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Xreal has made a name for itself with some surprisingly nice-looking augmented reality glasses<\/a>, which put a display in front of your eyes<\/a> so you can do things like watch TV or play games on a giant screen projected just for you. But unlike, say, Apple\u2019s Vision Pro<\/a> or Meta\u2019s Quest 3<\/a>, Xreal has no built-in software or content. It\u2019s just a screen in your glasses. This is good in that you can plug in lots of other devices, but it does restrict the sort of things those glasses can do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The new Beam Pro is Xreal\u2019s latest attempt to bridge that gap. It\u2019s a handheld device with the rough dimensions of a smartphone, but Xreal thinks of it as more of a companion to your glasses. It runs a customized version of Android 14 \u2014 Xreal calls it NebulaOS \u2014\u00a0and should be able to load most apps onto your face screen. And on the back, there\u2019s a dual-lens camera you can use to take spatial and 3D videos for viewing in your glasses. (Or your Vision Pro; Xreal says the Beam Pro\u2019s footage will work in your Apple headset, too.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The specs here are pure smartphone: the Beam Pro has a 6.5-inch, 2400 x 1800 screen, runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor<\/a> (though it\u2019s not clear which one), and has either 6GB or 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The cheapest model costs $199, though you probably won\u2019t want one unless you\u2019re also plunking down a few hundred bucks for a pair of Xreal glasses. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are a couple of obvious tells that this is no ordinary Android phone, though. First are the dual 50-megapixel cameras, the likes of which we haven\u2019t seen on smartphones much in recent years. The Beam Pro also has two USB-C ports, so you can charge the device and connect it to your glasses simultaneously. The NebulaOS tweaks to Android are all about AR, too; when you have your glasses plugged in, you can use the Beam\u2019s screen as a touchpad, and the device is also designed to have two apps open side by side in your field of view. When you first plug in the glasses, it\u2019ll pop up a homescreen of your apps, which you can open and control using the Beam Pro as a remote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Beam Pro looks like a big upgrade on the Beam, which was essentially just a remote control for your Xreal glasses. The Beam definitely solved a problem<\/a> for Xreal owners, but it had some issues: a bunch of reviewers and users found it was fiddly<\/a> and unreliable<\/a>, and Xreal had a hard time explaining to users why it even existed in the first place<\/a>. The screen should make the Pro much easier to use, and the camera makes it more than just a lesser smartphone replacement. You can, of course, still plug in your Steam Deck or smartphone and use Xreal\u2019s glasses that way, but this feels like a more integrated approach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Xreal\u2019s approach is much less<\/em> integrated than what we\u2019re seeing from Apple and Meta, both of which are determined to put a whole computer on your face. But there\u2019s something clever about Xreal\u2019s way: it\u2019s using a totally mature device category to do all the hard work \u2014 and doing as little on your face as possible. At least for now, it feels like a smart strategy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n