RayNeo Air 2S Display Glasses Review: A Step Down from the Competition

The display glasses connect via USB-C to provide a much larger and more portable screen when you’re on the go. They’re great for playing games, watching movies, or connecting to a laptop, as well as getting work done when transporting a monitor isn’t ideal, like on a plane. I’ve reviewed a lot of display glasses, and the RayNeo Air 2S have one of the brightest and largest displays I’ve seen to date. That’s also a problem; the screen is too big for me.

The glasses retail for $400, which is $50 cheaper than the Xreal Air 2 Pros and $60 cheaper than the Viture Pros.

As someone who travels a lot and is always looking for ways to play games or watch movies in the best possible way, I love taking a pair of display glasses with me. They allow me to play my Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch on a much larger screen. I can watch movies from my phone with more immersion. The image is also sharp enough to make text readable, so I can use them with my MacBook if I want to get some work done. I love the ability to connect the glasses, set the device aside, and lie down with the display floating above me.

The RayNeo Air 2S glasses have two 1080p micro-OLED displays, one for each eye. All the computing happens in the large brim at the top. The image is directed down toward the angled lens, then forward so you can see it. That means the display doesn’t fill the entire view, just what’s in that part of it. RayNeo says the glasses are the equivalent of 201 inches viewed from 19.7 feet away (5.1m at 6m).

The project matters

This screen size is the largest I’ve seen with a pair of viewing glasses, and it actually stretches too far for my eyes. The edges are blurry and unsharp, and the corners even bend and get cut off. This makes many games that typically have UI along the edges or corners of the screen very difficult to read, or worse, cut off entirely. The hinges move so freely that I can slide the glasses back and forth and watch different parts of the screen come and go, and the corners and edges bend and straighten.

Unfortunately, no position allows every part of the image to remain sharp and completely uncropped, so I often wish I could shrink the screen so that everything was perfectly visible. RayNeo offers an accessory that helps with this problem, but I’ll talk about that below.

The glasses are rated at up to 5,000 nits, which is the highest brightness I’ve seen to date. And like the Xreal Air 2 Pros and Viture Pro glasses I recently reviewed, they also support a 120Hz refresh rate. Along the right arm, you’ll find two buttons for adjusting brightness, while the left arm has two volume buttons and one for the menu. In the menu, you can adjust the speaker volume, refresh rate, and the color temperature of the display.

These speakers are located on both arms. Unique to the Air 2S, there are two speakers on each side, one placed at the top and one at the bottom. Other glasses I’ve reviewed only have one that points down. This gives the Air 2S the highest maximum volume of any display glasses I’ve tested.

Comfort-wise, they’re in the middle of the range of models I’ve used. What’s cool about the RayNeo is that, like the Xreal, they have three degrees of freedom, so you can tilt the lens to get better viewing angles (compared to the Viture, which can only stay rigid). The back of the temples has some flexibility, but they’re not as flexible as the Xreal. For my head shape, the angle and where that curve starts are more in line with the Xreal design—the RayNeo makes my ears stick out a bit.

The Air 2Ss come with two nose pad options, one or two fewer than I’ve come to expect from other eyewear manufacturers. This limits the placement options on the nose. Unfortunately for me, while I can tilt the glasses a bit, I still wish the screen were lower. Viture glasses offer this hollow-style nose pad option, which I ended up using more often, but it wasn’t very comfortable either. Removing the nose pads from the RayNeo glasses does align my eyes better, but it almost hurts my nose.

Unlike the Xreal Air 2 Pros or the Viture glasses, there’s no way to adjust the opacity of the display. Both the Xreal and Viture glasses have a button to adjust the electrochromic film that smoothly changes the opacity of the glasses, and that’s a great feature that I miss here.

The area beyond the screen is fairly opaque and dark, meaning that these glasses are closer to sunglasses than regular glasses. You can adjust the brightness, but even with the brightness turned down, you won’t see much better through them. This means that these glasses are great for outdoor use, as they block out a lot of light, but they also don’t allow you to easily see your surroundings. So even when I wear them and look down, away from the displays, it’s still a bit difficult to see through them because everything is so dark.

This isn’t a complete problem, since I mostly use these glasses at their highest opacity. I usually try to block out everything around me so I can focus on the game or movie, and I can always just take the glasses off if I need to look at something else. Another annoying thing is that the RayNeo glasses reset to 50% brightness every time I unplug them, so I have to change the level every time I put them on.

Essential accessories

The $100 Pocket TV is the most useful add-on RayNeo offers, and the one that helps with the screen size issue. It lets you access a variety of entertainment apps via Google TV, including Disney+, Prime Video, and YouTube. This add-on gives you access to more settings on the glasses, like zooming in and out of the screen size. Unfortunately, you can only change the scale from 80% to 100%, so it doesn’t scale low enough to be perfect, but it does improve visual clarity in my peripheral vision. It’s disappointing that this feature isn’t built into the glasses themselves.

The Pocket TV supports MicroSD cards if you want to upload your own media to the device instead of streaming it. It has its own battery, so you can connect your phone or other device to charge it like a battery, which I find super handy if you’re traveling with a pair of these glasses.

The Air 2S only connects to USB-C devices, but RayNeo sells two other accessories that expand your capabilities. The JoyDock lets you mirror your Nintendo Switch without having to use the optional dock. I love Switch docks because they power the system, allowing for longer gaming sessions between charges, and even act as a USB battery for other devices, which is great for when I’m traveling.

The JoyDock can only connect one pair of glasses, while the Viture Dock can connect two. It’s disappointing that the JoyDock only works on the Switch: the Viture and Xreal docks also support HDMI devices like the Xbox or PlayStation.

For that, you’ll need to spend $70 on the Goovis HCS 2.0 HDMI to Type-C adapter. Plug the included HDMI cable into your console, then into the adapter, then into your glasses. Then, you’ll need to power the device with the included cable. That last step is a bit of a letdown, since both Xreal and Viture have similar devices that don’t require an additional power cable.

The RayNeo Air 2S looks great and is perfectly usable, but that large display may not be a comfortable enough experience for many people. I spent more time adjusting the focal point than enjoying the games, and that’s the deciding factor for me. I would have preferred a smaller screen where I could always see everything clearly. It’s also disappointing that the JoyDock and Goovis accessories lack a feature or two that I expected from the competition. So while you save a bit of money with the RayNeo, I can’t recommend it over what I’ve already tested.