and Thursday
in your weekly columnNick Sutrich, Senior Content Producer at Android Central, dives into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and more.
The last two years have produced significant advances in smart glasses. Whether you’re looking at a “wearable TV” or a pair of glasses with built-in AI, it’s never made more sense to get smart glasses than it does now. And as their popularity continues to grow, they get better and better.
Viture specializes in the “wearable TV” smart glasses segment and recently delivered its first pair of glasses with built-in spatial tracking. It also offers the best smart glasses ecosystem that you can find today; which includes the only smart glasses that work with the Switch 2a wearable space neckband, and multiple drivers.
I had a conversation with Viture’s Chief Optical Officer, Dr. Deqing Kong, about the company’s latest launches and learned about even more interesting products in the pipeline for the future. These represent the next generation of quality and eye comfort, and it won’t be long before they’re ready to buy too.
The roadmap to perfection
My biggest problem with smart glasses today is not the quality or functionality of the screen; It’s comfort. Smart glasses like the Viture Beast offer built-in spatial tracking and a significantly smaller and lighter design than a virtual reality headsetbut the micro-OLED displays at the heart of the optical engine aren’t always the most comfortable to view for long periods of time.
For me this is because I am sensitive to low frequency PWM attenuation. Almost all smart glasses that use PWM dimming use a frequency of 120 Hz or 240 Hz, while the two most recent generations of RayNeo offer 3840 Hz PWM dimming (not a typo). According to Dr. Kong, this disparity is due to two factors: the quality of the screen and the manufacturer’s specifications.
RayNeo uses micro-OLED displays from SeeYa, a smaller company in China, while Viture and Xreal use micro-OLED from Sony. Viture used SeeYa SY049 panels for the Viture One, but Dr. Kong told me that the Sony panels offered higher color saturation and pixel density, so Viture switched to Sony for future product launches.
SeeYa panels have historically been more comfortable for me, partly because they use different dimming methods and, according to Dr. Kong, because the Viture One’s optics have a narrower FoV and higher pixel density. All of the main Viture and
Dr. Kong tells me that Viture’s upcoming smart glasses, launching later this year, will feature a large field of view with 2560 x 1600 resolution, a notable improvement over Viture’s latest sports releases with 1920 x 1200 resolution. Next year, we should expect a further increase in resolution, which may also coincide with an increase in FoV.
In addition to this, they will feature PWM dimming up to 3840Hz, ensuring that people like me can find them comfortable no matter how long they use them. This solves two big problems in one fell swoop, and while there are many other hurdles that will need to be overcome for smart glasses to be “perfect,” these important steps will ensure that everyone finds the sweet spot as the products evolve.
Pushing the boundaries of wearable technology
Every pair of smart display glasses (portable TVs) you can buy today uses micro-OLED displays, regardless of which company makes the screen or glasses. While micro-OLEDs offer some of the same great benefits of OLED TVs and smartphones, they also need to work a little differently due to the inherent nature of how lenses work in a portable device.
So while Sony’s latest ECX348 micro-OLEDs can generate a dazzling 5,000 nits of brightness, that amount of light is reduced by 1/5, meaning your eyes are getting around 1,000 nits by the time it reaches your eyes due to the glasses’ birdbath optics. That number is even lower in virtual reality headsets, and although headsets like Galaxy XR and Apple The Vision Pro uses similar 5000 nit panels, its pancake optics reducing brightness to less than 200 nits when light hits your eyes.
For a VR headset, this low level of brightness is not a big problem since most headsets block external light, but smart glasses have to solve this differently, since they do not obscure vision. glasses like Viture Beast and Xreal 1S Use adjustable electrochromic film, which you can adjust in the settings of the glasses, adding tints to the front of the glasses to reduce light interference with the screen.
And although electrochromic film is very effective at reducing front light, these glasses still have to overcome peripheral light leaks at higher brightness levels. Dr. Kong tells me that the upcoming Viture glasses will feature displays with a maximum brightness of 8,000 nits, which, if the math remains the same, means they will deliver an effective brightness level of 1,600 nits to your eyes.
Dr. Kong noted that VITURE’s display roadmap extends well beyond next-generation glasses, with further gains in resolution, brightness and custom silicon on the horizon.
At the same time, we will also see an improvement in color reproduction and capabilities. Current micro-OLEDs use 8-bit SDR color output and although glasses like RayNeo Air 4 Pro are the first to debut with HDR10 support and 10-bit color, RayNeo’s HDR10 implementation uses temporary hesitation – a software flickering technique that simulates HDR.
VITURE’s position is to wait for true HDR at the panel level rather than offering an alternative software solution. Any flashing like this can cause headaches and discomfort for some people, so companies should offer ways to disable these techniques for affected users.
These updated micro-OLED panels will also feature RGB self-emitting, meaning they will function more like the OLED display on your TV or smartphone. Current smart glasses and VR-mounted micro-OLEDs feature white light pixels with RGB filters on top. Self-emissive color pixels will provide improved color gamut and energy efficiency.
I don’t know which of the next two generations of glasses will support a wider range of colors, but Dr. Kong tells me that the future Viture glasses willpower Supports 10-bit HDR output and 100% DCI color. Some of these improvements are tied to the glasses’ coprocessor, and Viture is working on a new custom chip that will debut in 2027.
That new chip will also support AI-based super resolution, similar to AI enhancement in phones. like the Galaxy S25 Ultrabut the quality improvement will likely be even more pronounced due to the perceived size of the virtual screen on the Viture glasses.
Lastly, Viture tells me that it is working on several other pain points for its users. Native color options, “pro-level color management”, anti-aliasing and anti-chromatic aberration are in the works for future Viture glasses. That last part, in particular, is music to my ears, as many glasses with a larger FoV suffer from chromatic aberration around the edges of the lens.
All of this portends an incredibly exciting future for smart display glasses, especially those that focus on delivering top-notch image quality. Viture Beast was a big step forward for the company’s glasses, adding native spatial tracking and several other important features. The company’s next steps look to take those improvements and combine them with the Luma line to create something even more impressive.
And if you can’t wait at all, stay tuned Prime Day (starting June 23) to see some smart glasses sales. These types of products are always discounted for Prime Day (and similar sales events), making it the perfect time to pick up a pair.
