™Google's Xreal Aura Glasses Cost $1,279, $20 Less Than Meta's
Only reservation holders can preorder for now, and Xreal's CEO says the first 2,000 Founder's Edition pairs ship this year.
Xreal's Aura, the first see-through glasses built on Google's Android XR, costs $1,279. Preorders opened Wednesday, but only for people who had already reserved a pair.
That's $20 under Meta's VR Glasses, The Verge reported, and on paper the two are close enough to be the same decision. Each weighs around 100 grams. Each keeps a Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite chip and its battery in a puck on a cord. Put either one on and a grid of app icons floats in front of the wearer.
The $1,279 gets 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. A 16GB, 512GB version costs $1,499. By the time The Verge published, Xreal couldn't say whether any apps would need the extra memory.
The real split is how each one shows the room. Aura's lenses are clear, so the wearer sees the actual room. Meta's glasses show it through cameras, a method called passthrough, and lean harder into immersion. According to The Verge, Aura's 70-degree diagonal field of view is one of the widest yet for transparent glasses, but Meta's is still bigger.
The controls differ too. Meta's glasses track the eyes, the way Apple's Vision Pro does: look at a button, then pinch fingers resting in a lap. Aura has a touchpad on the puck and hand tracking that turns fingers into virtual laser pointers. One runs Android apps and the other runs Quest games, and both can take video from a USB-C DisplayPort device plugged straight in.
Android XR doesn't have much of a track record to judge it by. Samsung and Google's Galaxy XR headset ran it when it shipped last year at $1,799, $520 more than Aura's base model. The Verge says the companies never sent it one to review and it hasn't tested Android XR at length, so it argues that no journalist can call a winner yet.
What Xreal does have is a head start. Meta's glasses aren't due until spring 2027. Xreal CEO and co-founder Chi Xu told The Verge that the first 2,000 Founder's Edition pairs will ship this year, and those are the only ones guaranteed for launch. Preorders opened Wednesday. Shipping, Xreal's press release says, starts "soon."
The first pairs go to the U.S., Canada, Japan and South Korea, and Xreal plans to reach more regions in 2027.
Everyone without a reservation has to wait for public orders, which Xreal says will open "in the coming weeks." Meta's pair, the one Aura undercuts by $20, isn't due until spring.
Source: The Verge, retrieved October 7, 2026.
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