Is the best way to watch a movie on a pair of sunglasses?

观看电影的最佳方式是戴上一副太阳镜吗？

I am nothing if not a huge movie buff. I watch way too many of them, and I’m always on the hunt for a new format in which to experience them. So when XREAL, the smart glasses company, sent me an a01 — one of its newer models, which it released in May of this year — I was eager to give them a spin as the newest vector by which to satisfy my media fanaticism. 我绝对是一个超级影迷。我看的电影实在太多了，而且我一直在寻找体验电影的新方式。因此，当智能眼镜公司 XREAL 将其今年 5 月发布的新款机型 a01 送到我手中时，我迫不及待地想尝试一下，看看它能否成为满足我媒体狂热的新载体。

The a01 isn’t a particularly sophisticated smart glasses model. Unlike more software-heavy AR glasses like, say, the Meta Orion or Snap’s Specs, it’s basically just an external monitor. It also doesn’t have a battery or an internal power mechanism. Instead, a simple USB-C cable plugs the glasses into a device of your choosing, which then becomes the headset’s power source. It’s also not so expensive, at an accessible price point of around $300. a01 并不是一款特别复杂的智能眼镜。与 Meta Orion 或 Snap’s Specs 等软件功能更强大的 AR 眼镜不同，它本质上只是一个外接显示器。它没有电池或内置电源机制。相反，只需一根简单的 USB-C 线缆将眼镜连接到你选择的设备上，该设备便成为头显的电源。它的价格也不贵，约 300 美元，处于一个易于接受的价位。

The a01 is actually optimized for gaming, in that it can be plugged into a Steam Deck or other handheld gaming device. However, XREAL also advertises them as a way to watch movies and TV — and since that’s more my speed, once I had the a01 in hand, I plugged it into my personal laptop and booted up the Criterion Channel. I then sat watching David Lynch’s film “Wild at Heart” for a while, enjoying a sequence where Nicolas Cage, dressed in a snakeskin jacket, beats up a guy in a bar and then sings an Elvis song. a01 实际上针对游戏进行了优化，它可以插入 Steam Deck 或其他掌上游戏机。然而，XREAL 也将其宣传为观看电影和电视的一种方式——由于这更符合我的喜好，拿到 a01 后，我便将其插入我的个人笔记本电脑，并打开了 Criterion Channel。随后，我坐下来观看了大卫·林奇的电影《我心狂野》，欣赏了尼古拉斯·凯奇穿着蛇皮夹克在酒吧里痛打一个人，然后唱起猫王歌曲的片段。

I’ll say this: The images look quite good. The glasses, which come outfitted with dual mini OLED panels, provide quite a nice image (those panels offer a 1080p resolution with up to 1,600 nits of brightness), with very vibrant colors. If you aim the glasses at a wall, it feels vaguely like you’re using a really vivid home projector — or perhaps are at a drive-in movie. In a dark room, you’re one step closer to the in-theater experience. 我得说：画面看起来相当不错。这款眼镜配备了双微型 OLED 面板，提供了非常好的图像（这些面板提供 1080p 分辨率和高达 1,600 尼特的亮度），色彩非常鲜艳。如果你对着墙壁看，感觉就像在使用一台非常清晰的家用投影仪，或者像是身处汽车影院。在黑暗的房间里，你离影院体验又近了一步。

However, the overall experience also brought some questions to mind. Namely, why would I sit next to my computer with glasses on my head watching a thing that is also playing on my laptop only 14 inches away? The reason, XREAL offers, is that the glasses are more immersive (they claim the device’s projections are equivalent to viewing content on a 147-inch screen). Still, the redundancy of watching a movie while it plays right next to you makes you question what the actual purpose of the device is. 然而，整体体验也引发了一些疑问。也就是说，我为什么要戴着眼镜坐在电脑旁，观看一个距离我仅 14 英寸的笔记本电脑上也在播放的内容呢？XREAL 给出的理由是，这款眼镜更具沉浸感（他们声称该设备的投影相当于在 147 英寸屏幕上观看内容）。尽管如此，在电影就在你身边播放的同时还要戴着眼镜观看，这种冗余感让人不禁质疑该设备的实际用途是什么。

XREAL has suggested that the glasses can function as a “second monitor” (indeed, they’ve actually been referred to as a “wearable display”) but the functionality of this is, again, questionable. It’s rather difficult to see anything other than what the glasses are projecting — which would make it quite difficult to, say, work on a laptop while also wearing them. XREAL 曾表示，这款眼镜可以作为“第二显示器”（事实上，它们确实被称为“可穿戴显示器”），但其功能性同样值得怀疑。除了眼镜投射的内容外，你很难看到其他东西——这使得你很难在佩戴它们的同时使用笔记本电脑工作。

