TCL rose as a display (TV) company, and as such, it’s not completely surprising to see it enter the eXtended Reality (XR) Glasses market. However, the prototype revealed at CES looks surprisingly good and attractive.
To be clear, only the industrial was revealed here at CES. TCL aims to show a working version at MWC in late February, and then we would be able to judge how good it really is.
The technological foundation of these glasses seems to be very close to products previously announced, such as the Oppo Air Glass. Similarities include using a tiny projector with Micro LED (waveguide display) and a Snapdragon 4100 chip.
We expect the display to have modest capabilities and could be used to display notifications, directions, and other simple “glance at” visual information. It’s not meant to replace much larger XR headsets often used by professionals (Microsoft’s Hololens) but push for a consumer-friendly XR usage model.
Assuming the display fulfills its role of displaying “holographic-style” pieces of information like a heads-up display would, the question is: how will apps use it? That is the million-dollar question that has yet to be answered, but the industry needs to start somewhere, and TCL’s device might be one of the foundational pieces that will make early users bite.
As Ubergizmo co-founder Eliane Fiolet often says, the hardest part of Wearable Devices is to make people wear them, and TCL’s design has the merit of being attractive. It’s something that people would want to try and see how they can benefit from it. Next step: prove to us the display is worth looking at.
Filed in . Read more about Augmented Reality (AR), CES, Ces 2022 and Tcl.