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You should swap your work or gaming monitor for a pair of AR glasses, and I'm not joking
(www.laptopmag.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Technology
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I've been considering a pair of X-reals out of curiosity but they are right at the tipping point for tech I may not use enough to justify the purchase. Even the price drop in the article still isn't quite enough.
I have a Gen-1 pair. They are great for traveling. If you game on your phone or steam deck they are also nice to have.
Price point is too high. There are lot of other options out there. I only recommend if you travel a lot or you want to turn your phone into a mini-laptop.
Price used isn't that high, can score an nreal air for 100 ish on eBay.
Yeah, that's kind of my take as well.
If HMDs get to the point where they can replace laptop screens, then manufacturers can just exclude the laptop screen from portable computers and ship an HMD, so that'll offset some of the cost.
I also don't care too much about the price if it's honestly something that I'd use day in and day out. If a manufacturer could give me a display that is equivalent to my existing, traditional monitor but perfectly fills my visual arc and gives me a private view of the screen, I'd be willing to spend $1000 or more; I use my monitor all the time, and in the past, I've kept monitors for many years before they get thrown out; they have a lot more longevity than, say, a GPU. My problem is just that, as I mention in my comment, my experience is that HMDs just aren't a reasonable replacement for displays today, as they come with too many drawbacks. Even if the thing cost nothing, I'd still mainly use my laptop's display. So at best, an HMD is a device that I'd use occasionally, for special-purpose cases. And that dramatically reduces what I'd be willing to to spend.
There are HMDs that do win in their own niches. VR displays like the Index are better than traditional monitors for playing VR games. The Royole Moon I have is better for watching movies on the go than a laptop screen. AR glasses like like XREALs are the only way to do AR; can't really do it with a traditional display. There are probably some people out there who really, really want to do these specific things a lot, and for them, that might be worthwhile.
I'd still lug out my Moon if I knew in advance that I was going to be viewing sensitive stuff in a public environment. With video cameras and stuff all over in today's world, I'm a little uncomfortable having passwords flash on the screen, for example.
But there isn't any HMD that I'd use in preference to my computer's screen for general use. And that makes the thing a toy or a specialized tool that I'm not getting use out of most of the time.