XREAL Aura Launches at $1,099, $180 Under Its Preorder Price

The starting price has dropped to $1,099 through December. That’s $180 less than the preorder price announced earlier this month (opens in a new tab).

What it is

Aura is a pair of see-through glasses. You see the room directly through the lenses, and your apps float in front of you.

The glasses weigh about 95 grams. A cable connects them to a 265-gram compute pack that holds the battery and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite chip. That keeps most of the weight off your face.

Sony micro-OLED displays put 1920 × 1200 pixels in front of each eye, at up to 120Hz. The field of view is 70 degrees.

What you can do with it

You can open Android apps as windows around you. Plug a compatible laptop or handheld gaming device into the pack’s USB-C video port, and its screen appears beside them.

Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, can help with a game or highlight things in the room when you share your view.

XREAL says Aura launches with more than 150 apps and experiences made for XR, alongside regular Google Play apps. New immersive films include Nevatars, co-directed by Andy Serkis, and Galapagos: The Last Eden.

With NBA League Pass, you can watch three games at once or put a live game on a virtual tabletop.

What to know before buying

The glasses need their wired compute pack, but you don’t need a separate phone or PC to run Android apps.

You control Aura with your hands, voice, or the pack’s trackpad. It supports Bluetooth gamepads, but there’s no eye tracking (opens in a new tab).

Some features are still on the way. Google Photos’ spatial gallery and games such as Fallout Factions (opens in a new tab) are coming later.

Price and availability

• 12GB of memory with 256GB of storage is $1,099, normally $1,279.
• 16GB of memory with 512GB of storage is $1,299, normally $1,499.

Both launch prices last through December.

Customers who fully paid before October 28 qualify for a refund (opens in a new tab) of the price difference. XREAL expects to start those refunds within 30 days.

Orders are open in the U.S., Canada, and South Korea through XREAL, and in the U.S. through Best Buy. Google lists November 2 for Japan. Shipping is expected to begin in mid-November.