Pros & Cons
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- Bright, colorful picture
- Very wide field of view
- Built-in head-tracking features
- Ultrawide mode
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- No focus dials
- Useless camera
Viture Beast Specs
| Connection | Wired |
| Field of View | 58 |
| Glasses Features | 3DOF |
| Glasses Features | Camera |
| Glasses Features | Dimmable Lenses |
| Glasses Features | Display |
| Glasses Features | Speakers |
| Input Controls | Button |
| Integrated Display Type | Prism |
| Resolution | 1,920 by 1,200 |
| Voice Assistant Compatibility | None |
Prism display smart glasses reach a new high point with the Viture Beast, a model that pairs a wide field of view with a strikingly bright virtual display and precise spatial stability that keeps the image anchored as you move your head. While XReal’s $649 One Pro helped set the category's expectations, the Beast takes things further with a more vivid presentation and a more immersive sense of scale, making everyday use feel closer to a portable ultrawide monitor than a novelty display. At $549, the Viture Beast isn’t cheap, but it undercuts key rivals while delivering one of the most impressive head-tracked viewing experiences currently available, firmly positioning it at the top of the category and earning our Editors' Choice award.
Design: Familiar Frame, Bigger Ambition
The Beast is a pair of prism display smart glasses, meaning it uses microprojectors and chunky prism lenses to project a large, full-color image into your eyes. This type of smart glasses, also known as AR smart glasses, doesn't run apps or play media; instead, it serves as an external, private monitor for any compatible device connected to it over USB. It’s typically intended for stationary use, unlike waveguide display smart glasses, which are designed for on-the-go use.
From the outside, the Beast looks and feels just like Viture's lower-end Luma smart glasses line. It’s a chunky (but not cumbersome) set of black plastic frames shaped in the typical, rectangular-lens sunglasses design. A glossy black section on the bridge houses a tiny camera identical to the one on the $499 Luma Pro. The temples are flat and smooth, with ear hooks that narrow just slightly before ending in a flat tip on the left and a USB-C port on the right. Their undersides have speaker stilts, plus a rocker and a button in front near the hinge (I'll detail what they do in a bit). A metallic blue Viture logo sits on the left endpiece, the only splash of color on the glasses, along with the blue shortcut button at the bottom of the right temple.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The Beast's prism lenses are much larger and chunkier than the Lumas, but come with a notable omission—they don't let you manually adjust the focus to compensate for nearsightedness. As a glasses wearer, this has been one of my favorite aspects of Viture's prism display glasses, and it's a shame to see it gone. I suspect this is due to the larger prisms and wider field of view, which make it harder to implement user-adjustable focus.
The Beast comes with a hard-shell zip-up case that securely holds the glasses and USB cable. A lens insert is included, which you can take to your optometrist to have prescription lenses made. You can also buy prescription lens inserts directly from Viture, starting at $79 for clear 1.67 index lenses and up to $149 for blue-light-blocking 1.74 index lenses. Viture sent a clear insert for my prescription, and it snapped in securely, making the glasses' picture look crisp to my slightly nearsighted eyes.
Features and Controls: Head Tracking, Side Views, and Serious Customization Options
With two rockers and two buttons on each temple, the Beast is loaded with controls for a pair of prism smart glasses. On the right temple, the rocker adjusts the transparency of the exterior lenses from nearly clear to nearly opaque. The button switches between head-tracking modes: 0DOF locks the picture in place in front of your eyes, Anchor keeps the picture stationary at a set location, and Smooth Follow makes the picture follow your head movement, possibly reducing motion sickness if 0DOF makes you nauseous (the latter feature is something the $299 RayNeo Air 4 Pro lacks). In Anchor mode, long-pressing the right button resets the picture's position. On the left temple, the rocker adjusts both volume and brightness, with the button switching between the two.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)Long-pressing the left button brings up the glasses' menu system, a fairly extensive interface for changing how the glasses behave. The menu has Spatial, Display, Audio, Settings, and About tabs. Spatial lets you set the simulated picture size and its distance from your eyes, toggle ultrawide and 3D modes, and enable a Side View that shrinks the video to sit on the left or right of your field of view so you can see clearly ahead. Display lets you switch between 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rates and five color profiles, and adjust brightness and lens transparency. Audio controls come courtesy of a volume slider, which you can adjust using the left rocker.
The Settings tab is particularly interesting because it lets you map functions to the L1 and R1 controls, which are long-presses on the rockers. You can set either control to toggle full transparency, ultrawide mode, left- or right-side modes, or 3D when viewing side-by-side (SBS) 3D video. The Settings tab also enables and disables auto-transparency, which adjusts the lenses based on how much light the glasses detect, and auto-shutdown, which fully turns off the glasses when they're plugged in but aren't receiving an active signal, to help save the connected device's battery life. Finally, the About tab has a tutorial that walks you through the glasses' controls and shows you device information, such as the firmware version.
