Rokid Station review: Full Android TV on your face, supercharged Rokid Max

The Rokid Station also allows smartphones without video out support, previously unable to connect with the Rokid Max, to now cast videos to the glasses wirelessly.

Design and build quality

The design of the Rokid Station is surprisingly outstanding – it feels dense and premium, and looks like a futuristic remote control. Which makes perfect sense, as it does connect with your AR glasses, after all. If you think about it, this is pretty futuristic, even in today's advanced tech times.

The device is reasonably light, made of plastic, feeling just a bit heavier than an average smartphone, but not by too much. It has rounded corners that make it look thinner than it really is. But even so, it is surprisingly thin for something with a 5000 mAh battery inside – just slightly thicker than my iPhone 12 mini with a case, so it's more than pocketable for sure.

On the front, we have a circular directional pad at the top, with a button in the middle of it, for selecting things in the Android TV operating system.

Below the d-pad is a mic, but interestingly – it's not activated, Rokid told us, so you'll want to use an Android TV remote if you wish to speak to Google Assistant, or to use your voice for writing in text fields. Obviously you can also write with the d-pad, which is surprisingly quick and easy to do, so no complaints there.

Below the d-pad we additionally get four shortcut buttons, and an LED light.

The left side of the Rokid Station sports volume keys, while on the right is a power key, plus an LED strip that serves as a battery-slash-charging indicator.

On the bottom of the Rokid Station we get both a mini-HDMI port, which you'll use to connect it with your Rokid Max or Rokid Air glasses, and a USB Type-C port, for charging. Rokid thoughtfully included a cable for the former, because you will definitely need it.

The AR Android TV experience

Upon booting up the Rokid Station we're immediately greeted by a familiar Android TV interface, but, of course, it's transparent, and fixed right in front of your eyes. The glasses I use with the Rokid Station are the Rokid Max, but as far as we know, the Rokid Air will work also.

Now that your Rokid AR glasses are connected to the Rokid Station – you can be completely independent of smartphones or any other smart devices. Your once simple AR glasses are now full-blown smart glasses, with a full Android operating system. And pretty much all of the apps you may want are available to you to download.

YouTube, Spotify, movie streaming apps – you can download them like you would as if this was a smartphone or a normal Android TV, and enjoy all of your entertainment on the go, in an extremely portable package of just a pair of AR glasses and the Rokid Station.

Chromecast is built into the Rokid Station also, so you can cast videos from your smartphone or other smart devices to it, if you find that easier.

Unfortunately that's a bit limiting, as you can't really cast, say, your entire PC screen, in order to do some game streaming, which would've been pretty cool. I'm hoping Rokid introduces an easy way to do that. However, you can still use the Rokid Station + Rokid Max combo for cloud gaming, if that's what you're into. Or you can straight up play Android TV games directly on the device.

At this point, after having used the device for a while, it's worth pointing out that the Android TV experience is quite snappy on the Rokid Station, and not as laggy as you may have experienced on regular, midrange or budget television sets, which is obviously great.

But like the Xreal Beam we reviewed recently, it is getting quite warm to the touch. Granted, we're in a pretty hot summer right now, so it's probably unreasonable to expect anything less. Especially considering the Rokid Station does not have a built-in fan, unlike the aforementioned Xreal Beam. So if fan noise would bother you, you would be happy with this.

Something else worth noting is that unlike the Xreal Beam + Xreal Air experience, we don't actually get any head tracking by default here, and because of that, you could argue that we're not experiencing "true" AR.

The Android TV interface is absolutely fixed, as if glued to the back of your glasses' lenses. So you can't turn your head up and expect it to realistically move down, as if it's positioned in the real world, or anything like that.

Now, personally, I'm fully okay with this, especially if no head tracking equals longer battery life, but at least having an easy way to resize and reposition where exactly the picture is fixed would've been welcome.

In contrast, Rokid's competitor Xreal offers us several options for positioning the screen around, and changing its behavior, with the press of a single button, plus actual head tracking is on by default too. Meanwhile here all we get is a simple fixed view, and the main reason I'm not okay with that is – the picture feels a bit too low for me, and I would've liked the option to move it up a bit. Maybe resize it too, in case I don't want it obstructing my entire view of the real world.

On a more positive note, I feel inclined to repeat what I said about the Rokid Max glasses in their own review – they really offer some spectacular image quality – super bright, vivid colors… Watching anything feels great, and the speakers are not too shabby either. Check out our full Rokid Max review for the details, but yeah, every time I use them to watch high-definition content, I'm impressed.

So, pairing this full Android TV device – the Rokid Station – with your already superb Rokid Max glasses, is indeed a great combo for watching movies on the go, privately, or in my case – working out while watching YouTube videos.

Battery life and charging

Charging the Rokid Station's 5000 mAh battery happens via a USB Type-C port on the bottom. You can use your smartphone's charger, because there isn't one included in the package, but we do get a cable.

According to Rokid, you can expect about 5 hours of using the Rokid Station with your Rokid Max, on a single charge, which is really good battery life. Should be enough to watch two movies plus an episode of your favorite show, on a weekend trip or something.

In our experience, we definitely get a reasonable day's worth of using this ultra portable entertainment suite on a single battery charge, whether we're talking about a lengthy gym session, or just watching some YouTube videos and podcasts on a car ride for a couple of hours.

A bonus feature is that the Rokid Station can even serve as a battery bank for your phone, in cases where you may find yourself desperately needing to recharge with a few percent, so that's good to have as a failsafe option.

Rokid Station technical specs

Verdict

For its pre-order price of $129, it's definitely worth picking up the Rokid Station if you already own the Rokid Max, and taking your experience to the next level.

You can completely break away from your smartphone and its distracting notifications, instead turning this one combo into your ultra-portable and focused entertainment suite, if that's something you're after. If you're the right person for what this device offers – a full Android TV in your pocket, projected in front of your eyeballs – then the Rokid Station + Rokid Max are pretty hard to beat.