AC thVRsday
In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and so much more.
The past two years have yielded significant advancements in smart glasses. Whether you’re looking at a “wearable TV” or a pair of glasses with an AI companion built in, smart glasses have never made more sense to get than they do now. And as they continue to grow in popularity, they’re only getting better and better.
Viture specializes in the “wearable TV” smart glasses segment and recently delivered its first pair of glasses with built-in spatial tracking. It also offers the best smart glasses ecosystem you can find today; that includes the only smart glasses that work with the Switch 2, a wearable spatial neckband, and several controllers.
I had a conversation with Viture’s Optical Lead, Dr Deqing Kong, about the company’s latest releases and learned about even more exciting products in the pipeline for the future. These represent the next generation of quality and eye comfort, and it won’t be too long before they’re ready to buy, too.
The roadmap to perfection
My biggest issue with smart glasses today isn’t display quality or functionality; it’s comfort. Smart glasses like Viture Beast offer built-in spatial tracking and a design that’s significantly smaller and lighter than a VR headset, but the micro-OLED displays at the heart of the optics engine aren’t always the most comfortable to look at for long periods of time.
For me, this is because I’m sensitive to low-frequency PWM dimming. Almost all smart glasses that use PWM dimming employ a 120Hz or 240Hz frequency, while RayNeo’s most recent two generations offer 3840Hz (not a typo) PWM dimming. According to Dr Kong, this disparity is due to two factors: display quality and manufacturer specifications.
RayNeo uses SeeYa micro-OLED displays, a smaller firm out of China, while Viture and Xreal utilize Sony micro-OLEDs. Viture used SeeYa SY049 panels for the Viture One, but Dr. Kong told me that Sony panels offered greater color saturation and pixel density, so Viture switched to Sony for future product releases.
SeeYa panels have historically been more comfortable for me, in part because they use different dimming methods and, according to Dr. Kong, because Viture One’s optics have a narrower FoV and higher pixel density. All major Viture and Xreal models released in the past year have a much wider FoV over 52 degrees, which lowers the pixel density of the glasses, but Viture’s next glasses will more than make up for this.
Dr. Kong tells me that Viture’s upcoming smart glasses, set to release later this year, will feature a large FoV with 2560 x 1600 resolution, a notable upgrade from the 1920 x 1200 resolution Viture’s latest releases sport. The following year, we should expect a further bump in resolution, which may also coincide with an increase in FoV.
In addition to this, they’ll feature up to 3840Hz PWM dimming, ensuring that people like me can find them comfortable no matter how long they’re worn. That solves two huge problems in one fell swoop, and while there are plenty of other obstacles that’ll need to be overcome to make smart glasses “perfect,” these important steps will ensure that everyone finds the sweet spot as products evolve.
Pushing the boundaries of wearable tech
Every pair of smart display glasses (wearable TVs) you can buy today uses micro-OLED displays, regardless of which company makes the display or the glasses. While micro-OLEDs deliver some of the same great advantages of OLED TVs and smartphones, they also need to work a little differently because of the inherent nature of how lenses work on a wearable.
So while the latest Sony ECX348 micro-OLEDs can pump out an eye-searing 5,000 nits of brightness, that amount of light is cut by 1/5th — meaning your eyes receive around 1,000 nits — by the time it hits your eyes because of the glasses’ birdbath optics. That number is even lower on VR headsets, and even though headsets like Galaxy XR and Apple Vision Pro use similar 5000-nit panels, their pancake optics reduce brightness down to under 200 nits by the time the light reaches your eyes.
For a VR headset, this low brightness level isn’t a huge deal since most headsets block out external light, but smart glasses have to work around this differently since they don’t obscure your vision. Glasses like Viture Beast and Xreal 1S use dimmable electrochromic film, which you can adjust in the glasses settings, adding tinting to the front of the glasses to reduce light interference with the display.
And while electrochromic film is very effective in reducing forward light, these glasses still have to overcome peripheral light leaks with higher brightness levels. Dr. Kong tells me the next Viture glasses will feature displays with a peak brightness of 8,000 nits, which, if the math stays the same, means they’ll deliver an effective brightness level of 1,600 nits to your eyes.
Dr. Kong indicated that VITURE’s display roadmap extends well beyond next-generation glasses, with further gains in resolution, brightness, and custom silicon on the horizon.
At the same time, we’ll also see an improvement in color reproduction and capabilities. Current micro-OLEDs use 8-bit SDR color output, and while glasses like RayNeo Air 4 Pro are the first to debut with HDR10 support and 10-bit color, RayNeo’s HDR10 implementation uses temporal dithering — a software flicker technique that simulates HDR.
VITURE’s position is to wait for true panel-level HDR rather than ship a software workaround. Any flickering like this can cause headaches and discomfort for some people, so companies must offer ways to disable these techniques for affected users.
These upgraded micro-OLED panels will also feature RGB self-emission, which means they’ll work more like the OLED screen in your TV or smartphone. Current smart glasses and VR-mounted micro-OLEDs feature white light pixels with RGB filters on top. Self-emissive color pixels will provide an upgraded color range and power efficiency.
I’m not privy to which of the two upcoming generations of glasses will support a wider color gamut, but Dr. Kong tells me that future Viture glasses will support 10-bit HDR output and 100% DCI color. Some of these improvements are tied to the coprocessor in the glasses, and Viture is working on a new, custom chip scheduled to debut in 2027.
That new chip will also support AI-based super-resolution, similar to AI upscaling on phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but the quality upgrade will likely be even more pronounced because of the perceived size of the virtual display in Viture glasses.
Lastly, Viture tells me it’s working on several other pain points for its users. Native color options, “professional grade color management,” anti-aliasing, and anti-chromatic aberration are all in the pipeline for future Viture glasses. That last part, in particular, is music to my ears, as many glasses with larger FoV suffer from chromatic aberration around the edges of the lens.
This all spells an incredibly exciting future for smart display glasses, especially ones that focus on delivering top-tier image quality. Viture Beast was a huge step forward for the company’s glasses, adding native spatial tracking and several other important features. The company’s next steps look to take those improvements and combine them with the Luma line to create something even more impressive.
And if you absolutely can’t wait, stay tuned for Prime Day (starting June 23) to check out some smart glasses sales. These kinds of products always go on discount for Prime Day (and similar sales events), which makes it the perfect time to pick up a pair.