Every Pair of AR Glasses From Google Glass to 2026 — And What Changed

2026年8月29日

I wrote up the history of VR headsets a while back, and there is one more field I want to follow: AR glasses.

If VR is about immersing you in another world, AR is about layering digital information onto this one. When Google Glass appeared in 2013, plenty of people expected a future where you simply put on a pair of glasses and information appeared in front of you.

More than a decade later, glasses you could actually wear as glasses were still not arriving. Too expensive, too heavy, too strange-looking — those walls held for a long time. As of 2026 they are finally starting to come down. Display glasses like the Xreal Air can be had for roughly $350–500, and AI-equipped sunglasses like the Ray-Ban Meta have arrived.

The conclusion: as of 2026, around $350 buys a pair of AR glasses you can genuinely use. This article lays out the main AR glasses from 2013 to 2026 as a timeline.
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An AR glasses timeline (2013–2026)

First, the main products in order. Prices are launch reference prices in dollars.

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Looking down the timeline, two currents appear. One is “capable but expensive and heavy", aimed at enterprises and developers (HoloLens, Magic Leap, Vision Pro). The other is “strip the features, get it cheap and light", aimed at consumers (Xreal, Rokid, Ray-Ban Meta). From around 2022 the second has grown fast.

Sorting them: four types

Lumping everything called “AR glasses" together only causes confusion. By technical approach they fall into four broad types.

Optical see-through

You see the real world directly, with holograms (3D objects) floating on top. This is closest to the ideal of AR, but for now the field of view is narrow (52 degrees on HoloLens 2) and holograms are hard to see in bright surroundings.

Meta reaching 70 degrees with the Orion prototype was a real step forward, at about 98g — a sixth of a HoloLens. As of April 2026 it is still not on general sale.

Video see-through

Cameras on the outside feed displays on the inside, with CG layered on top. The MR modes of the Vision Pro and Quest 3 work this way. Compared with optical see-through, CG sits more naturally against reality, and occlusion (CG hiding behind real objects) comes out convincingly.

The catch is that you are looking at the world through cameras, not directly. And weight remains a problem: the Vision Pro is about 600–650g, the Quest 3 about 515g.

Display glasses

Since 2022 this has been the most widespread form. They look like sunglasses, with a Micro-OLED virtual screen floating in front of you. One cable connects them to a phone, a PC or a Switch.

They cannot lay CG onto the space around you the way “real AR" does, but having the equivalent of a 130-inch screen wherever you are is genuinely useful. More and more people use them for video on planes and trains.

Smart glasses

Keep the display to a minimum (or drop it), and put in a camera and an AI assistant. The Ray-Ban Meta is the standard-bearer. It is closer to “sunglasses with AI" than to AR glasses, but it looks more like ordinary eyewear than anything else here. At about 49g it is essentially a pair of sunglasses.

You can ask Meta AI what you are looking at, and it will translate for you. Unglamorous — but this may be the closest thing to everyday AR available in 2026.

Generations of AR glasses

Dividing the history into generations makes the progress, and the problems, easier to see.

Getting from the first generation to the third took about ten years. The step from third to fourth took one or two. The impression is that progress in AI is accelerating progress in AR glasses.

Experience versus price

Here I plot the main AR and MR devices on two axes: price, and an AR experience score.

How the score is worked out: field of view (3 points), comfort and weight (3 points), capability and spatial awareness (4 points), for 10 in total. I assigned these myself from published specifications and reviews. Treat them as a rough guide.

Scatter plot data

Product,Price ($),AR experience score (out of 10)
Google Glass (2013),1500,2.0
HoloLens 1 (2016),3000,4.0
Magic Leap One (2018),2295,4.5
HoloLens 2 (2019),3500,6.0
Nreal Light (2019),499,4.0
Google Glass EE2 (2019),999,2.5
Xreal Air (2022),379,5.5
Rokid Max (2023),439,5.0
Xreal Air 2 Pro (2023),449,6.5
Meta Quest 3 MR (2023),499,7.0
Xreal One (2024),499,7.0
Apple Vision Pro (2024),3499,9.0
Meta Orion (2024, prototype),10000,8.5
Ray-Ban Meta (2025),379,5.0

How to read it: price runs along the horizontal axis, the experience score up the vertical. The closer to the top left, the cheaper the good experience. The Xreal line and the Meta Quest 3 have improved value sharply since 2022. The Vision Pro scores highly but sits far out at $3,499, which makes plain that it is for people not counting the cost.

