VITURE One XR/AR Glasses, 120″ HD Display

So, after watching about 5 to 10 different youtubers, saying that the size of the screen is like a 120 inch tv about 3 meters away from you, is grossly exaggerated.

The size of the Screen is like the size of an ipad pro screen that is about 2 feet away from you, that is locked to your head, unless you download and use there app.

For $200 dollars more, you can get a Quest 3, which has a better field of view, and everything is included in the unit.

I gave it a try , and the main plus is that the size and form factor of the virture is great, and exactly as described as sunglasses.

Would I recommend this ? I would only recommend this to normies who have not experienced real virtual reality like the quest 2 or quest 3. For people who have never experiences VR , then this might be mind blowing to them, and the light weight is great.

P.S. I might be biased see below:

I am returning and getting a refund for this product.

Took a little while to get used to, but now it’s brilliant. Really nice picture quality with no barn door effect and despite only being 1080p, no visible pixels either. The diopter adjustment is also a really nice touch.

Bonus – I have always sworn to myself never to have a tv in my bedroom. Now I can stay true to that, yet still binge a Netflix series while lounging around in bed 🙂

Audio is ok, but much better with seperate headphones. Not a surprise as the amount of space they have to work with is minimal.

Short version of my review: if you wear glasses, these are the AR glasses you should buy. The only other game in town is Rokid and their glasses and customer service are hot garbage.

Also be aware that all brands of AR glasses on the market today are only designed to focus properly for people with close to the average human interpupillary distance (the distance between your eyes), which is about 63mm. If your eyes are significantly closer or wider than average, you may not be able to see the virtual “screen” properly no matter what you do. I think this is why reviews on AR glasses tend to be so mixed, with some reviewers saying they’re perfect and the others saying they’re totally useless. Both are true, it depends on the wearer.

———————————–

In my original review I complained that these glasses work well but only for devices that have native USB-C video output, a limitation that Viture didn’t make clear at the time I placed my order. Usually a cheap generic USB-C to HDMI adapter is enough to work around this, but for this particular pair of AR glasses you’ll likely experience audio cutouts or possibly worse. The only sure fix is to use Viture’s own proprietary HDMI adapter which, at the time of my original purchase, was not even available in Canada.

Viture contacted me asking how they could make things right and I told them they absolutely needed to make this limitation clearly visible in the product listing, which they’ve done: at the top of the page there’s now a bullet point mentioning that HDMI compatibility requires their adapter, and in the bundle comparison section at the end of the page there’s now a specific callout to the requirement of their HDMI adapter for use with HDMI laptops and PCs. They also sent me a free HDMI adapter to confirm that it solved my issues, and indeed it does.

Now, why are these the AR glasses I recommend despite the fact that they require an expensive HDMI adapter and Rokid’s products are cheaper? Get your popcorn.

A few years back I sustained a repetitive stress injury in my neck. This makes it extremely uncomfortable when I try to relax watching TV or movies. When I heard about AR glasses beginning to appear in the market I was ecstatic because I believed these would allow me to enjoy movies while laying down comfortably – and better yet, there were models coming from two companies (Rokid and Viture) featuring integrated myopia correction at no extra cost! Genius!

The first product available in Canada was the Rokid Air and I ordered a pair immediately. Rokid’s product seemed especially good because they used an industry-standard USB-C connector instead of a proprietary cable like Viture, but this would prove to be a disastrous mistake. It turns out, while USB-C is a great standard for charging phones and transferring files, it’s not so good for wearable devices. As a challenge, try reading the rest of this review without moving your head AT ALL. You’ll find it’s nearly impossible because our bodies are constantly moving in tiny subtle ways as muscles tense and relax, our posture adjusts slightly, and so on. Every single time you move your head while wearing a USB-C AR glasses you’re wearing out that connector ever so slightly. My Rokid Air lasted just a few weeks of heavy use before I began experiencing brief disconnections, and within months the connection was so delicate that the slightest movement would cause the signal to cut out entirely, despite me treating them with extreme care. Instead of alleviating my neck pain, this left me constantly tensing my neck trying to maintain the video signal! Despite this literal headache, I continued using my Rokid Air for well over a year – that’s how much I missed being able to kick back and relax after a long day. I also discovered that if I bought a new USB-C cable I’d get a slightly more reliable connection again, though only for a couple weeks at best. I probably spent at least $200 on replacement USB-C cables over the past year.

The terrible choice of connector is ONE issue Rokid has – and to be fair, very occasional users might never encounter it. But for frequent users, it’s only a matter of time.

The second (and arguably worse) issue Rokid has is one that will affect EVERY user. They put all the electronics in the part of the device that sits across your eyebrows, and electronics generate heat. Not enough heat to be problematic for the user, but apparently enough to overheat the displays. This means that after a few minutes of normal operation, the screens’ color drastically shifts to become darker and with almost no detail in near-blacks. Worse, it happens to each eye’s display out of sync with the other. Try watching a dark movie like Batman or something, when every few minutes most of the screen goes black… but only in one eye! …and then in the other! …and then in both! …and then in neither! It’s hard to convey how infuriating this becomes. And heaven forbid you’re trying to use the glasses for anything color-sensitive like video or image editing!

