XREAL says its Android XR glasses only work wired, teases ‘largest screen,’ 2026 launch

Ben Schoon | Jun 10 2025 - 12:15 pm PT

XREAL’s first pair of Android XR glasses, “Project Aura,” were announced alongside Google I/O last month, and some new details are now coming out about the display and that you’ll need a wired “puck” to power the experience.

“Project Aura” is the second confirmed product to be running Google’s Android XR. The glasses, much like XREAL’s other products, are not necessarily for all-day wear. Rather, they essentially act as a very compact VR/XR headset, especially when compared to the likes of something like Meta Quest or Samsung’s upcoming “Project Moohan” headset.

XREAL is teasing some big advancements on the hardware side for this release, too. The company has updated its website with some more details about “Project Aura,” as well as offering more information at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) as captured by Gizmodo.

“Project Aura” will feature a 70-degree field-of-view, making it the “largest screen” the company has made to date. A new “flat prism lens” enables this wider field-of-view despite being much smaller than the existing lenses. “Aura” will also include an X1S chipset alongside its Snapdragon chip, with X1S being a modified version of the chipset found in XREAL One and XREAL One Pro.

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That processing power won’t be found in the glasses themselves, though.

At AWE, XREAL confirmed that “Project Aura” will require a tethered “puck-like” device to house all of the components that power Android XR. A wire built into the glasses will connect to that device which sits in your pocket and disconnects for easier storage. Other XREAL products work similarly, but usually to connect to other types of devices. Both Samsung’s “Project Moohan” and Apple’s Vision Pro also require being connected to an external battery, so it’s certainly not outlandish for XREAL to offload the processing power and battery to an external device in order to keep the glasses themselves compact. XREAL has yet to show what this external “puck” will look like. Your smartphone also won’t be able to act as this external computing device.

XREAL also confirmed that “Project Aura” will have forward-facing sensors for hand tracking.

As for the release window, XREAL confirmed through its website (as well as a post that went under the radar last month) that “Project Aura” won’t be coming to market until 2026, meaning this second Android XR headset is still at least six months away from launch.