Oppo Air Glass 3 hands-on: One step closer

The Oppo Air Glass 3 prototype was just announced at MWC 2024 and… well, it's not getting a release since it's still a work in progress.

We did, however, get a short hands-on time and the ability to appreciate how far Oppo has come with this technology.

Design and screens

These are probably among the lightest XR glasses we've tested. The temples do look thick, but “fashion statement” thick, not “we needed to put a battery in it” thick.

They sit on the head comfortably, and we can probably have them on for hours at a time.

The glasses have tiny displays right in the center of your vision. Both are in color and are being fed images from 1,000-nit projectors. The testing area was semi dark, so we can't say how they look under the sun. However, when looking through them and into a light source, data on the displays was still readable.

The glasses have a refractive index of 1.7 – very close to normal glass, which is at 1.5. This is important, because high refractiveness causes rainbow effects. Definitely something you don't want. Oppo said that there are no rainbows “in most cases” – we saw none in the current environment

Software experience

So, right now, the prototype can play music, show you pictures in color, has a weather widget, and can provide calling functionality via Bluetooth.

You swipe through the widgets via a horizontal touch pad on the temple frames. Apparently, there should also be vertical swipe input – for volume or for scrolling through images. The UI cues were there, but vertical swipes do not work on the current prototype we got to test.

The Oppo Air glasses should also work with Oppo's own AndesGPT on board – an interactive assistant that should help you through your day-to-day with just a voice prompt.

AndesGPT is currently not available outside of China, due to regulations. But Oppo is working to enable its smart AI assistant features and is partnering with different companies to do so – including Microsoft.

But for this hands-on – we didn't get to try it.

Sound quality

The audio from the Oppo Air Glass 3 comes from speakers in the temple rims. With "reverse sound field technology", which we couldn't get a more accurate description of, it's supposed to focus sound into your ear canals and keep it private, with others unable to hear your conversations and multimedia.

Expectations