The RayNeo Air 3s is one of our favorite pairs of XR smart glasses thanks to its wide color range and reasonable $269 price. For just $30 more, the Air 3s Pro outshines it with a display that’s twice as bright and just as colorful. It has very few frills, but at $299, it’s still much less expensive than most other video-focused models. If you’re nearsighted, the Viture Luma Pro is slightly brighter and has a wider field of view, dimmable lenses, and focus dials, so you don’t need to purchase a prescription lens insert, but it costs a lot more at $499. When it comes to budget-friendly smart glasses, the RayNeo Air 3s offers tons of bang for the buck, making it our Editors' Choice winner.

Design: Similar to Sunglasses

The Air 3s Pro is physically identical to the Air 3s, but in all black instead of with silver temples. It has the same flat front cover plate, shaped to give it a passing resemblance to ordinary sunglasses. The projector-prism assemblies of the display modules sit behind the plate, flanking the adjustable rubber nosepads on wire arms. Two sets of nosepads are included with arms of different lengths. The front plate is smoke-tinted but transparent, so you can see through it while using the glasses. There's also a separate snap-on opaque shield, an optional accessory for the Air 3s, if the transparency is distracting. It isn’t as convenient as the push-button lens dimming of the Rokid Max 2 or the Viture Luma Pro, but it blocks out all light while the other, electronically dimmed glasses can still let some through at their darkest settings.

The temples are slightly thick but not cumbersome, and the hinges can be clicked to one of three vertical angles to best align the displays with your eyes. The right temple holds a brightness rocker on the bottom edge near the hinge and a USB-C port on the tip of the earhook. The left temple features a volume rocker and a menu button for adjusting settings. Both temples also have a pair of small speaker grilles located on the top and bottom edges, just in front of where the earhooks start to curve. Weighing the same 2.6 ounces as the Air 3s, the Air 3s Pro is light and comfortable to wear.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

On-glasses controls are minimal, with most interaction limited to the brightness and volume rockers. The Air 3s Pro has a simple menu system accessible via the display, offering a few extra features. Pressing the menu button on the left temple will bring up a list of four functions you can flip through using the volume rocker. This menu lets you switch between three audio modes (Standard, Whisper, and Spatial) and five color balance modes (Standard, Professional, Movie, Game, and Eye Protection), choose from 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rates, and toggle a brightness-increasing Vision Boost feature. The Air 3s has a similar but more limited menu that lacks the Vision Boost toggle, the Spatial audio mode, and the Professional color mode. 

The menu offers more built-in options than most other smart glasses, but doesn't come close to the $649 XReal One Pro’s extensive adjustments and in-glasses features. XReal’s glasses have much more in-depth interfaces that let you adjust the simulated size and distance of the display and enable multiple screen configurations, including 32:9 ultra-wide when connected to a computer. They also support head tracking to keep the display fixed in one place as you move your head, not locked in front of your eyes at all times. Those more advanced functions are not available on the Air 3s Pro. Head-tracking sensors are built into the glasses, but they’re exclusively used for the spatial audio mode and not for display tracking.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

A gray, snap-shut case made of molded neoprene is included with the Air 3s Pro. It isn’t as secure as the hard-shell zip-up case of the Air 3s, but the material is thick and stiff enough to protect the glasses from most drops, and it won’t accidentally open as long as you make sure the snap is closed. It’s much more unassuming than most cases that come with smart glasses.

Like all XR glasses of this type, the Air 3s Pro works with any device that can output DisplayPort video over USB-C. This includes nearly all PCs and most smartphones and tablets with USB-C ports, including the last two generations of iPhones and iPads. It doesn’t work directly with the USB ports on the Nintendo Switch or Switch 2, though you can connect them using RayNeo’s optional $99 JoyDock adapter. You can also use an HDMI-to-USB-C convertor with either Switch system via its dock, or with any current game console with HDCP disabled, but make sure it’s specifically HDMI-to-USB-C. USB-C-to-HDMI adapters are much more common and likely to show up at the top of searches, but they won’t work because they’re designed to convert video output over USB-C to an HDMI signal and not the other way around. 

Display: Bright, Colorful, and Modestly Wide

The Air 3s Pro has the same 1080p resolution, 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rates, and 46-degree field of view as the Air 3s, though it’s much brighter than the cheaper model. According to RayNeo, the Air 3s Pro has a peak brightness of 1,200 nits, almost double that of the Air 3s (650 nits). That's the second-brightest pair of smart glasses I've seen, next to the Viture Luma Pro's 1,250 nits. It covers the same 145% of sRGB and 98% of DCI-P3 color spaces.

The 46-degree field of view can simulate a 201-inch theater screen from 20 feet and is comfortable to use. It’s a reasonable display size for the price, though it’s on the small end; the more expensive Rokid Max 2 and Viture Luma Pro have much wider 50- and 52-degree fields of view, respectively, and the XReal One Pro’s is a massive 57 degrees.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

If you’re nearsighted and usually wear glasses, you might have to get a prescription lens insert for the Air 3s Pro. A template is included that you can take to your optometrist, or you can order an insert from Lensology for £95 (approximately $130). Focus dials like the ones found on the Rokid Max 2 and Viture Luma Pro are always preferable, since they let you adjust the focus of the displays without spending extra for a lens insert, though currently only Rokid and Viture offer this feature in their smart glasses.

I have a fairly light prescription (-1.50), and while the Air 3s Pro is a bit blurry without a prescription lens insert, I still found it very usable. When connected to a Windows PC, I could read small text with only a little effort, and increasing the UI scaling from 100% to 150% made it clear enough that I could actually get work done. I also found watching movies through my phone and reading subtitles fairly easy, while most other smart glasses I’ve tested appear much blurrier without lens inserts or focus adjustments. It's still not as sharp as using inserts or having focus dials, though. 

For watching video with my phone and navigating Windows on my computer through the Air 3s Pro, it’s clear that glasses are a step up from the Air 3s. The picture is clear and bright, visually comparable with the Viture Luma Pro in light output. Colors are wide and vibrant, though this isn’t surprising; the Air 3s already stand out with some of the best color performance I’ve seen in smart glasses, matching or slightly edging out models that are nearly twice as expensive.

(Credit: Will Greenwald)

Sound: Clear and Full, With Supposedly Spatial Audio

While it uses the same dual acoustic chamber speakers as the Air 3s, on paper, the Air 3s Pro has one notable upgrade: Spatial audio. The glasses have built-in spatial audio processing that uses built-in motion sensors to track your head position and adjust the source of audio based on that, like a VR headset or the Apple AirPods Max. It’s a nice feature that, in theory, can add to the immersion of whatever you’re watching or playing, but it doesn’t really work. I didn’t notice any real directional imaging with the Spatial mode on, even when moving my head. It also made everything sound slightly echoey and distant.

That only applies to the Spatial mode, though, and the Standard sound mode works great. The stereo audio is clear and about as full as you can get with a gap between the glasses’ tiny speakers and your ears. Bass is weak, and outside noise can easily overcome the speakers, but it’s still pleasant to hear in a relatively quiet environment and doesn’t sound thin or tinny. The lack of sound isolation also means anyone around you can potentially hear what you hear, though a Whisper mode adjusts the frequency range of the audio to reduce how much leaks out.