Earlier this year, my colleague Jason England put the original Xreal One Pro AR glasses head-to-head against one of the best premium pairs of AR glasses, the Viture Beast.
This week, Xreal released an updated version of its flagship glasses dubbed the Xreal One Pro Plus, with an upgraded display and a more comfortable nose pad. We've already put the One Pro Plus to the test.
In the original battle, Viture's premium glasses just edged out the One Pro thanks to a lower price, slightly better specs, and a bit more versatility.
Does a refreshed Xreal take down Viture? It's a lot closer than you think.
One Pro Plus Glasses: $599
The updated Xreal One Pro Plus packs a pair of gorgeous micro-OLED prism lenses with a 57-degree field of view. These are paired with a built-in X1 chip to handle 3DoF tracking entirely on the glasses. Plus, it features a redesigned nosepad to make the glasses more comfortable to wear.View Deal
The AR glasses cream of the crop — the Viture Beast pack amazing OLED display tech with a crispy 1200p resolution, camera-aided 3DoF tracking, and a massive 58-degree field of view.
Xreal One Pro Plus vs Viture Beast: Specifications
Spec | Xreal One Pro Plus | Viture Beast |
|---|---|---|
Price | $599 | $549 |
Display tech | Sony Micro-OLED | Sony Micro-OLED |
Resolution | 1920 x 1080 per-eye | 1920 x 1200 per-eye |
Field of view (FOV) | 57 degrees | 58 degrees |
Peak brightness | 1200 nits | 1250 nits |
Refresh rate | 120Hz | 120Hz |
Tracking | 3DoF (native) / 6DoF (with Eye camera) | 3DoF (native) / 6DoF (with Spacewalker app) |
On-device tech | X1 spatial chip | VisionPair customization |
Dimming | 3-level Electrochromic | 9-level Electrochromic |
Audio | Speakers tuned by Bose | Speakers tuned by Harman |
Weight | 91 grams | 98 grams |
Buy the Xreal One Pro if…
- You actually work with the glasses
- You prefer not everything on-device
- Smooth 3D is a requirement
Out of the box, the Plus glasses are basically the same as the original One Pro specs — which means all the advantages we highlighted before are still here.
Xreal upped the brightness from 700 nits to 1,200 (still 50 nits less than the Beast, but much closer), so the display is much better. They already featured flatter color science, making for more accurate video and photo editing. Plus, Xreal added three new modes: Reading, Standard, and Movie, which adjust the display depending on what kind of content you're viewing.
The new modes add more versatility and make reading websites or even an eBook a much better experience compared to the original glasses.
The built-in X1 chip gives you a lot of on-device ways to tweak the display. No, there isn't the ultra-wide display and screen-by-screen 3D like the Beast, but Viture's glasses do require the Spacewalker app for more versatility.
Xreal's glasses have real-time 2D-to-3D content transformation, which got a boost from 30FPS to 60FPS in the Plus version. It's a smoother upgrade.
Xreal gave the One Pros a permanent price cut to $599 earlier this year, and the new Plus version retains that price. However, to get the most out of the glasses you still need the $99 optional Eye Camera, which enables 6DoF anchoring compared to the native 3DoF.
As a reminder, here's the difference:
- 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) is the spatial experience — locking a screen to a physical coordinate in your room based on what the Eye camera can see.
- 3 Degrees of Freedom (3DoF) is the swivel chair experience — pinning a screen to a specific direction and tracking head rotation only.
Unfortunately, if you're traveling and lack the Eye camera, the Plus still gets, as Jason said, "bamboozled" when on a moving vehicle.
Buy the Viture Beast if…
- You want top-tier gaming and streaming picture quality
- Solid anchoring is important to you
- More versatility
When the Viture Beast launched in January of this year, we didn't have much good to say. However, the company quickly added tweaks that make the glasses an actual animal.
Despite Xreal's updates, the Beast is still slightly better spec-wise. They feature a slightly wider 58-degree field of view, 50 nits higher brightness, better sharpness and color reproduction when it comes to gaming and streaming.
Display glasses are often marketed as an extension of your entertainment and the Viture Beast is a perfect example of that goal.
Compared to the Xreal glasses, productivity uses take a backseat. You can customize the color in the on-device menu, but the One Pro Plus, especially in reading mode, is better for work.
I don't notice the chromatic aberration as much on the edges. This is one of those cases where display preference is up to the individual.
The new modes do a lot to help Xreal catch up, but the Beast does feature an ultrawide monitor mode built into the glasses themselves, plus impressive 3Dof tracking. However, you do need the Spacewalker app for multi-screen support, 6DoF tracking and Immersive 3D for AI 3D content conversion.
In practice, that means that some phones might have compatibility issues. And some features are locked into the app's UI rather than featuring across different apps. For example, if you want to watch 3D movies on Netflix, you have to use the Viture browser rather than your Netflix app.
Still, in combination, the app and glasses do give you plenty of versatility in how you use the Beast for both work and play.
For the rest of you
Before, we gave the edge to the Viture Beast thanks to the $50 savings, slightly wider FOV, and more versatility in tuning the glasses. All of those things remain true.
However, Xreal's refresh is much closer thanks to the updated display and new modes. At this point, I'd say that the Beast and One Pro Plus are on equal footing, and it all comes down to preference.
These are the cream of the crop when it comes to display glasses. Both have excellent electrochromic dimming on the lenses, pretty good audio, and are comfortable for long sessions; the Xreal even more so, thanks to the redesigned nosepad.
Here's the rub, though: when it comes to display glasses, most people don't need this much capability or to spend this much money.
You can get pretty good bang for your buck if you explore any of the budget-friendly models. Fortunately, both Xreal and Viture have excellent options in the $299 range that released this year.
The Xreal a01+ brings some flair to a pretty staid category of tech with glasses that actually look like sunglasses you'd wear out of the house. Viture dropped the updated Pro 2 AR glasses in August, prioritizing comfort and versatility over display upgrades, and it totally paid off.
If you'd like to know how they compare, I put the Viture Pro 2 and Xreal a01+ in their own head-to-head contest.
Otherwise, RayNeo is the king of budget display glasses, offering a lot in the $299 Air 4 Pro; you could also try out the new RayNeo GT.
Here's the one drawback to all of those budget options compared to the Beast and One Pro Plus: the FOV is much smaller. I won't get VR headset truther on you, but I promise a 57 or 58-degree field of view feels better and different than 50 or 46, like in the budget options.
My dream would be for Xreal and Viture to keep making excellent displays and bringing them down to the budget tier for the rest of us. Meanwhile, these are both excellent display glasses.