Google's Xreal Aura AR glasses open preorders at $1,279, undercutting Meta's VR Glasses

Xreal has opened preorders for the Aura, the transparent XR glasses it developed with Google, priced from $1,279 — $20 below Meta's upcoming VR Glasses. According to The Verge, the move sets up a direct commercial contest between the two most closely watched lightweight headsets of the moment.

Pricing and configurations

The entry price covers a model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. A step-up version with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage costs $1,499. The Verge reports that Xreal could not say, by publication time, whether the larger memory allotment will actually matter for any apps.

Shared design, different philosophies

Both devices weigh around 100 grams because neither carries its computing hardware on your face. Each tethers to an external puck that houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite processor and the battery, and each puck runs its maker's platform: Android XR on the Aura, Meta's Horizon OS on the Meta glasses. Both devices also present a floating grid of app icons as their starting interface.

The deeper divergence is optical. The Aura uses genuinely see-through lenses, while Meta's product reconstructs the world through cameras — passthrough video that enables a more immersive experience. The Aura's 70-degree diagonal transparent field of view is among the widest achieved in a see-through display, yet The Verge notes it remains narrower than Meta's passthrough view.

Input follows the same split. Meta's glasses offer eye tracking in the style of Apple's Vision Pro, letting users choose items by looking at them and pinching their fingers; the Aura instead relies on a touchpad on its puck plus hand tracking for pointing at interface elements. Both support additional peripherals, both accept USB-C DisplayPort video from external devices, and each leans on its own software catalogue — Android apps for the Aura, Quest titles for Meta's hardware.

The Verge cautions that no journalist can credibly declare a winner yet, and adds that Android XR itself remains under-tested: Samsung and Google shipped the $1,799 Galaxy XR running the software last year, but never sent The Verge a review unit.

A deliberately narrow rollout

For now, only customers who placed an earlier reservation can preorder the Aura, and just the first 2,000 "Founder's Edition" pairs are assured for the launch window. Xreal CEO and co-founder Chi Xu told The Verge those units will ship before the end of this year.

The company's press release says the glasses "will begin shipping soon" and that launch is "now just weeks away," with general-public orders opening "in the coming weeks" — language The Verge characterizes as flexible. Initial shipments will reach the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea only, with more regions added in 2027. Meta's VR Glasses, meanwhile, are not due until spring 2027.

Why it matters

The Aura is the first mainstream retail showdown between Google's Android XR and Meta's Horizon OS in the emerging class of glasses-weight headsets, and Xreal's $20 undercut signals it intends to compete on price as well as design philosophy. But the opening is largely symbolic: with a few thousand launch units across four countries, the meaningful comparison will only arrive once both products are broadly available in 2027. The launch is also the first real public stress test of Android XR, a platform whose debut hardware escaped wide review — which means a great deal rides on how the Aura performs once reviewers get extended time with it.