Viture’s cheapest AR glasses have the sharpest image clarity I’ve seen yet

I enjoy using display-mirroring glasses as a way to play Steam Deck games on a big screen, and I’m always on the hunt for the best pair. There’s still not one perfect model I can recommend to everyone, but Viture’s new $299.99 Pro 2 have sharper-looking screens than models that cost hundreds more. It’s mostly thanks to the simple but effective diopter-adjusting dials that sit above each eye.

The dials move the lenses, helping more people get the clarity they are hoping for out of the box. These have been in some past models that sold for around $400 or more, but now they’re in glasses that cost a lot less. Most models have few, or no, built-in methods to improve clarity. The only recourse for blurry screens is to pay $50 for prescription lens inserts. That, or just return the glasses. (The Pro 2 glasses support lenses, too, in case the dials alone don’t help.)

Another perk here is the consistent sharpness across the Pro 2’s 50-degree field of view. I didn’t struggle to find a sweet spot; their entire FOV is easy to parse, be it text or other small details, like minimaps in games or menus. Sure, their FOV is smaller than some competitors, but I’ll take smaller and sharper over bigger and blurrier.

Screen sharpness aside, the Pro 2 are basic screen-mirroring glasses without extra features that let you augment how big the screens are or where you can put them virtually. Their micro OLED screens can mirror or extend another device’s screen via a tethered USB-C connection at up to 1080p with a 120Hz refresh rate — standard stuff. They have buttons to adjust volume, brightness, and the screens’ color temperature. They’re even simpler than Xreal’s A01 Plus, which includes a stabilization feature to keep the screens still when you make small head movements, though it’s not a good substitute for three degrees of freedom, a feature found in pricier glasses that both of these lack.

In lieu of fancier features, Viture aimed to make these comfortable enough to wear for hours, and it mostly succeeded. The Pro 2 glasses weigh 63 grams (just a gram more than the A01 Plus), and both have a subtle clamping force that floats on top of my ears, touching the back of my head instead of painfully pressing on my cartilage. Their comfort let me play XCOM 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2 in 90-minute spurts — longer than I usually sit down to play games. I could do that with the A01 Plus, too, but I needed $50 prescription lenses to get similar clarity to what the Pro 2 offers out of the box. Even then, Xreal’s screens weren’t as consistently crisp.

One of the biggest differences between Viture and Xreal’s cheapest AR glasses and their pricier models is flimsier build quality. The Pro 2 and A01 Plus aren’t poorly designed, but the temple arms have more flex, and I noticed some heat on the Pro 2’s right temple arms during extended testing, which wasn’t pleasant to feel during these warm months.

It’s delightful not just to have more options in the budget-friendly AR glasses space, but to have good options, too. If you’re considering your next or first pair, the Pro 2 are excellent for the price. What they’re lacking in features they make up for with very good image clarity.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge