I Wore Google's Android XR Glasses. Here's What Impressed Me Most

Smart glasses are gaining serious momentum, and Google is emerging as one of the companies driving the category forward. After introducing the Android XR platform for wearable displays in 2024, Google used this year's I/O event to make two major moves toward mainstream adoption.First, the company unveiled its first Android XR-powered smart glasses through partnerships with Samsung, Gentle Monster, and Warby Parker. These glasses combine audio, cameras, and Gemini AI in stylish frames that feel more fashion-forward than most wearable tech. They could become the strongest challengers yet to Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. However, they don't include built-in displays, which is why Google's second announcement is even more compelling.Google also officially launched the Android XR developer program and revealed plans to distribute XReal's Project Aura devices to developers.Project Aura is a standalone pair of prism-display smart glasses with a spatial computing interface, similar in concept to the XReal One Pro. Unlike the new Samsung collaborations, Aura includes immersive display technology and offers capabilities closer to devices like Samsung's Galaxy XR and Apple's Vision Pro. Those headsets are powerful, but they’re also bulky and expensive, priced at $1,799 and $3,499, respectively.Project Aura aims to deliver a lighter, more comfortable experience in a form factor that feels much closer to everyday glasses, while hopefully coming in at a far lower price point when it launches later this year. Before that broader release happens, Google plans to put the device into the hands of Android XR developers so they can begin building software for Aura and other future smart glasses in the ecosystem.I tried out the Project Aura and got a first look at Google's own developer hardware late last year. Read on for all the details of what I saw. Note that what follows was originally published on December 9, 2025, and has been updated with minor revisions. Project Aura: The Smartest Glasses Yet?Project Aura is a pair of smart display glasses that use bulkier prisms instead of a waveguide system, but offer an incredibly wide 70-degree field of view. It doesn’t fill up your entire vision with a picture (even the Galaxy XR, with its 109-degree field of view, doesn’t do that), but it still looks like a huge theater screen in front of you. On the virtue of its display alone, it’s more impressive than other prism smart glasses, and with a much wider view than my…