Xreal's New $299 AR Glasses Offer a More Affordable Way to See Digital Screens in Real Life

Xreal is launching a new pair of augmented reality glasses called the A01 Plus on July 10, 2026, priced at $299. That's $150 cheaper than Xreal's existing flagship model, the Xreal 1S, and the new glasses are also noticeably lighter — at 62 grams compared to the 1S's 85 grams The Verge.

The A01 Plus belongs to a new sub-brand called X by Xreal, or XBX for short. Think of it as Xreal's entry-level line, separate from the company's more expensive flagship glasses Engadget.

What the A01 Plus Can Do

The display technology is similar to what you get in the pricier 1S. The glasses use tiny OLED screens — the same premium display tech found in high-end smartphones — positioned using special mirrors that bounce the image into your eyes. Each eye sees a 1080p image refreshed 120 times per second, which is smooth enough to feel natural The Verge. The glasses can display over a billion colors across 14 different brightness levels Ubergizmo.

The glasses adjust for different distances between a wearer's eyes — a critical fit issue for comfort and image clarity — spanning the range that covers most adults without needing custom lens inserts The Verge.

What You Lose at This Price

To hit the $299 price, Xreal cut two features from the 1S. First, the A01 Plus doesn't have electrochromic lenses — smart lenses that dim electronically at the push of a button. Instead, Xreal supplies swappable shell covers that include a tinted option and a light-blocking cover, so you manually switch them when you need darker lenses The Verge.

Second, the A01 Plus lacks what's called "three-degrees-of-freedom" screen-locking. This is a feature that anchors a virtual display to a fixed point in space — useful if you want the screen to stay still while you move your head around, the way a monitor on a desk doesn't wobble when you shift in your chair. Instead, the A01 Plus has a toggleable stabilization feature that tries to smooth out unwanted jitter, though it doesn't lock the screen completely The Verge.

The glasses ship in a hard protective case rather than a soft pouch.

The Broader Context

Interestingly, Xreal hasn't published a formal press release about the A01 Plus on its own website. Instead, information about the launch surfaced through hands-on reviews from outlets like The Verge, Engadget, and Ubergizmo, with Xreal's shop pages confirming the July 10 launch date Xreal Shop.

The omission of screen-locking will matter most to people who want to use these glasses as a portable monitor for work — people who need the virtual display to stay steady when their head moves. The toggleable stabilization feature is a different approach, likely handled by software rather than by anchoring the image to physical space. People switching from the 1S or other glasses with screen-locking should expect a noticeably different experience.

The move to swappable shells instead of electronic dimming is a practical trade-off. Electrochromic lenses add cost and require extra circuitry that probably didn't fit Xreal's budget at $299. Swappable mechanical covers are cheaper, tend to last longer, and don't rely on firmware updates to work properly — though they do require you to physically swap them when lighting conditions change.

Creating a separate XBX sub-brand rather than just launching a cheaper Xreal model is a deliberate business choice to keep the flagship brand's reputation separate from the entry-level tier. Whether this strategy succeeds depends on whether XBX expands to include more models or remains a one-time experiment — something Xreal hasn't disclosed yet.

The Bottom Line

At $299, the A01 Plus undercuts most competing AR glasses that offer comparable screen quality and smoothness. For anyone interested in AR glasses but deterred by the $449 price of the 1S, this opens a real option. The price, more than any single specification, is likely to be the number that shapes how people actually adopt and use these devices once they start shipping.