Oppo’s new Air Glass looks hella cool, but will they perform well in real life next year?<\/b>
\nThe latest tech news Your sardonic source for consumer tech stories Human-centric AI news and analysis Driving the future of sustainable mobility No-nonsense stories about startup growth Inside money, markets, and Big Tech The hottest new jobs in tech Help build the bank of the future Coding for Public Service If I were a spy, I\u2019d surely want Oppo\u2018s new Air Glass in my gadget bag, or rather on my face. No, that\u2019s not a typo, Oppo\u2018s \u2018assisted reality\u2019 headset can be worn only on one eye \u2014 kinda like a monocle. But it looks cool nonetheless. Looks are half of the appeal of the fashionable wearable, with a sleek frame and flowing lines. The whole setup weighs just 30 grams. Oppo\u2019s unit can easily snap to prescription glasses with magnets. Technology-wise, the lens uses sapphire glass and a Micro-LED panel (capable of achieving brightness up to 3 million nits) to display notifications and contextual information. The display is powered by a coffee-bean-sized \u201cSpark Micro Projector.\u201d To make it easier for you to read the display in daylight, the average brightness of the screen is 1,400 nits. Air Glass also has a speaker at the end of the stem placed near your ear so you can take calls. The company claims the device can show you notes and act as a teleprompter. It at least looks cool in the image below. What\u2019s more, Oppo has worked with Baidu to customize navigation for the Glass, so you can follow directions without looking at your phone or watch. The Chinese tech firm says you can interact with the glass with touch, voice, head movement, and hand motion (with the Oppo Watch 2). The device will be available in two frame styles, and in black and white colorways. While Oppo\u2019s assisted reality device sounds great, I\u2019m not getting my hopes up until I try this myself, or see experiential videos from users. Sadly, the Air Glass will be available only in China in Q1 2022 to a limited number of users, and we don\u2019t even know the price. Oppo said it\u2019ll create a community of early adopters to gather feedback, and open up its SDK for developers to make compatible apps. In comparison to Snap\u2019s \u201cNew Spectacles,\u201d Oppo\u2019s glass looks a bit sleeker. Hopefully, more people will be able to get hands on it, unlike Snap\u2019s selected user release. Plus, the Oppo Air Glass (30gm) is lighter than the Nreal Light (106gm) \u2014 one of just a handful of AR glasses available to consumers right now. The device has all the capability of the bygone Google Glasses, including on-the-fly translation and displaying weather information and notifications, and some. But we hope that it doesn\u2019t meet the same fate.<\/p>\n