Also: CES 2023 tech you can actually buy now Of the trio of new offerings that TCL showed off at the show, the NXTWear S glasses are the most mundane. They don’t really qualify as an augmented or virtual reality device, but they do offer the wearers a head-mounted display capable of displaying a virtual screen with an apparent size of 130 inches. Also: What tech is in the CES 2023 bag of ZDNET’s Editor in Chief? They’re similar to offerings already on the market like the Nreal Air AR glasses. While the Nreal Air glasses do offer some basic AR functionality, they’ve mostly made a niche for themselves among mobile device owners, especially fans of portable consoles like Valve’s Steam Deck, being used to turn a small-screen gaming experience into a very big-screen one. Like similar offerings, the NXTWear S glasses can connect to your smartphone, tablet, or laptop and serve as what is essentially a big-screen TV that fits on your face. TCL showed the glasses being used with Nintendo’s Switch in the press shot above, though its not entirely clear how multi-unit support will be handled in cases like this. The NXTWear S glasses are available now via an IndieGoGo campaign for $350 and up, depending on the funding tier you choose. The NXTWear S glasses are just about to ship, but the remaining two products shown off aren’t ready for primetime just yet. The first of these is the RayNeoX2 AR glasses. The augmented reality specs are based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 (Extended Reality 2) core, a chipset designed to be able to bring advanced technologies like 5G connectivity and 8K video to AR and VR devices. The glasses employ this processing power to provide video output via a Micro LED optical waveguide that suspends the device’s video in the user’s field of view. TCL suggests the glasses can be used for things like live text translation, navigation services, and more. Also: How these companies see VR as the future of business The company notes the built-in displays are capable of outputting up to 1,000 nits of brightness to keep their imagery visible even in bright sunlight. It was much more vague about its specific plans for the RayNeoX2s, offering no price and saying only that they would be available at a later date. The final entry in TCL’s surprise lineup is the most conceptual: the NXTWear V headset. This still-mysterious device looks set to be a direct competitor for the likes of the Meta Quest Pro, coming in at just 236 grams while offering 1512ppi of pixel density for a display that should leave the dreaded “screen door effect” seen on older VR headsets well behind it. It also includes a 108-degree field of view for solid immersion. TCL mentioned no plans to offer the NXTWear V headset commercially. However, if the company’s early dabbling in AR and VR proves successful, it’s highly likely its technology will soon make its way to the public, even if it is in a slightly different package.
