The Asus Micro-OLED AR gaming glasses is perhaps the weirdest factor I’ve ever examined at CES, and that is saying one thing

The Asus ROG Xreal Micro-OLED gaming glasses are… bizarre. This is the conclusion I’ve drawn after spending ten minutes with them at CES 2026, so take that as you’ll. However, it was sufficient time to understand that, whereas on paper they appear like they is perhaps a good suggestion, in follow, it is… sophisticated.

The thought is, you get a digital 177-inch monitor beamed in entrance of your eyeballs by way of a Micro-OLED show inside the glasses, overlaying 95% of your imaginative and prescient with a 57-degree area of view of fantastic gaming constancy. Why have an enormous display screen in your wall, when you may have a tiny one which creates the identical impact in a wearable type issue?

Mmm. We’ll get on to that in a minute, because I’ve got some ergonomic issues to discuss first.

For a start, there’s a substantial cable attached to the rear of the left arm, which makes putting them on a very awkward event. I did it in public and nearly poked myself in the eye, as the glasses seem destined to fall in on themselves as you bring them towards your face.

Secondly, they made me look like a dork. Yes, I look like a dork already. You’re very funny. But there’s something very uncool about wearing gaming shades, especially ones with a fair amount of tech crammed in the front.

There’s also a strip of RGB on each side, which really, really doesn’t help with the aesthetic. The Asus glasses are reminiscent at first of Ray-Ban Wayfarers, however in particular person they’re a bit too “Buddy Holly goes cyberpunk” for my liking.

“But what about the effect?”, I hear you cry. Well, the picture high quality of the 240 Hz Micro-OLED show is definitely fairly good, regardless of its comparatively low 1080p decision. Unfortunately, the glasses themselves are cumbersome sufficient, and the frames restrictive sufficient, that the expertise is ruined by a definite impression that you just’re all hemmed in.

The thought is to create the phantasm of an enormous show in entrance of your face, however in follow it felt to me like a big display screen by means of a small hole in somebody’s entrance room window.

The display screen additionally stayed in a single spot regardless of how I moved my head, for technical AR-based causes I do not fake to thoroughly perceive. I’ve since realized it’s because they had been in “Anchor Mode”, which I discovered very, very disorienting.

Angling my head again on the actual proper angle to view the display screen once more had me wanting like an outdated man making an attempt to learn a bus timetable on a stormy evening. It’s not, you may undoubtedly be stunned to listen to, a refined expertise.

Anyway, I futzed round in a racing sport for a bit, determined they weren’t for me, and put them again on the stand the place they belong. Certainly, they had been drawing a variety of consideration on the Asus sales space. But as one thing I’d really need to personal? Nah, I’m good I feel. Onwards.