RayNeo Air 3s review: not quite XR, but hear me out

Inside each box of RayNeo Air 3s, you’ll find:

• A pair of impressively lightweight RayNeo Air 3s glasses
• A prescription-lens frame, which you can bring to a specialist to get the required lenses made
• A USB-C cable, conveniently bent on one end, so you can use it with all sorts of smart tech
• A selection of nose pads, some even mint-scented
• A stylish carrying case, which fits the glasses and their cable perfectly
• A branded cleaning cloth: a sure way to signal a premium product
• A user manual, but don’t get frightened by its thickness – using these is simple as can be

That being said, there exist a few branded accessories, which don’t come with the package, but you should take into account:

• PocketTV – think of this one like a portable Chromecast, adding a proprietary “smart” component to the Air 3s
• JoyDock – this is essentially a USB/HDMI hub, which allows you to use the Air 3s with devices like the Nintendo Switch and its upcoming sequel
• HDMI-C – this is a USB-C to HDMI converted, which may come in handy, depending on the generation of hardware you’ve got on hand

The odd thing about the items above is that you can find bundles of the Air 3s with each dedicated accessory on sale, but there isn’t one on sale, combining all of them, so keep that in mind if you decide to go shopping after this review.

By the way, this is typically the part where I’d list off all the device’s specs, but since these aren’t smart-glasses in the conventional sense, there isn’t anything specific to list out.

Design, build quality, controls

I mean, of course they don’t look like normal glasses. The Meta AI Glasses almost do, but those aren’t in the same playing field as the Air 3s. It is downright impressive that RayNeo managed to fit all of this tech in a product, weighing in at about 80gr.

That is still obviously still more than a usual pair of specs, so after long sessions, you are bound to feel the weight. But let me tell you: it’s not comparable in any way to the experience of wearing a Vision Pro or Quest 3.

  

The Air 3s do look sleek and modern, however. They don’t feel as rigid on touch, but that is as per design: the frames of these specs can flex both horizontally and vertically in order to ensure you get a better view. While that is absolutely appreciated, the lack of any sort of Inter Pupillary Distance (IPD) settings is still sorely missed.

In case you are new to the world of XR, let me put it like this: IPD settings allow you to fine tune your image, so that what you are seeing on these interactive specs is visible in a way, which matches the distance between your eyes. That ensures you’re seeing things as crystal-clear as possible, while removing the dangers of eye strain and headaches.

And let me tell you, I sure wasn’t made to fit this model. I got a headache very soon after starting my testing. After one of my longer sessions, one of my eyes was noticeably larger and irritated, which was concerning. For the record: I don’t suffer from any eye-conditions. Those specs on my profile pic are just to make me feel more tech-y – they contain high-end protective lenses, that’s about it.

While the specs themselves are plug-and-play, there are some buttons along the frames, which you can use to fine-tune your experience:

• A volume rocker, just like on a phone
• Another similar button, this time for adjusting screen brightness
• A Menu button, which allows you to:
  ○ Cycle through the available image modes: Standard, Game and Movie, which offer different color gamuts and saturation levels. There’s also a special Eye Care mode, which I greatly appreciated.
  ○ To enable and disable Whisper mode: a quiet mode, perfect for when you’ve got people around
  ○ Toggling the displays to either 90hz or 120hz, but we all know that there is truly just a single right answer here (it’s the latter)

One last detail: I got a very bad allergic reaction to the mint-scented nose tips, which come with the RayNeo Air 3s. Could it have been caused by something else? Yes, but I’ve no reason to believe so, and my doctor is pretty certain that it was the nose tips. Naturally, allergies are extremely subjective. I’m certain that RayNeo did its best to use safe technology in order to elevate the user experience. Still: if you have a history, you should keep this in mind.

 

Screen quality and viewing experience

The RayNeo Air 3s are essentially spectacles with built-in screens, which allow for a fantastic viewing experience and even some neat 3D effects. That being said, let’s not mistake any of this for AR: it’s all flat images, some of them just might pop-out or in – just like on the 3D films at your local cinema. While this is serviceable, I don’t think it’s the focus of the product.

In my opinion, the core pillars of the Air 3s are:

• Viewing experience
• Portability
• Convenience

It takes mere seconds to whip out and equip the glasses, and then connect them to a smartphone, Steam Deck or even a PC. They can act as a standalone monitor, or duplicate your existing desktop, depending on preference.

With the model’s front panel being semi-transparent, you get to view part of the real world too. Now, this can be a blessing or a curse, depending on personal preference and how dark your given environment is. Personally, I found the screen of the specs pleasantly viewable both in darkness and in direct sunlight.

