Every January, Las Vegas convention centers are packed with exciting new technology for CES, and it’s no different for CES 2024. And what technology is more exciting than the best VR headsets and AR glasses?
We scoured CES 2024 for the best VR and AR tech announcements. We drove AR-powered cars, tested a bunch of different glasses, and even… subjecting ourselves to a haptic suit.
However, it was all worth it to find five fantastic gadgets for this CES 2024 round-up.
If you want to see more of the great tech on display at CES, we have a guide to the 20 best gadgets from CES 2024 and the best wearable and fitness tech from CES 2024.
1. New Qualcomm XR2+ chip
This isn’t a VR headset, and technically it was unveiled before CES, but we’re including it here because Qualcomm gave us a deeper look at the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 at the tech convention in Las Vegas. This chipset will be used in some of the best VR headsets we see hitting the market in the coming years.
This powerful successor to the XR2+ Gen 1 in the Meta Quest Pro will power the next generation of business headsets. This includes the Samsung VR headset that is being developed in collaboration with Google.
In practical terms, the chipset can support displays with a resolution of up to 4.3K per eye at 90 Hz, has 2.5x better GPU performance than the XR2 Gen 2 in the Meta Quest 3, and has 8x better AI performance . It also supports Wi-Fi 7 and full-color mixed reality passthrough.
Qualcomm is currently the name in the XR chipset game, and we expect the XR2+ Gen 2 to only further strengthen its position. And it could help rival XR gadgets prove they’re just as capable as the Apple Vision Pro.
2. Asus AirVision M1 glasses
Speaking of Apple, this year’s CES award for the gadget that most resembles an Apple knockoff goes to Asus’ AirVision M1 glasses.
The name may bring to mind the Vision Pro – with aspects of the iPad Air and Apple’s M1 chipset found in some iPads and Macbooks – but has virtually nothing to do with Apple’s hardware. The only minor similarity is that these specs are a wearable AR display.
The Asus glasses do not function on their own; you’ll need to connect them to a compatible phone or computer with a USB-C display port (which means it can output video and audio via USB-C). While these types of gadgets are a lot of fun, our experience with them is that they are still quite pricey for what you get. The resolution is full-HD only, and you often have to buy several not-so-optional add-ons to get the most out of your experience – pushing the price up from the usual $400 / £400 / AU$600 what you already pay for smart glasses.
We haven’t tried the Asus AirVision M1 glasses yet – nor do we know which regions they’ll be available in or when the launch date is – so we’ll reserve judgment on them for now. But if you’re looking for specs that match what you expect from “AR glasses,” the next item on this list might be a better choice.
3. Xreal Air 2 Ultra
Xreal makes some of our favorite smart glasses – you can read more about the AR specs it previously made in our Xreal Air review and Xreal Air 2 Pro review – and at CES 2024 it debuted something that promises to be even better than what we have seen of it in the past.
The Xreal Air 2 Ultra goes beyond just projecting an AR screen into your real world like its predecessors. It’s a real spatial computer, complete with a camera so the device can track your hands and identify real-world objects that virtual elements can interact with.
Although the glasses look a lot like the Apple Vision Pro, there is one drawback: you need an external device to power them. Specifically, Xreal only mentions the Samsung Galaxy S22, the Samsung Galaxy S23 and a “custom computer unit” that has yet to be released because the gadgets are suitable for it. If you’re not interested in spatial computing, you can use them as a portable full-HD display for any gadget with a USB-C display port.
On the other hand, even if you buy a new Samsung phone, you can get a whole Xreal spatial computing package for around $1,000 / £1,100 if you can find a Galaxy S22 on sale. This is less than a third of the price of the Apple Vision Pro at $3,499 – although it is quite a bit more expensive than the Meta Quest 3 at $499.99 / £479.99 / AU$799.99.
We don’t yet know how well this Air 2 Ultra experience compares to its rivals, but if it can deliver a solid experience, Xreal could be a winner.
4. AR glasses in a car
BMW has been trying to find ways to bring XR technology to cars for a while now. We’ve previously seen its efforts to bring VR offices and entertainment to your travels so that car passengers can get more out of their journey, but the CES 2024 demo focused on drivers.
Thanks to a pair of Xreal Air 2 glasses, we saw AR cues that guided us through the streets of Las Vegas (for the demo, we sat in the passenger seat while someone else drove). We could also see warnings about upcoming potholes, stop signs and how much charge the electric vehicle had left.
This was all just a very well-crafted research pilot to help inform the future of driving technology. But the BMW AR experience sold us on the idea, so we’re hoping this kind of technology isn’t far from being more than just a prototype.
5. Sony’s business headset
Most people think of entertainment when they think of VR, but there is a huge push to bring more XR gadgets to market – a trend that the newly announced Sony XR headset continues.
Created in collaboration with Siemens, the device is designed to help companies bring more production phases – specifically design and prototyping – into the metaverse. Using the headset, they can produce and analyze 3D models of their designs and diagnose any problems before investing in real prototypes.
Overall the headset looks pretty standard, but it does feature the odd pair of handsets. One is a more traditionally shaped VR controller, the other is a ring. The benefits of this setup are that it frees up your hand to interact with real-world objects more easily, and it allows you to get hands-on with virtual objects while still having the convenience of buttons on a controller.
There’s not much more to say about the headset for now, but given its standalone design, perhaps this will pave the way for a successor to the PSVR 2 headset that’s no longer tethered to a PlayStation console.