The glasses can also be connected to your phone. Unfortunately, I have an older iPhone, which means that the a01’s cable is not compatible with the phone’s port. An adapter would have been necessary to link the two. The user experience is easy enough to imagine, however. Connecting the glasses to a phone means that you’re not captive to an indoor experience anymore as you would be with a heftier device like a laptop. You can watch a movie while you’re traveling on a plane or a train (or, hell, while you’re walking down the street — although I would say this last option is generally ill-advised unless you want to accidentally walk into traffic). 这款眼镜也可以连接到手机。遗憾的是，我用的是旧款 iPhone，这意味着 a01 的线缆与手机接口不兼容。连接两者需要一个适配器。不过，用户体验很容易想象。将眼镜连接到手机意味着你不再像使用笔记本电脑那样被束缚在室内。你可以在乘坐飞机或火车时看电影（或者，见鬼，在你走在街上时也可以——尽管我得说最后一种选择通常是不明智的，除非你想不小心撞进车流中）。

Image Credits: Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch 图片来源：Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch

However, there are still inconvenient limitations with using the device this way. For one thing, the glasses still only function as a screen-mirroring device — meaning that the screen of your phone needs to remain active while you’re using the glasses. This brings us back to the redundancy problem. You’re watching a video on a screen attached to your face while the same video plays on a different screen that is located less than a foot away. You could partially solve this issue by putting the phone in your pocket, but the chances seem high that any jostling might upset the device’s playback functionality. 然而，以这种方式使用该设备仍然存在不便的局限性。首先，眼镜仍然只能作为屏幕镜像设备使用——这意味着当你使用眼镜时，手机屏幕必须保持开启状态。这又回到了冗余问题。你戴在脸上的屏幕在播放视频，而不到一英尺外的另一个屏幕也在播放同样的视频。你可以通过把手机放进口袋来部分解决这个问题，但任何晃动似乎都很容易干扰设备的播放功能。

It’s worth noting that the device can also be paired with a separate device, dubbed the Beam Pro, which is essentially a mini-tablet and can act as an isolated streaming hub. Users download shows and movies onto the Beam, connect it to the glasses, and watch. However, this device will cost you another $200. 值得注意的是，该设备还可以与一个名为 Beam Pro 的独立设备配对，它本质上是一个迷你平板电脑，可以作为一个独立的流媒体中心。用户将节目和电影下载到 Beam 上，连接到眼镜即可观看。不过，这个设备需要你额外支付 200 美元。

Then there’s the heat. It doesn’t take long for the a01 to start warming up — producing an odd tingling sensation on the bridge of your nose and over your eyes. This is, of course, not an experience unique to XREAL’s products — it’s a well-known defect of most XR glasses. You can only cram so much computing into a small plastic device before all the electrical processing begins to warm everything up. Still, it’s a tad disconcerting, and not exactly what you would want from an accessory that you’re wearing on your face. 接下来是发热问题。a01 用不了多久就会开始变热，在鼻梁和眼睛上方产生一种奇怪的刺痛感。当然，这并非 XREAL 产品独有的体验——这是大多数 XR 眼镜众所周知的缺陷。在小小的塑料设备中塞入过多的计算能力，所有的电子处理过程最终都会导致设备发热。尽管如此，这还是有点令人不安，而且这绝对不是你希望戴在脸上的配件所带来的体验。

I will say that — heat aside — the a01 is a relatively lightweight and comfortable device — and it isn’t overly cumbersome like other smart glasses that I’ve worn. (Having given Snap’s Specs a try at CES earlier this year, I promise you those are significantly heavier — although it’s also a very different kind of device than the a01.) 我得说，抛开发热问题不谈，a01 是一款相对轻便舒适的设备，而且不像我戴过的其他智能眼镜那样过于笨重。（今年早些时候在 CES 上试用过 Snap’s Specs 后，我向你保证那些眼镜要重得多——尽管它们与 a01 是完全不同类型的设备。）

Image Credits: Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch 图片来源：Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch

XREAL continues to iterate its product line, with each new device seeming to improve upon the previous one. Indeed, some of the existential dilemmas present in the a01 and previous XREAL headsets seem to have been ironed out in the company’s newest (and yet to be released) device: Project Aura — which I caught a glimpse of during my visit to Google I/O earlier this year — promises a significantly more immersive and convenient experience. The Aura is powered by Android XR, an extended reality operating system developed by Google and Samsung. The Aura comes with native hand tracking (which is absent in the a01), as well as access to the Google Play Store, giving the glasses significantly more interactive abilities and AR potential. It also comes with a puck, tethered to the glasses, that acts as both the charging source and a compute node. XREAL 不断迭代其产品线，每一款新设备似乎都在前代基础上有所改进。事实上，a01 和之前 XREAL 头显中存在的一些本质困境，似乎在公司最新（尚未发布）的设备 Project Aura 中得到了解决。我在今年早些时候参观 Google I/O 时瞥见了它，它承诺提供更具沉浸感和更便捷的体验。Aura 由 Android XR 驱动，这是谷歌和三星开发的扩展现实操作系统。Aura 配备了原生手势追踪功能（a01 所没有的），以及对 Google Play 商店的访问权限，这赋予了眼镜更强的交互能力和 AR 潜力。它还配有一个连接在眼镜上的圆盘，既作为充电源，也作为计算节点。