What stands out is the cluster of products scoring 5.0–7.0 in the $300–500 band. Being able to choose a genuinely usable pair of AR glasses for a few hundred dollars is a change that only arrived around 2022.

How they differ from VR headsets

“What is the difference between a VR headset and AR glasses?" comes up often. In 2026 the boundary is blurred, but here are the basics.

The point is not that one is better. VR is strong on immersion, AR on blending with reality. MR devices that do both through colour passthrough, like the Quest 3 and Vision Pro, are increasing — but the weight problem remains.

For myself, in 2026 the practical split is: a VR headset for VRChat and games at home, AR glasses for watching video or using an AI assistant while out.

Recommendations as of April 2026

By use case. Prices are references as of April 2026.

Where this goes next (2026–2028)

Finally, the next two or three years.

Shapes approaching ordinary glasses

Meta’s Orion prototype reached 70 degrees at about 98g. If that reaches production, AR glasses in the 50–60g range that look close to normal eyewear could appear in 2027–2028.

Rumours continue that Google and Samsung are jointly building an Android-based XR platform. Combined with Qualcomm’s next XR chips, the foundation for light, capable AR glasses would be in place.

AI integration accelerating

What the Ray-Ban Meta demonstrated is that AI can be enough on its own, without an AR display. Show the camera something and ask what it is; have a foreign sign translated as you look at it; get directions read out. Experiences like these depend less on display resolution than on how capable the AI model is.

By 2026, multimodal models are genuinely practical. Put one inside a pair of glasses and “a life where you never take out your phone" starts to look plausible.

The VR/AR boundary dissolving into MR

As the Quest 3 and Vision Pro already show, the split between VR-only and AR-only devices is fading. The industry’s broad direction is convergence on MR devices that switch smoothly between full immersion and overlaid reality.

The obstacle is weight. VR-grade immersion needs a wide field of view and high-resolution displays, and that means mass. Getting down to AR-glasses weight means cutting features. How that trade is solved technically is the question of the next few years.

A closer look: what field of view means

[kimono_bar title="Field of view compared" unit="deg" color="#1976d2″ highlight="6″ note="Human effective field of view is about 30 degrees; the perceptual threshold is above 90″]
Google Glass (2013)|15
HoloLens 1 (2016)|30
Magic Leap One (2018)|50
HoloLens 2 (2019)|52
Xreal Air 2 Pro (2023)|46
Meta Orion (2024)|70
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[kimono_heatmap title="The four types compared" note="As of April 2026″]
Type|Field of view|Weight|Image quality|Spatial AR|Price
Optical see-through|30-70 deg|98-579g|Good|Yes, spatial|Expensive
Video see-through|90-120 deg|515-650g|Excellent|Yes, spatial|$499-3499
Display glasses|around 46 deg|75-84g|Good|No, screen only|$379-499
Smart glasses|no display|49g|-|No|$299-379
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In summary

From Google Glass in 2013 to now, AR glasses have thirteen years behind them.

• 1st generation (2013–2016): experimental. Google Glass and HoloLens 1 showed the future but were not things ordinary people could use
• 2nd generation (2017–2020): matured for enterprise. HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap reached factories and hospitals, but $2,000-plus was a wall
• 3rd generation (2021–2023): display glasses spread. The Xreal Air put a “screen in sunglasses" at $379 and reached consumers for the first time
• 4th generation (2024–2026): AI integration and spatial computing. The Vision Pro and Ray-Ban Meta marked out the two poles — maximum capability, and everyday wear

As the scatter shows, several products score 5.0–7.0 in the $300–500 band. The era of “a few hundred dollars buys usable AR glasses" only began two or three years ago.

My own sense is that the day AR glasses feel like simply swapping one pair of glasses for another is close. The immersion of a VR headset is not there yet — but as a way of using digital information as an extension of the real world, AR slots into daily life more easily.

It is an odd thing for a blog that has covered so much VR to say, but over the next few years AR may have the greater effect on everyday life.