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XREAL continues to pioneer the smart glasses form factor, and with power from Asus display hardware, the ROG R1 is born. The XREAL ROG R1 glasses make a solid companion for mobile gaming and, to an extent, an at-home option.
The “smart glasses” product category is so new that it’s hard to differentiate between mobile companions and purpose-built face displays. Android XR lives in both categories, and options like the Meta Ray-Ban display glasses have blown up while Google is still trying to get its first mobile smart glasses out the door.
XREAL lives on the other end of that spectrum. It’s produced some impressive AR glasses, though they mostly cater to those who need a dedicated tool, rather than a “go anywhere” pair of glasses.
The ROG XREAL R1 AR glasses fall firmly into that sub-category. They’re meant for gaming, or really any use case that might benefit from a display for your face, limited by a power cable.
But because of that ROG tag and what power comes from Asus’ development alongside XREAL, the ROG R1 stuffs some incredible display power into a surprisingly minimal form factor.
Smart glasses are already tricky to develop, otherwise we would be swamped with options to choose from. Add a 240Hz micro-OLED display built for gaming to accommodate a variety of face shapes and eyes, equip it with AR spatial tracking, and you have a real hill to climb.
The XREAL R1 glasses bring those technical challenges to life in the shape of what look like slightly oversized sunglasses, and not just at first glance. Behind those two tinted shades are two optical elements that focus a 1920 x 1080 display into the frame.
XREAL says the ROG R1 glasses project a 171-inch virtual screen at 4 meters, though it’s hard to confirm it really feels like that. There are several combinations you can play around with, ranging from a virtual display 1 meter in front of you at a little over fullscreen, to an image around 10 meters away.
The real reason distances are adjustable is to make use with other displays and your surrounding environment more comfortable. Imagine using a desktop display and trying to focus on a massive screen 30 feet away, and working with both displays. Your eyes are repeatedly focusing between close and far, which is exhausting. By setting the R1 display to a virtual distance similar to your environment, there’s little effort needed to transition focus.
Electrochromic lenses make that transition easier. At the touch of a button or when you look away in “Anchor mode,” the sunglass lenses shift from tinted to nearly clear. They’re still shaded at the lowest setting of three, but it’s enough to see another display in front of you or your environment.
These days, they wouldn’t be smart glasses without speakers in the arms. The drivers are powered by Bose, and they certainly bring surprising boom considering what they are. In fact, I’ve been consistently impressed by the quality of sound coming from the arm speakers and the volume they could hit. That isn’t to say they’ll replace your gaming IEMs or dedicated speakers, but they’re a solid built-in option. A pair of wireless earbuds wouldn’t give you much benefit in most circumstances.
Glasses have two main points of contact – the ears and the nose bridge. XREAL packs three choices for nose pads in the box to dial in the distance between your eyes and the displays. You’re looking for a pretty close fit, and I didn’t have an issue getting that with the pre-installed nose pads.
Your ears also play a big part in how the ROG R1 glasses perform on your face. Two articulation points in the arms address that. Each arm is not only spring-loaded for outward expansion, but a stepped hinge lets you angle the arms up and down, effectively moving the angle at which you see the display. In my case, that meant pushing the arms all the way down so the display was in sight somewhere lower.
The issue with these types of lenses in field of view. They’re essentially small prisms that show you content in a small portion of your vision, and getting that lined up perfectly is a massive part of overall comfort. On paper, the 57-degree field of view gives plenty of space for your eyes to wander, but it can still feel tight.
Between nose pad placement and a properly angled pair of lenses, getting the right position is much easier than I’ve experienced with earlier iterations of display glasses.
When you get it right, the glasses sort of disappear on your face. At least, it feels that way.
They don’t weigh much at all, at 91g, lending themselves to long-term wear. They also seem to rest along the browline since there’s a little extra material built into the glasses to distribute what little weight there is.
XREAL also offers the option to add prescription lenses, which is non-negotiable for glasses wearers like me. When they’re accurately made, it gives users who need them an easy and seamless add-on for the best accuracy. There are also IPD settings within the glasses OS, but you need to get the right frame size when you order them.
There are two ways to power the glasses, and neither of them means you can realistically connect a battery for standalone use.
