrades befitting the ‘Plus’ branding here.

The standard experience uses 3DOF head tracking – tracking where you look, rather than where you move – with the option to anchor your virtual display in place. Due to the lack of 6DOF, it doesn’t get smaller or larger if you get closer or further away like virtual screens on a mixed reality headset like the Meta Quest 3 would, but it stays at the angle you place it at.

I also like that the electrochromic lenses deactivate when you look away from the screen, giving you a brighter look at your environment if you, say, need to look at the clock on your wall, before dimming when you look back. It’s pretty instant in use too.

If you don’t like the idea of locking the screen in place, a tap of one of the buttons on the right side of the panel switches between anchor and follow mode. Follow mode does what it says on the tin, keeping the screen centred no matter where you look – though I find anchor mode much more natural in everyday use.

If you pair that with the optional XReal Eye accessory that clips into place just beneath the bridge of the glasses, you can use your hands to virtually interact with the big screen – think swiping through TikTok videos, switching movies, that kind of thing.

However, I’d say the idea is better than the execution; the use of a single camera means hand tracking isn’t on par with VR systems with multi-camera setups, closer to the 3DOF controllers of early VR headsets than anything else. Even then, I find that it often misses the gestures, leaving me flailing my hand in front of my face for no reason. Also, because of the camera’s positioning, your hand needs to be right in front of your face – and that can get tiring pretty quickly.

While I’ve mainly used the glasses to watch movies on Netflix on recent flights and game on using my ROG Ally X, I can’t deny how useful the specs are as a virtual screen for laptop work. I much prefer to use widescreen displays – I have a 32-inch 21:9 screen and a vertical 25-inch 16:9 panel for my home setup – and going from that to a 14-inch laptop screen when in the office can be a struggle. The One Pro Plus helps close that gap for me.

It offers support for both 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide modes, giving you either 1.5x or 2x the horizontal space of the default 16:9 mode the glasses display when connected to a laptop or PC. Though the 57-degree field of view means I can’t see the entirety of the screen at once, I can look left and right as I would at my home setup, allowing me to be way more productive.

I can also choose to only display via the specs on my laptop, keeping prying eyes away from my work if I’m working in public – a privacy win for anyone working on sensitive content.

The other big headline feature of the One Pro Plus is the ability to convert 2D content to 3D content by adding depth on-the-fly. It was a feature that first appeared on the regular One Pro specs at the start of the year, but it was capped at just 30Hz – the Plus model boosts that to a more palatable 60Hz.

It works pretty well, and it does add noticeable depth to content I tried on Netflix – Lupin in 3D is an experience – but it does make the overall image a little softer. I also noticed occasionally that the processing read the depth of the scene wrong, putting elements in the background that should’ve been in the foreground. It’s kind of like when you use Portrait mode when taking a photo on a phone, only to find that your ear or a bit of your hair is wrongly blurred.

As such, it’s something I think most people will use once or twice and then forget about – but if XReal can keep up the progress, I could see it being a real USP in the future.

And, just like with previous XReal glasses, you can tweak the size of the screen, the distance between you and it, and switch between display modes using the buttons on the right arm. It can be a bit of a fiddly system, and even after close to three weeks of use I’m still occasionally getting it wrong, but it does the job – I didn’t need to tweak much once I got my settings initially dialled in.

Should you buy it?