Xreal Beam Pro is essentially a custom Android phone specifically designed to power Xreal Glasses, including 6DoF AR on Xreal Air 2 Ultra.
Xreal Air glasses lack onboard compute or battery, they just act as an external monitor for whatever device (such as your phone) you connect over USB-C, projecting the image onto a head-locked virtual screen in front of you. When used with a few specific Android phones, a PC, or almost any device via the existing Xreal Beam adapter though, the glasses can support rotational 3DoF tracking. And when used with specific Samsung Galaxy phones the Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses can even do true AR with 6DoF positional tracking.
Xreal glasses are 0DoF with most input devices (left), 3DoF with Beam Pro on most Air models (middle), and 6DoF with Beam Pro on Air 2 Ultra.
Enter Xreal Beam Pro. It's designed to let you use true 6DoF AR on Air 2 Ultra or have a 3DoF screen on the other Air models, regardless of what phone you own and without draining its battery.
The pitch of Xreal Beam Pro isn't to replace your existing phone, it's to act as a dedicated compute puck for your smart glasses - one that supports all the media and gaming apps already present on the Google Play Store.
Xreal says that includes Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Steam Link, and cloud gaming services. For gaming you can pair a Bluetooth gamepad, and for all use cases you can pair Bluetooth earphones.
When you connect your Xreal Air glasses to Xreal Beam Pro, you'll see the company's Nebula app launcher which you can use to position these Android apps in space. On Xreal Air 2 Ultra apps will stay locked in position thanks to 6DoF tracking, while on all other glasses models they'll only be 3DoF (rotational).
David Heaney
Unlike typical phones, Beam Pro features two USB-C ports on the bottom. One to power and drive the glasses, and the other for simultaneous charging. The battery should last around 3 hours, and supports 27W charging to fully recharge in just over one hour.
Beam Pro is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, a low-end but relatively recent 4nm chipset used in budget Android phones, and features a 6.5-inch 90Hz LCD panel with 1080p resolution.
Xreal Beam Pro
The two rear cameras are designed to capture stereoscopic 3D photos and videos and have 50mm spacing. This is much wider than iPhone 15 Pro's cameras. And Xreal Beam Pro supports 1080p 60FPS 3D video recording, compared to 30FPS in Apple's camera app.
The $200 base model has 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, while an 8GB RAM and 256GB model is available for $250.
These two models only have Wi-Fi, but a higher-end model with a SIM card tray and 5G modem is coming later this year in case you actually do want this thing to replace your current phone.
All models have a microSD slot supporting cards of up to 1TB.
Preorders for Xreal Beam Pro are now available in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Czechia, Japan, and China. In South Korea preorders will open on July 1. Xreal says it "anticipates" shipping in August.
Owners of the original Xreal Beam, which has been poorly received due to issues with the image output quality and the cooling fan, can order Beam Pro for $150 until July 10, a $50 discount.
