TCL, maker of some of the best TVs under its brand RayNeo, on Wednesday released its latest pair of XR glasses, the RayNeo Air 2. Available from
Amazon
for $349, these glasses aren’t designed to be VR headsets; rather, they are here to bring a big
screen
to your everyday life. I’ve spent some time with them for another article, so I thought I would give you a brief hands-on.
Not a Meta Quest
There are a lot of headsets and glasses out there, and they can be confusing. Terms like VR, AR and XR, can often be used indiscriminately, blurring the lines of what each of them can actually do. To clarify, XR in terms of the RayNeo Air 2 means it can eXtend Reality (that’s where the XR comes from) to make something you’re already doing easier. Think of it like a giant 201-inch projector screen that sits on your face.
Unlike the Meta Quest 3, the RayNeo can’t operate on its own. The glasses require a USB-C connection to whatever device you want to show on the bigger screen. So if you plug the USB-C into your
Macbook
, you’ll get a large display of your desktop on the Sony-built micro-OLED displays. So far, once I adjusted the frames and nose guards, the image has been crisp and clear on all of the devices I’ve tried, though the experience for each is different.
While RayNeo alleges support for a wide range of Android
Phones
,
iPhones
, Macs, PCs and game consoles, the reality is a little different. Only Android phones with DisplayPort technology turned on are compatible without a separate Miracast adapter, and only the iPhone 15 works for the same reason. For some inexplicable reason, many phone manufacturers,
Google
included, don’t have one of the coolest features of USB-C turned on by default. If you have a
Samsung
, you are likely to be in luck, but only the Pixel 8 has DisplayPort turned on from Google.
You will also need an adapter for the
…
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