These specs come with a lot of superlatives attached, but instead of listing them off, I’ll tell you what they are meant to convey:

• Great contrast
• Real-world colors
• Impressive levels of brightness

All of the above, I found to be mostly true. The only thing I’d argue against is the claim that the picture, which the Air 3s produce, is equivalent to a 201” TV. It does not feel like that at all: it very much feels like you’ve got a floating screen close to your face, as there is no real spatial effect taking place.

The Micro-OLED screens on the Air 3s are bright, vivid, saturated and look best when viewing content in motion. I tried to write parts of this review while wearing the unit, but elements like text are a nightmare to deal with. See, crispy levels of focus are present in only about 50% of the centermost part of the screen. Blurry edges practically come with all of the close-to-your-eyes-screens-powered technology out there, but they feel really noticeable on the Air 3s, on static content in particular. If anything, I was hoping for a bigger leap in this regard.

When viewing high-quality and high-refresh rate content like video games or movies, however, the RayNeo Air 3s were a blast to use. If not for a few other flaws, I’d even label the RayNeo Air 3s as “immersive”. But the lack of 3 degrees of freedom (3DoF) really ruins that for me.

3DoF is basically a feature, which allows a piece of tech to sort of tell where it is, relevant to the real world. Or, in simpler terms: the screen remains straight when you tilt your head and in-place when you move around. I fully realize that cramming 3DoF in a device as lite as this would be near impossible, but at the same time, I can’t lie about what my experience was like: I would start doing something with the glasses, ease into it, get to the edge of immersion, and then I’d jerk my head slightly, making the entire screen bounce along, making my brain go “EARTHQUAKE! HIDE!”.

For some: this may be a deal-breaker. For others: not as much. But one thing is for certain: you can’t really beat the ability of relaxing completely, while not having to worry about things like posture versus screen visibility. It’s just a next-level type of convenience that you need to experience in order to appreciate. From there on out: it’s either going to be your vibe or not.

The device is marketed as being capable of playing Spatial Video shot on iPhone — you know, the Apple Vision Pro’s not-really-proprietary-anymore, hyper-immersive video format. I wasn’t able to try this out, but I’ve got to be honest: I really doubt that the Air 3s can pull it off on a level close to the Vision Pro, or the Quest 3 for that matter.

Oh, headache check: yep, still there, and getting a bit worse.

The RayNeo Air 3s is marketed as the world’s “first dual opposing acoustic chamber design”. Here’s what the brand says this means:

What that translates to is “it sounds great for this small form factor”. The specs come with a pair of downfacing speakers, and sure enough: they work.

Now, here’s the thing: I’m perfectly aware that most of my peers and other Air 3s users love the audio, but with our unit: the experience was pretty dreadful. Highs were constantly peaking in that nasty way that makes your ears pop, mids were practically non-existent and some voices were barely audible.

If you are just passively listening to something like background music on a game level: sure, it gets the job done, for sure. That goes double for simpler tunes, like chiptunes. But whenever I tried to challenge this setup with real music, things just fell apart.

This could be just our unit being partially faulty, or it could be my decades of experience with general audiophile shenanigans making me in particular a bit more critical than required. For me, the soundscape certainly did not feel rich, complete or impressive.

But hey: you can always combine these with a separate set of headphones.

I expected a really good app experience this time around. After all, why shouldn’t I? This isn’t RayNeo’s first product, and at this point the company has had numerous chances to update and upgrade its app.

Despite that, however, I was severely disappointed. From security concerns to random minor glitches, I really do think that the app needs to be revisited.

Getting the app and kickstarting it is easy enough: you scan a QR code, available in the device manual, and moments later you are ready to go. You connect the Air 3s, you allow your phone to utilize them and you’re in. And for the record, it is available both on Android and iOS. 

When you open up the app’s “XR space”, however, it still is practically just a floating window. When you move your head horizontally, you scroll through what you are seeing, which is about the point where I start having questions for the QA department. Why can’t I do that via other means? Why is my only control option to use my phone as a very wobbly pointer?

Furthermore, device compatibility seems to be an issue. My OnePlus 13 overheated for the first time ever while testing the app out. Every single time I’d lock the phone, the screens would start flickering in an incredibly annoying way, for no real reason. I’m pretty sure that if I disable my always on display, that would go away, but that’s one step too much, if you ask me.

But wait — what is the app even used for anyway? Well, it acts as a micro-hub for the glasses. It allows you to utilize a few apps, games and services with "enhanced capabilities”. The services on offer are:

• YouTube
• Prime Video
• Crunchyroll
• Plex
• Pluto TV

… Which is literally all of the ones I don’t use, as I’m subbed to Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max. In short: I couldn’t really tell you if they offered any Air Neo-specific features. I did try out YouTube, but the app didn’t have any system integration. This means that it asked me to manually type out my email and password to log in. I’m on Android — why is this a thing in 2025?

