XREAL’s Android XR glasses one-up Apple’s wired battery with a controller, more [Video]

Ben Schoon | May 20 2026 - 10:40 am PT

Google says the first Android XR display glasses aren’t coming until 2027, which makes me all the more excited to check out XREAL’s upcoming Project Aura hardware and, at I/O, we’re getting more details about those glasses, including how they one-up Apple’s Vision Pro by turning the wired battery into the brains of the experience, and a controller too.

As we covered earlier this week, XREAL Project Aura is on display over at Google I/O 2026, and the first demos are revealing more about the hardware for these Android XR glasses. Of course, like other XREAL glasses, these don’t fit the “normal” definition of smart glasses, instead acting more like a headset that also happens to have the ability to see through the contents of the display – “passthrough,” “see-through,” whatever you want to call it, it’s a better version of what headsets like Galaxy XR, Meta Quest, and Apple Vision Pro accomplish with cameras.

That’s one advantage of XREAL’s design, but another is the form factor. Like other XREAL glasses, the hardware here looks remarkably compact because, unlike VR headsets, all of the brains and battery aren’t inside of the glasses.

Instead, as it turns out, they’re found inside of a wired puck. That contains a battery, a Snapdragon chipset, and everything else needed to power the Android XR experience. XREAL had previously confirmed this would be a wired experience, but this is the first time we’ve seen the puck itself.

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Apple’s Vision Pro also has a wired puck attached to it, as pictured above, but it acts solely as a battery. XREAL’s offering one-ups that by acting not only as a power source and the brains of the experience, but also as a usable touch-sensitive controller for Android XR, as Google’s Dieter Bohn showed in a video demo. You can use that controller instead of the typical hand controls, which also work with Aura’s on-board cameras. The folks over at Android Central point out that Aura has three cameras – two used for gesture controls, and one that just acts as a regular camera. There are also buttons on the actual glasses for volume, Gemini (or the homescreen), and the electrochromic dimming that adjusts the level of passthrough you’re seeing.

The puck also has DisplayPort (over USB-C), allowing you to use external devices on Aura’s display.

XREAL has confirmed that Project Aura is launching before the end of 2026, with select Android developers able to apply to get early access to the hardware.