Oppo has announced its new smart glasses at MWC 2024 – and the Oppo Air Glass 3 is a big step up from its predecessor.
I tried the Oppo Air Glass 2 and a host of other smartglasses at MWC last year, in what was inevitably a soul-crushing afternoon of AR disappointment.
I went around the show floor trying various experiences from the likes of Oppo, Lenovo, and Xiaomi, and was left startled by how far these AR experiences were from consumer-ready experiences.
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But this year’s Oppo Air 3 perhaps shows a bright future.
The glasses themselves are a little bigger and dorkier than the Air Glass 2, but the visuals placed in your vision are now bigger, brighter, and full color.
We saw a host of applications, including an e-book and on-screen translations – and the experience made for far more comfortable viewing than I’ve seen on a pair of specs before.
The waveguide on the lens places the on-screen graphics front and center in your vision.
It offered a far larger FOV with an attractive full-colour UI which was far easier to read without getting eye strain.
The visuals do block your vision of course, and it’s quite an odd experience to be speaking to someone, and have them partially obscured by on-screen information.
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However, the Oppo Air Glass 3 has a button on the arm of the specs, which can quickly dispatch on-screen visuals.
AI plays a huge part here in making the glasses more useful to wear.
It uses AndesGPT which means it can process images and text and get you answers to questions.
However, don’t expect to be donning these specs any time soon. Previous Air Glass devices have not made it out of China, and the Air Glass 3s are a prototype device.
But it feels as if the industry is starting to solve some of the issues around AR specs – and this feels like a far more usable pair of AR glasses than we’ve seen to date.
Building on AI capabilities to support consumer use cases and apps will only fuel that advance.
The Oppo Air Glass 3 isn’t a product I need in my life – but it’s made me believe that AR glasses have a future.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.