When I complained about these issues, how do you suppose Rokid responded? Did they offer me a refund? A partial refund? A store credit towards a different device? Well, first they asked me for proof. Fair enough. With great (GREAT!) difficulty I managed to record an example of the displays randomly shifting their color gamut, which is really tricky when they’re constantly shutting off because the USB-C connector is totally shot! I’m not exaggerating, this took over an hour.

Rokid thanked me for the video… and asked me to record another one. Very frustrated now, I explained that A) it was nigh-impossible to record the problem due to the connection issue, and B) I’m a video editor by trade and could easily manipulate a video into showing literally anything I wanted it to but I was trying to be an honest person and I hoped to receive an honest response in kind. All I wanted to know was what they could do for me, if anything. Maybe they’d want me to ship the glasses back to them first? Maybe they’d only be able to offer an apology? Nothing. Just record another video. They were deliberately wasting my time, hoping I’d get frustrated and go away… which yes, I did.

That >$600 disaster out of the way, next up was Viture! They were finally selling their glasses in Canada now! Happy days. I ordered a pair. I plugged them into my Steam Deck and they worked great! Their proprietary magnetic cable connector turned out to actually be the best design decision they could’ve made because it ensures a ROCK SOLID CONNECTION! Great! And I also noted that instead of the middle part of the glasses getting warm, instead the right arm gets warm! They stuffed all the electronics in that part of the glasses to prevent the displays from overheating! Great engineering!

But then I plugged them into my PC with a generic HDMI adapter (the one that came free with my Rokid Air in fact) and they worked great there too! …until I tried to watch a movie. The audio began cutting out every few seconds. I tried to figure out what was going on, and it turns out Viture’s glasses required that I also purchase their proprietary HDMI adapter.

The HDMI 1.0 spec (providing 1080p60 video with surround sound) was finalized in December of 2002, well over two decades ago. Today HDMI is the most popular video cable standard in the world, yet Viture’s glasses are incompatible with it. This is such an enormous design oversight that it boggles the mind, and my original review expounded on what a disappointing mistake this was. But in contrast to Rokid, when Viture contacted me the first thing they did was offer to fix the problem, and within days they’d made my suggested changes to the Amazon listing and ensured that the HDMI adapter would be available in Canada, which it now is.

Viture’s HDMI adapter is still more expensive than I believe it reasonably should be, but if you compare their glasses to the competition, they actually still offer much better value for users requiring corrective eyeglasses. You’ll find all the ones that require you purchase a lens insert and a set of corrective lenses will end up running you AT LEAST an extra >$100 – and heaven forbid you want to share them with glasses wearers who have different prescriptions!

The AR glasses market is still nascent, with very few players and little competition, a bit like handheld PCs before Steam Deck arrived and stimulated a huge new market to develop. Over the coming years, I expect Apple and Meta’s offerings will likely have a similar stimulating affect on the AR glasses market. In the here and now, these are all mostly first-generation products and there are going to be bugs – really stupid ones, even. Taking into account all the positives and negatives, I honestly believe that for glasses-wearers, there’s simply no better alternative to Viture right now. If you buy another brand as well as their pricey lens inserts, in a few years you may want to upgrade and whoever you try to sell them to isn’t going to want YOUR prescription lenses. By contrast, Viture and Rokid (if the latter wasn’t an absolute garbage product) are much more universal. And if you do happen to have perfect eyes, over 50% of the market doesn’t, and it might not be possible to order inserts that fit them years from now. Or what if you want to share them with another user who does need glasses? “Hold on one sec, I’ll order you a pair of inserts. Got your credit card?”

Oh… I suppose I should mention cosmetics. Rokid’s products make you look like an absolute goofball, while Viture’s could easily be mistaken for a pair of regular sunglasses.

Weigh your options, make up your own mind. For me, Viture basically gave me back my ability to enjoy electronic entertainment. They’re beyond a luxury good, they’re closer to a medical device. Even factoring in the dumb HDMI problem there’s simply no better choice available, and at least you can work around it by opening your wallet. And again: be sure to check your interpupillary distance before ordering, if possible. If your eyes aren’t average-spaced, you may be best off waiting for a product to arrive with adjustable IPD.

I bought these thinking I would be able to do the things I want to do with the Vision Pro, but for less money. What I get wasn’t exactly what was advertised.

The virtual screen is about 24”, not 120” like they claim. Oh but you can make it bigger, if you want to buy their underpowered neck band.

So you want this for your switch huh? No problem, just buy the dock and it should work!

Want to connect it to your iPhone 14 or older, well you need their adapter, plus an adapter from Apple.

Want to try that awesome 3D they told you about? Dang it, Apple doesn’t show the Vision Pro compatible movies without the Vision Pro! That’s okay though, because turning on 3D requires a long press or the power button and that causes the device to go black and never turn back on. You have to literally reboot it to get the 3D to work.

Oh and I was going to use it with my iPad PRO M2 and to control the app, you literally have to awkwardly waive the iPad around as a laser pointer, clearly not something they thought out very well.

Even more, they will sell you a cap to black out the front of the glasses, but light and reflections come in from all around the glasses, so I wouldn’t even say it was very usable that way either. It would be nice if the glasses had blinders as well.

The best thing about it are the dioptric adjustments. It’s great not needing glasses to use them, but they’re just not all that great of a device and it’s a shame honestly, I was hoping for better and I wasn’t expecting the full Vr Experience.