It's been nearly two years since we first got our hands on Nreal Light and, at the time, Nreal seemed like it was finally ready to deliver a consumer AR product that people might actually care about. Considering it's hundreds or even thousands less than the competition and Nreal Light is available at Verizon stores, all the pieces are in place for success.
After all, the premise is pretty exciting. Put on a pair of Nreal Light glasses, plug the USB Type-C cable into your phone, and you suddenly have a choice between turning your phone's screen into a giant 220-inch virtual projection — that only you can see, of course — or working via a fully-tracked mixed reality virtual desktop with floating windows and the whole nine yards.
Since they're AR glasses, not VR like an Oculus Quest 2, you can see right through the lenses to the world around you.
It sounds like something from the pages of science fiction and, indeed, much of it feels just within reach. But too many parts of the experience regularly brought me back to actual reality — one that isn't augmented by cutting-edge technology — and made me painfully aware that someone who spends $599 on a pair of these AR glasses is almost assuredly going to be disappointed.
Nreal Light: Price and availability
Nreal Light went on sale in the U.S. on November 18, 2021 in select Verizon stores throughout the country. The glasses were later made available online on December 2 on Verizon's website and on Nreal's website. Nreal Light glasses retail for $599.
Since then, Nreal Light has sold out at Verizon and is on backorder although, at the time of publishing for this review, you could still order them on Nreal's website.
Nreal Light glasses come with a pair of glasses with non-removable cable, four different sized nose pads, a small clip to aid in cable management while wearing the glasses, a lens frame for using prescription lenses with Nreal Light, a VR cover, manual, and cleaning cloth.
Nreal Light: A more refined product
If you've ever used a pair of AR glasses, you'll know that most of them are bulky monstrosities. Nreal Light, on the other hand, is almost as tidy as a pair of "smart glasses" like Ray-Ban Stories. They weigh 106 grams, which is about 3x heavier than a pair of normal Ray-Bans but still don't feel terribly bulky while wearing.
A cable comes out of the back of the left temple, which is used to connect to your smartphone or PC via a USB Type-C connection. This is necessary since Nreal Light glasses have no compute module inside and cannot be operated by themselves.
The lenses themselves are quite good for AR glasses, although they still exhibit the restrictions of current early AR glasses technology. Part of what makes them better than most glasses in this category is the relatively wide 52-degree field of view. That translates into a roughly 220-inch display right in front of your face.
The content displayed on Nreal Light can either be exactly what's happening on your phone's screen or a mixed-reality mode that features floating windows and special AR apps. Both of these modes require the Nreal Nebula app to be installed.
You can also plug them into a Windows-based PC and get a virtual 220-inch monitor, but I didn't have much luck with this feature during my review.
Display quality was surprisingly good, offering up faithful color reproduction and high resolution — roughly 1080p quality — despite being a projection onto the lenses themselves. Nreal is using a unique dome-shaped lens to project the image, which results in a wider, clearer virtual display.
I also found it to be surprisingly bright considering that you can see straight through the virtual display into the world beyond. That is, of course, what makes these AR — that's augmented reality — and not VR, although an included black cover can be snapped onto the outside of the glasses to turn them into VR glasses of sorts.
Nreal Light sports excellent 6DoF tracking, which means you can move your head around naturally and the virtual imagery will stay in place in virtual space exactly as you would expect. Two cameras on the front can track the real world and help a realistic sense of presence for projected virtual information, but they won't be tracking your hands Minority Report style anytime soon.
For me, the best use of these glasses was playing Minecraft with my son while he played on his Nintendo Switch. This gave me a significantly larger display than even my Galaxy Z Fold 3 has, all while enjoying the freedom of holding a controller in my lap as if I were playing on a TV.
It's much, much more comfortable than using a game controller that plugs into your phone, as you won't need to hold the phone up the entire time you're playing.
Similarly, you can watch movies or videos while lying down thanks to the ability to reposition the virtual display anywhere you want easily. During the MR mode, you can even use your smartphone as a mouse-like trackpad to point and click around the interface.
