It has never been easier to take your gaming with you, thanks to options like the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, or your smartphone. The downside to a portable gaming setup mostly comes down to the screen, as it can be harder to parse what you’re seeing on a seven-inch LCD when compared to the much larger TV in your room. Extended Reality (XR) glasses have been presented as a solution, but early attempts at creating wearable screens were clunky and headache-inducing to wear for long periods. Fortunately, the technology continues to improve rapidly, and Viture’s Beast XR glasses offer a plug-and-play solution that hits the sweet spot for clarity and comfort.
After trying these out for two weeks, I’m impressed with how good the Beast XR glasses are as a Swiss-army-knife option for gaming. The glasses are equipped with a dual 1920x1200p Sony Micro-OLED display, a refresh rate up to 120Hz, and up to 1,250 Nits of brightness. According to Viture, the glasses can project a 174-inch virtual screen. Those are good specs on paper, and in real life, the Beast glasses work superbly well. As someone who regularly games on a 55-inch LG OLED CX TV, I was surprised to see a crisp and vibrant image straight away. And while I didn’t have a tape measure handy, it did feel like I was sitting in front of a cinema-sized screen as I craned my neck upwards.
Fortunately, there are settings to fine-tune how big you want the display to be, and whether you want the virtual display to move with your head or prefer it anchored in place to avoid feeling queasy. Other quality-of-life features, like auto-transparency mode, perceived distance tracking, and customizable dimming, made it easy to play games in public–though I did get a few weird glances from people around me. However, at under 90 grams, the Beast XR glasses feel lightweight and are barely noticeable when worn. The package also includes several sets of nosepads to help adjust the fit, a blessing for someone like me with a pronounced nose bridge.
Viture Beast XR Glasses
$549
Viture Pro Mobile Dock
$129
The tilt of the glasses can be adjusted one notch up or down. Connecting to a console requires plugging a USB cable from the right arm into a USB-C port on your device, but the angled design of the included cable flows well behind your head and into your console, making it hardly noticeable and rarely obtrusive. The glasses feature a thick wayfarer design that looks slick, and each arm has controls to easily customize your gaming session.
The left arm houses a main menu and buttons to adjust brightness and volume. The right arm allows you to quickly set screen modes, lens tint, 3D mode, and spatial functions. A set of Harman-tuned speakers with 3DoF audio finishes off the frame, providing shockingly subtle yet punchy sound. A camera is also positioned on the front, and it’s used to track head movement during use. Viture says that it’ll eventually be used for more potential AR features in a future update for the Spacewalker app, but for now, it’s purely there to help the screen follow your head movements. This camera does not record any video, eliminating major privacy concerns and preventing intrusive behavior.
For my testing, I plugged the glasses into various machines ranging from my handheld Asus ROG Ally X and Switch 2 consoles to my laptop, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S, and iPad Pro. Here’s the catch: only my ROG Ally X, iPad Pro, and laptop worked with the included USB-C cable. Other hardware required the Viture Pro Mobile Dock to create a digital signal handshake with the glasses. The Beast XR glasses retail for $549, and the dock adds another $129.
It’s a necessary extra for those consoles but offers benefits like a built-in power bank that extends your handheld time and ports for two XR glasses, allowing others to connect to your device for multiplayer games. With that gear, I played games on all my systems, and the glasses provided a genuinely impressive picture when focused on the main center point.
Where the Beast XR glasses falter is on the periphery of your vision, as chromatic aberration appears. If you notice these things easily, it can be annoying to spot occasional fuzziness around the edges. The glasses can also become warm after extended gaming, but not to the point of concern. The warmth is generated at the top of the frame.
These are mild annoyances rather than dealbreakers. If you overlook them, the Beast glasses provide a stunningly colorful and sharp image when looking straight ahead. I tested several games, alternating between Vampire Crawlers, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch 2. On my PS5 Pro, I booted Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Death Stranding 2 for big-budget gaming. On my Xbox Series X|S, I enjoyed Destiny 2, Absolum, and Forza Horizon 6. On my ROG Ally X, I wished I’d stuck with my modded Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 instead of playing the Dead Space remake at midnight.
The running theme with all these games is that they ran superbly through the XR glasses. No lag, no crashes, just a simple “it works” experience as I played a wide variety of games. While I see myself using these high-tech specs more for handheld consoles than home hardware, I’m happy to know the option is there in case I find myself in a dodgy motel with a TV from the Stone Age.
I was surprised to discover how multi-functional the glasses are. I used them for PlayStation Remote Play cloud gaming on my tablet, and connected them to my PC for a Zoom meeting. They are not quite there yet for tasks like writing scripts or creative work requiring a sharp eye, such as color-grading videos. But they work well for watching Netflix when you don’t want to be limited by a 14-inch laptop screen. As someone lazy, lying flat on my back to enjoy Switch games or Instagram doom-scrolling on my iPad is a treat.
The Viture Beast XR glasses make a solid impression right out of the box. The Micro-OLED displays are sharp, the frame is comfortable, and the glasses easily switch between an ultrawide screen for your face and a multifunctional monitor for mundane tasks. There are some annoyances–like chromatic aberration causing fuzzy edges and having to pay extra for the dock to use the glasses on Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation consoles–but aside from those gripes, Viture’s Beast glasses come highly recommended for anyone aiming to transform their gaming setup into a high-tech and cinematic experience.
We’re entering an exciting time for this technology, as it has dramatically improved over the last few years, and it’s out of its awkward teething phase. Viture’s XR glasses prove that, offering a big step forward for wearable tech that’s comfortable, powerful, and pretty stylish to boot.
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