The ROG R1 can run on the included hub or through a direct USB-C connection. The hub lends itself to better performance because it draws power through a USB-C connection and an AV signal via HDMI or DisplayPort. If you’re using the ROG XREAL R1 glasses with a PC or at your desk, this is the way to go.
Of course, the direct USB-C option works for portable gaming, and that’s where the glasses shine. The partnership with XREAL and Asus means the glasses are marketed as a seamless option for the ROG Ally handheld, but they can really be used with other options like the Steam Deck or a laptop. Anything that can output a video signal via USB-C will work.
On the ROG Ally, all of the controls you get with the hub are accessible via the handheld. For any other device, you need to use the hub to access options like Anchor Mode or the buttons on the glasses, if you’re using USB-C to USB-C.
The glasses’ performance really relies on the device being used to power them. On something like the Steam Deck, you can’t expect a fantastic experience simply because of the handheld’s hardware limitations. That’s only made more difficult by the native display’s lower resolution, which means the hardware needs to work harder to output a 1080p picture.
Playing heavy games like Horizon: Zero Dawn got me somewhere around 45 to 60 fps with quality-focused graphics. Sure, textures aren’t incredibly sharp, and there are weird artifacts indicative of optimized titles, but I had a much better experience than I anticipated. On less demanding titles like Risk of Rain Returns, I found myself sinking hours into the game I might not have done without the glasses.
Without the dock, setup couldn’t be much easier than what it is – plug the glasses into the USB-C port and start gaming. It depends on the handheld, but it’s genuinely plug-and-play. The Steam Deck has been a good experience, but something like the Switch 2 simply won’t play along. In theory, you could plug the glasses into their dock, then connect HDMI from the Nintendo Switch dock. At that point, it’s not a convenience.
On my PC, the ROG R1 glasses work flawlessly. With a standard 16:9 image at full resolution, I get a consistent 120 frames per second, which is exactly what’s expected.
XREAL and Asus say the ROG R1s are capable of 240Hz, and they are, technically. The way to get that high refresh rate is by turning on image upscaling. It’s essentially on-board frame generation. The screen response doubles, but the trade-off is a slightly more blurry image.
The issue with that approach and advertising the glasses as capable of 240Hz is that one might expect a 1080p image, full stop. Turning on Frame Rate Boost sort of disintegrates that 1080p picture. It’s still playable, but the text isn’t as clear, and it doesn’t feel like a true high-res experience.
A couple of different viewing options make the experience a little more seamless. First, Anchor Mode brings some of that AR tech into play. It adds head tracking so you can anchor the screen in virtual space. It works so well that using it as a sort of virtual monitor in addition to other screens feels oddly natural.
When I look up at where it should be in space, the glasses tint and it comes into view. It never moves, and it’s always where I left it. When I look down, the lenses lose their tint, and my main monitor is clearly visible through the lenses.
To be frank, that method is a little overkill for my use case. But if I wanted to add an extra gaming monitor to my laptop or to keep things minimal, it makes sense.
When Anchor Mode is off, the display follows you wherever you go. It works well for travel, but I found that Anchor Mode lets me place the virtual display in one spot, make it as big as possible, and look around more comfortably with my head and eyes.
That’s sort of where I find the ROG R1 hits its limits. At full size, with an image that fits your entire field of view, the glasses give you something like a 27-inch monitor a couple of feet in front of you. At that, it’s still not quite as seamless as 1440p; anything larger bleeds out of view, and you have to move your head around to see everything, or the edges start to vignette and the content goes out of focus.
I could see the ROG XREAL R1 glasses being used in a variety of use cases, however niche it is
First off, I think handheld form factors genuinely benefit from something like this. As long as you take hardware limitations into account, the glasses become this much larger second screen. Even from a comfort perspective, there’s no need to crane your neck while traveling, and you can recline without having to hold a screen up to your face.
Even for PC users, I could see the ROG R1s being a nice addition. Granted, if you have a 1440p monitor bigger than 24 inches, it might not make much sense. But you could incorporate these glasses into a stealthy setup that lets you use PC hardware and the glasses without a screen. Or, you could use a gaming PC as a power source and get into a comfy position.
I think XREAL nailed it, to an extent. If it had a slightly wider field of view, I think I might be entirely happy. Overall, though, they look good and sound good, and with the right power source, they’re simply another way to see what you play.
The ROG R1 glasses are available from the Asus ROG website, XREAL, and other retailers for $849.