I used all the smart glasses RayNeo rolled out in the last two years, and I like how the brand is making this category accessible. With the X3 Pro, however, RayNeo has an ambitious goal: making smart glasses with a heads-up display. As a result, the glasses cost considerably more than the rest of the brand’s offerings, and coming in at $1,099, they’re nowhere as accessible as the Air 3S Pro or the Air 4 Pro.
Obviously, a lot of the interest in this category has to do with the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display, and RayNeo is touting several benefits: its smart glasses have binocular lenses, a 30-degree FoV (Meta does 20 degrees), go up to 6,000 nits (versus 5,000 with Meta), and they use a micro-LED optical light engine with a full-color diffractive waveguide, with Meta going with a geometric waveguide.
Rounding out the hardware, the glasses are powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform, feature a 12MP Sony IMX681 sensor that shoots photos and videos, have a 640×480 resolution with 60Hz refresh, built-in audio, and a 245mAh battery.
Coming to the software, the X3 Pro runs the custom AIOS, and it gets real-time translation alongside Google Gemini integration and turn-by-turn navigation. I demoed the X2 Pro at MWC 2025, and it was exciting to see real-time translation — that’s the kind of tech that actually makes a difference. The X3 Pro includes that feature as standard, and you also get a smattering of AI (obviously), along with a host of built-in features — a to-do list, AI recorder, and a host of other things.
These are among the most powerful AR glasses yet
RayNeo deserves credit for making the X3 Pro considerably thinner and more consumer-friendly than its predecessor; while the glasses still look a little chunky at 76g, they’re not particularly uncomfortable to wear. The styling could’ve been better, as the X3 Pro makes it quite evident that it’s a tech-focused product — Meta does a much better job in this regard.
But you get used to the weight after a while, and the best part of the X3 Pro has to be the built-in micro-LED panel. The heads-up view makes it highly convenient to parse information, and it isn’t distracting. Having used Even Realities’ G2 and other smart glasses in recent weeks, I really like what RayNeo did with the X3 Pro, and the light engine gets bright enough that it wasn’t an issue even while using the glasses outdoors.
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You get a physical power button along with a shutter button on the right side of the frame, and there’s a gesture control area on the right and left sides that makes it easy to navigate the interface. There’s a decent set of utilities bundled with the glasses, and RayNeo did a good job with the UI. It’s easy enough to pair the glasses with RayNeo’s mobile app, and you get a good rundown of all the available features.
The X3 Pro does a good job with real-time translation, and this was my biggest use case by a wide margin. Invoking Gemini is pretty straightforward as well, and you even get the ability to sideload apps as the glasses effectively run a custom Android build. Oh, and there’s a camera cutout in the middle to accommodate the 12MP lens. The photos and videos you get out of the camera is decent enough, and I’d put it in line with Meta’s glasses. On that note, the built-in audio is pretty great, and it’s fun to be able to listen to music via the glasses.
Middling battery life makes these glasses unusable
However, I didn’t do that a lot because of one factor: battery life. While RayNeo touts a five-hour battery life, that’s nowhere close to what you actually get in real-world usage. I couldn’t get the glasses to last more than 30 minutes, and you can see the battery life plummet while doing mundane tasks. Even updating the glasses drained the battery so much that I had to charge the glasses, and it makes tasks like AR navigation pointless if your destination is more than 10 minutes away.
The glasses charge over USB-C, and while they don’t take a long time to charge, there’s just no getting around the fact that these aren’t anywhere close to being ready for all-day use. There are other quibbles with network connectivity and errant crashes, but those issues got resolved with a software update — while the battery life continues to be a dealbreaker when you consider just how much the X3 Pro costs.
There’s no denying that RayNeo did a great job delivering AR glasses with a diverse feature-set, but ultimately, the poor battery life makes the glasses unusable. I’d like to see a bigger battery with the next generation, because there is a lot to like with the X3 Pro in general; RayNeo just needs to get these glasses to last a few hours at least.
