RayNeo, a spin-off from TCL that created the low cost ($340) RayNeo Air smart glasses, which we favorably reviewed in November, presented its next generation Air2. These handsome XR glasses provide a big screen-on-the-go that mirrors the tethered smartphone. It features an audio “whisper mode,” that keeps the sound extra private to the user. The RayNeo X2 Lite has a 30% field of view, and weighs in at 60 grams, making them the lightweight leaders.
Curve Reality uses Tilt 5 to fill a room with holograms. Tilt 5 is a game platform that brings holograms to board games. Its ultralight glasses are tethered to a PC, and four people can play at once on its special reflective mat. They are selling them just as fast as they can make them. Curve Reality is a small, powerful PC with an Nvidia processor that fits in a pouch you carry around you. Here’s the trick. Partnering with Tilt 5, they placed their reflective mats all over the suite. Users can then walk among a HoloGallery.
Pimax Crystal, with 12K screens and 60G Airlink (wireless PCVR), was awarded the CES 2024 Innovation Awards, as an Honoree in the “XR Technologies & Accessories” category. The Crystal is the only award-winning VR headset at the awards.
The Emdor looks like the Vision Pro. But that’s about it. Apple’s trendsetting design attracts imitators in this case the EmdorVR EM-AX162, debuting just two months after Apple's Vision Pro. While it bears a striking resemblance to the vision pro, its low budget specs speak to its superficial nature. It has a Snapdragon XR1 chip, 6GB RAM, and a 5.5-inch LCD for each eye. Apple's Vision Pro, on the other hand, boasts dual Apple Silicon chips, microOLEDs with exceptional resolution, advanced features like eye-tracking and augmented reality, and a robust 256GB storage.
Vuzix (NASDAQ: VUZI) Introduces a New Wireless Headset for Enterprise. The company secured its twentieth consecutive CES 2024 Innovation Award for its new Vuzix Ultralite S AR smart glasses, an all-day design that delivers on demand digital information in its monocular display. Aimed in part at sports and fitness users, the Ultralite S delivers hands-free, wireless connectivity to the information from the wearer’s smartphone or smartwatch. Weighing in at a mere 38 grams, it’ll last 48 hours on a single charge. The Ultralite S also employs Vuzix Incognito technology, virtually eliminating the eyeglow or forward light found with other waveguide-based solutions. The Vuzix Ultralite OEM Platform is a go-to-market ready, turnkey offering designed to fast track client AR solutions into production. Paul Travers, the founder and CEO, spends CES in his booth, demoing his new headset to irrelevant strangers who stop to gawk at the AR hardware surrounded by CES awards. Paul the CEO of a public company and he’s still repping it like an intern.
RealWear is Vuzix’ main competitor in the enterprise AR space, and was doing suite demos again this year. The problem with a booth is that it’s physically greuling, expensive, and you spend 99% of your time on irrelevant people. The problem with the suite demo is that it’s hard to get people here. In this case we met halfway, in the ciggy choked Westway hotel bar, next to the LVCC. The RealWear is a ruggedized monocular display that attaches to a hard hat or ball cap and sits on the edge of your peripheral. You swing it in and out of your eyesight. It’s controlled with a special kind of voice recognition that works even in extremely noisy industrial environments. Importantly it’s full of sensors, cameras, and flashlights that can. Realwear has had some real successes and great use cases. They’ve sold 15,000 units in the oil and gas industry. Hundreds of BMW mechanics use its see-what-I-see remote expert technology to troubleshoot maintenance issues with engineers in Germany. Honestly if the US Army had chosen RealWear instead of Microsoft for its IVAS program it might have worked.
Everysight AR Glasses for BMW Motorcycles are sexy as hell. In yet another case of CES serendipity, my podcast co-host Ted made the intro to founder and CEO Asaf Ashkenazi, who met me an hour before my flight home. Ashkenazi is a former Israeli Air Force pilot who saw the need for a practical heads up display ten years ago, when a bright microdisplay that looked like regular glasses seemed impossible. Everysight makes the BMW ConnectedRide Smartglasses ($680) which look like regular sunglasses. The glasses, called Mavericks, offer a monocular microdisplay that uses Sony OLED displays while still carrying a charge for eight hours. Mavericks will be available this summer.
Read the sequel, AR Glasses Push Limits At CES 2024, featuring Xreal, Sony, RayNeo, Zapbox, NRMYW, Solos, Nimio, Tilt5, Pimax, Emdor, Vuzix, RealWear, and Everysight.