This year isn't the first time OPPO has brought a set of smart glasses to show off at Mobile World Congress but the company's latest swing at the optics-led category feels closer to a real product than a prototype.
Akin to everything from the Meta Ray Bans to the Brilliant Labs Frames, the OPPO Air Glass 3 is a set of XR/AR glasses that leverages OPPO's own AndesGPT large language model to offer insights about the world around you.
Based on the glossy hype reel that OPPO has put out about the prototype below, the smart glasses are also able to tick a lot of the boxes that something like a smartwatch might.
The frames themselves weigh around 50 grams and incorporate an ultra-thin micro LED display and triple-color projector to create images, text, notifications and animations within your natural field of view. According to OPPO, this overlay can go as bright as 1000 nits but will usually adjust to suit the brightness of the environment around you in much the same way as your smartphone does.
The glasses also feature four microphones with "reverse sound field technology" that promises to help the Air Glass 3 deliver better noise isolation and a more private audio experience.
Beyond those nuts and bolts, the overall form factor of the Air Glass 3 is relatively inconspicuous. The glasses look a little chunky, but they're not likely to be mistaken for a set of Google Glass anytime soon. There's a button that can be used to trigger the AI voice assistant attached to the smart glasses, but otherwise, they look more or less like a regular pair of glasses.
To their credit, the OPPO Air Glass 3 look like what you'd expect a set of Apple smart glasses to look like.
For situations where speaking to an AI assistant might not be appropriate, you can also rely on the touch-sensitive stems of the OPPO Air Glass 3. Some of the examples OPPO is giving for how this input can be used include controlling music playback, answering phone calls, scrolling through on-screen text and more.
Maybe part of the reason why this iteration of OPPO's smart glasses feels a little more tangible this time around is that the landscape for AI-powered wearable tech has radically changed since the last Mobile World Congress.
Between the viral popularity of the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin and the fact that Apple finally shipped its Vision Pro headset, the notion that OPPO might bring a product like this to market doesn't seem nearly as crazy as it once might have. That said, given that OPPO isn't ready to talk about Australian pricing and availability, I wouldn't bet on the wearable to turn up in a JB Hi-Fi anytime soon. Maybe next time.
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