Overall, the Beast's menu system is much more complicated than the interfaces of the different Luma glasses. That's because the Beast is much more complex, with many more features. Built-in head tracking, an ultrawide picture mode, and side views are all new to Viture, though I have seen them before. It’s the same set of tools the XReal One Pro and 1S have. They're very useful features, and I'm thrilled to see them on more Prism smart glasses. Viture offers some of those features in its Luma and earlier smart glasses, but they require using Viture's resource-hungry SpaceWalker app for Android, iOS, Mac, or Windows.
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Compatibility: Universal USB-C Support, Plus a Dock for Nintendo Switch Use
Speaking of connected devices, the Beast is compatible with all Luma models and, by extension, with basically all other prism smart glasses. It accepts a signal via a wired connection from any device that can output video over DisplayPort or USB-C. That includes almost all laptops, most Android phones and tablets, and many iPhone or iPad models.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The Beast doesn't work directly with Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 systems, but Viture offers the $129 Pro Mobile Dock so you can play your Switch on any Viture smart glasses. It's a black slab, a little smaller than a Switch tablet, with a 13,000 mAh battery to keep your Switch charged and the glasses powered. It also has an HDMI port for connecting other game consoles or devices.
Display: Record-Bright, Wide, and Surprisingly Immersive
The Beast’s display has a 1,920-by-1,200 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, a peak brightness of 1,250 nits, and a 58-degree field of view. That’s record-breaking on two out of four counts, with a picture that's both brighter than the VIture Luma Pro (1,000 nits, 52 degrees) and slightly bigger than the XReal One Pro (700 nits, 57 degrees).
The refresh rate and resolution are close to standard for these types of smart glasses. The vertical resolution is higher than the One Pro's, but the same as the Luma and Luma Pro's. Although those extra 120 vertical pixels could theoretically provide a bit more taskbar and menu bar space when connected to a computer, the Beast only appeared as a 1080p display on the two PCs I tested it with. This isn't a big problem; the availability of ultrawide mode is more important than a little more vertical space. Besides, almost all the media you'd watch in 16:9 is cropped to 1080p.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The Beast's top-tier width and brightness set it apart from rival glasses. The single extra degree in its field of view means it doesn't look noticeably bigger than the One Pro, but with almost double the light output, it shows better contrast and appears much more vivid. I enjoyed watching the Fallout series on the Beast, as the wasteland looked bright and the vault-dweller outfits popped with color. The huge screen was a major advantage, elevating the viewing experience above that of the Luma and Luma Pro. In terms of productivity, I had no trouble writing and editing using the glasses in ultrawide mode. It's simply a great picture.
That said, I encountered one issue in testing. The picture's far-right edge showed a tiny, pixel-wide column of fuzzy light running the height of the display. It only stood out at maximum brightness with the lenses dimmed; dialing back the brightness just one notch made it difficult to notice. Fortunately, updating to the latest firmware erased that line, so it was a known issue that Viture has already fixed.
Head tracking also worked great after I updated the firmware. The Anchor and Smooth Follow views tracked my head accurately in most cases, and resetting the Anchor with a long press of the right button reliably popped the screen right in front of my eyes. The Anchor view drifted during my initial tests, making the picture turn and float relative to where I sat. This became much less common after the firmware update, though I experienced the same low-level drift I’ve become accustomed to on the XReal One Pro.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)This is the second time I've tested Viture glasses with an integrated camera, and the feature is essentially useless. Virtue says the Beast's camera is used for spatial capture and 6DOF motion tracking when using the SpaceWalker app, but I didn't notice any change in the glasses' head-tracking tech with the camera covered or uncovered. Sadly, the Beast doesn't come with a sheet of handy, precut privacy stickers like the Luma Pro. However, you can cover them with a bit of black tape if you want.
Sound: Clear Audio That Gets the Job Done
The Beast's Harman-tuned speakers sound as good as any smart glasses' speakers can. Dialogue, music, and sounds of action all come through clearly, though with little bass because of the air gap between the speakers and my ears. It can also get reasonably loud, letting you hear what you're watching over modest room noise. Don't expect it to drown out a train, though, and keep in mind that sound leakage means anyone near you will be able to hear what's coming through your glasses.
Final Thoughts
Viture Beast
The Viture Beast raises the bar for prism display smart glasses with a brighter, wider, and more stable head-tracked virtual screen that feels like a portable ultrawide monitor, delivering top-tier immersion.