Beyond that, there’s a dedicated RayNeo browser and about six games, one of which is in beta. I wanted to try all of them out, but that simply didn’t work for the following reasons:

• I was vastly annoyed by the fact that these were essentially separate apps that I had to download and install on my phone, instead of being in-app components to the home app
• Every single one of them was detected as a security risk by my operating system, and I was not allowed to install any of them

So I didn’t. Could I have? Absolutely. But, I mean, at this point, why would I? Especially after the permission request overlay came up a couple of times, only to completely freeze the RayNeo app, which made me have to restart the entire process numerous times.

At one point, the glasses just stopped reading my head movements, which meant that I could no longer navigate the home menu, so I had to restart again.

You see what I mean, right? At this point, given the amount of products compatible with RayNeo’s app, this user experience is certainly lacking. Given the screen quality of the Air 3s, especially considering the price tag, this app has vast potential. I hope that RayNeo gives it more attention in the future.

With not much else to do, I moved on to trying out the specs with other devices. For the record: my headache was still pretty strong.

Using the RayNeo Air 3s with other devices

Using the Air 3s with a laptop or PC is just as simple as using it with anything else: you plug it in, and it boots up. Now, the challenge with a Windows computer was finding a setup that can really take leverage of the glasses if you are like me and already running a multi-monitor setup.

The bigger issue, however, was that the glasses were detected as a 4K monitor, which almost made my work PC want to fly away. But I’m pretty good with my keybinds, so I managed to sort that out.

But then I wasn’t left with much to do, honestly. To me, the ideal use-case scenario would be to take these, a wireless keyboard and mouse and my Steam Deck, and just head out to write somewhere. But since viewing text on these is such a pain, this isn’t really a solid option.

YouTube, on PC, when you’re logged in to your own account and capable of running 4K video at 120Hz, is absolute bliss on the Air 3s.

I no longer have a Nintendo Switch, but I’d imagine these would work great with one. The specs worked great with the Steam Deck. During gameplay, the screens look their best and I can totally see how this would be an actually viable way to game for some people.

One odd thing about that: on some games, while on the main menu, the glasses would just stop working. I’ve got no idea why and no troubleshooting I did managed to fix this. On whoever side this is – RayNeo or Valve – I’m sure that a quick software update could patch things up.

Another issue I ran into was that parts of the screen were cut off. After tilting my head a bit, I realized that this was due to the positioning of the glasses. “Great!” I said to myself “What a fantastic opportunity to try out the different positions that these support.”

Well, after checking out all combinations: none fixed the issue. This may be a Steam Deck specific thing, but each other setting just kept eating up more of the visible screen.

 

I've always had issues with products like the RayNeo Air 3s claiming the XR moniker. XR stands for extended reality: something between VR and AR. Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology, which allows for complete immersion in an alter-reality. Augmented Reality (AR), on the other hand, aims to improve your existing reality in meaningful ways.

These glasses, however, do neither: they aren't capable of complete immersion, as this isn't a headset, and at the same time: all they offer is an overlay: something on top of your reality. Sure, that may slightly distract you from reality, but it doesn't augment it. That, on its own, may serve to augment your experience of reality, but reality itself? Not so much.

At the same time, I fully admit to the marketing challenge that exists before a product like this: if not XR, then what would you call it? I'd say it's a high-quality portable monitor alternative with basic 3D and smart functionality. And I'd rather we create some new word for this, instead of setting expectations, which simply put, cannot be fulfilled.

 

The RayNeo Air 3s are fantastic specs that can act as a portable monitor of impressive quality, compatible with a wide range of devices. The tech in these things is very impressive, especially considering the price range and weight of the product. But in a world where Meta’s AR glasses can talk to you and take pics, and the company's headsets can fully render 3D worlds… XR just doesn’t fit.

And this is where the issue lies: if I have to rate these as an XR product, I’d have to give a low rating. If I have to judge them as per my initial explainer above, I’d have to assign a higher mark.

I chose to rate the RayNeo Air 3s as per its qualities, not its shortcomings. That doesn’t come without feedback: the devs have a lot of bugs to address, and the RayNeo app needs a major overhaul, stat. But beyond that: the good outshines the bad, if you are the specific type of user that can take advantage of these. I’m not that guy, but I can’t deny the appeal.

• You should get the RayNeo Air 3s if you need an EDC-style product, which can act as a high-quality, plug-and-play monitor. That goes double if you plan to use it for media and gaming.
• You should not get the RayNeo Air 3s if things like IPD settings support and 3DoF are of high importance to you; or if you are expecting some legit AR/VR capabilities out of these things, like playing 3D games in that space.