Oppo Air Glass 3 hands-on: One step closer

Oppo Air Glass 3 hands-on: One step closer،

The Oppo Air Glass 3 prototype was just announced at MWC 2024 and… well, it's not released because it's still under development.

However, we had little hands-on time and were able to appreciate how far Oppo has come with this technology.

Design and screens

These are probably some of the lightest XR glasses we've tested. The branches look thick, but “fashion statement” thick, not “we had to put a battery in it” thick. They sit comfortably on the head and we can probably wear them for hours.

The glasses have tiny screens right in the center of your vision. Both are color and receive images from 1,000 nit projectors. The testing area was semi-dark, so we can't tell what they look like in the sun. However, when looking through them and into a light source, the data on the screens was still readable.

The lenses have a refractive index of 1.7 – very close to normal glass, which is 1.5. This is important because high refraction causes rainbow effects. Definitely something you don't want. Oppo said there was no rainbow “in most cases” – we didn't see any in the current environment

Software experience

So, right now the prototype can play music, show you color images, has a weather widget, and can provide calling functionality via Bluetooth.

You scroll through widgets via a horizontal touchpad on the temple frames. Apparently there should also be vertical swipe input – for volume or for scrolling through images. The UI cues were there, but vertical swipes don't work on the current prototype we were able to test.

The Oppo Air glasses should also work with Oppo's AndesGPT, an interactive assistant that should help you every day with a simple voice prompt.

AndesGPT is currently not available outside of China, due to regulations. But Oppo is working hard to enable its AI smart assistant features and is partnering with different companies including Microsoft to do so.

But for this practical experience, we didn't have a chance to try it.

Sound quality

Oppo Air Glass 3 practical: one step closer

The sound of the Oppo Air Glass 3 comes from the speakers located in the edges of the temples. With “reverse sound field technology,” which we couldn't get a more precise description of, it's supposed to focus sound into your ear canals and keep it private, leaving others unable to hear your conversations and media.

The onsite unit had music preloaded. It didn't sound bad, but the volume was definitely low and didn't have much depth. The highs were pretty sharp, but not quite there, so that's okay. However, we could hear the sound of other people testing the glasses. So we guess the prototype isn't quite there yet, with what Oppo wanted to achieve.

Expectations

There's not much to say at this point – we can't rate this as a product, because it's not a product. It will evolve and morph further, until Oppo reaches the point where it feels it is good enough to sell.

But do we “see” the future here? Type of. While Apple has decided to go all in with the crazy Vision Pro, other companies are offering us much simpler solutions for mixed reality or augmented reality. We really like the almost normal appearance of the Oppo Air Glasses 3. The low refraction and thin waveguides are impressive. The idea of having an AI assistant ready to show you information right on the glasses makes perfect sense.

We're sure there will be a lot of changes coming before they hit the market – the market itself could change during this time, which would require the Oppo Air Glass to evolve yet again. But this concept here, this idea, it's pretty cool.