i came Google I/O 2026 to try Google and Xreal’s ‘Project Aura’ XR smart glasses and I’m happy to report that I got more Tens of 90 seconds.
It is being launched globally this yearProject Aura is a pair of XR smart glasses that run on Google’s Android XR location platform. While neither company has yet shared details on pricing or a specific release date, media outlets like myself have been showing them off to find out what to expect. They are exactly what I expected: a middle ground between smart glasses without a screen Ray-Ban Meta AI Sunglasses (and Google and Samsung’s new “audio glasses”) and more effective headphones like Vision Pro or Galaxy XR. You get a “spatial computing” experience in a pair of compact frames.
Sliding them over my face, the Project Aura felt no different than Xreal’s One Pro AR glasses. Apart from the three cameras (the one on the bridge of the nose is for photos and videos, and the ones on the sides are used for hand tracking), they looked and felt pretty much the same – super light and unobtrusive. That’s what we want, because very few people are going to strap big headphones to their faces.
There’s a cable that connects to the left arm and plugs it into a ‘computing disk’, which you can then wear around your neck with the attached necklace. The puck itself looked like a battery pack for the Vision Pro. There’s also a trackpad on the puck surface, but I didn’t get to try it.
After installation, I did a short demo to learn how to use hand tracking. It’s simple enough: reach and pinch to select objects, and pinch and hold to drag them. One thing Project Aura doesn’t have is eye tracking, meaning you’ll have to turn your entire head and then reach out to select items in your “spatial” view.
This spatial view is the widest I’ve seen in a pair of smart glasses, and it makes a huge difference when you have a screen or multiple apps in front of your vision. At 70 degrees, the FOV is wide enough to comfortably see three application windows open next to each other. I was told that up to five application windows can be opened at the same time. At one point I had three programs and then a game on top of them. Just don’t expect the kind of indoor immersion you get from XR headphones.
The screens are also quite bright. They’re sharp enough that visuals and text didn’t look pixelated or difficult to distinguish at all. Unfortunately, I don’t have information on display type, resolution, or refresh rate. Adding a refresh rate as high as 240Hz inside Asus ROG Xreal R1 gaming smart glassesit will only increase the cost. For what it’s worth, Xreal has only shipped smart glasses with 1080p resolution so far, and its premium devices have micro OLED panels.
The Project Aura hardware is the best XR glasses can be right now, and will be the worst when we look at them in the future. More important is XR software experience. How does Android XR and Gemini Intelligence work on Project Aura? Based on my short demo, it’s less gimmicky than I expected.
While the hand tracking wasn’t perfect—a couple of times I tried to grab app windows only to have the smart glasses not recognize my hands—it worked well enough. For the most part, I was able to quickly and easily pinch windows and make them my field of view – all while controlling the amount of dimming I wanted by pressing the red button on the right arm. Grabbing a corner of an app provided a way to resize them, similar to clicking the corner of a window on the desktop. At one demonstration, I looked at a bunch of objects on a bookshelf and Gemini was able to tell me about each one.
My favorite demo was for the game. We downloaded the role play Demeo, and I could grab the whole level and punch it with both hands to rotate it around or zoom in or out. The pinch gesture was used to grab my character and move them around the board. Opening my right palm revealed a stack of cards that I picked with my left hand and then dropped on my character to attack or cast a spell. It was really cool! If hand tracking is ever more responsive, I could see some real innovation in play for games like this. Dungeons and Dragons or Minecraft. It felt more immersive and intuitive than using a controller or mouse to control.
They also showed me how Project Aura can be used as an external monitor for a laptop. After connecting the USB-C cable from the laptop to the computing drive, I was able to extend the laptop screen to the smart glasses. This was the worst of the demos. I couldn’t move apps between the physical and virtual screens at all, even though I wasn’t told to.
I’ll slow Google and Xreal down a bit for now. Project Aura clearly needs some polish on the Android XR front. Hopefully some bugs will be ironed out before the XR smart glasses are released. We’re almost halfway through the year, so if it doesn’t start near the end of the year, there’s not much time left.
In general, I will say that I left my disassembly optimistic. Assuming Apple has backed itself into a corner with Vision Pro, I have to wonder if we really need this level of immersion for spatial computing. How many people are looking for a more isolating computing experience? I don’t. To say the least, Project Aura’s compactness is promising for the XR smartglasses category. Perhaps less is more for XR smartwatches, and size and comfort will ultimately matter more than visual fidelity. Price will also be important. Few people paid $3,500 for the Vision Pro, and even fewer will turn to Project Aura if it’s too expensive.
