XREAL AURA Officially Revealed — Project Aura Becomes Reality with Reservations Now Open

The glasses formerly known as Project Aura have a name, a launch window, and an open reservation list. At AWE 2026, XREAL announced that its Android XR glasses — officially named AURA — will launch this fall, with paid reservations opening immediately.

From Project to Product

First unveiled at Google I/O 2026 as part of Google and XREAL’s Android XR collaboration, AURA has now moved from prototype to commercial product with a confirmed release window. XREAL has confirmed Aura will officially launch this fall in the US — including in Best Buy stores — alongside the UK, Canada, South Korea and Japan, with European markets following soon after.

The Hardware: Glasses That Behave Like a Headset

Built to replicate a standard pair of lightweight glasses, weighing under 95 grams, AURA actually operates more like a mixed reality headset such as Samsung’s Galaxy XR, relying on true optical see-through passthrough rather than a digitised video feed of the surrounding room.

AURA uses a wired, split-compute architecture — rather than placing all processing, battery and thermal loads inside the frame itself, XREAL uses a dedicated spatial compute unit powered by the Snapdragon Reality Elite chip, keeping the glasses more wearable while still delivering the performance needed for spatial computing, hand tracking, six degrees of freedom experiences, and AI-driven interactions.

Inside the frames, the XREAL X1S Spatial Coprocessor handles low-latency spatial display and sensor processing, with micro-OLED displays offering 1,920×1,200 resolution per eye at up to 120Hz refresh rate, and a 70-degree field of view through see-through displays with electrochromic dimming.

Powered by Android XR

Android XR brings Play Store access, Gemini integration and a growing developer ecosystem to the glasses, with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite delivering up to 48 TOPS of AI performance.

Reservations and Pricing

No official release date or price has been confirmed yet, but customers in the US, UK and Japan can now reserve a pair for $99, which converts into $199 credit toward the final price — effectively $100 off once pricing is announced. XREAL has also opened a Founder Pass reservation at $299, limited to 2,000 units globally, guaranteeing launch-day delivery and numbered special-edition hardware. XREAL has confirmed the final retail price of the base model will not exceed $1,500 before tax.

Content Coming At Launch

XREAL has also confirmed some of the apps and games already in development for AURA and Android XR, including Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, created with author Andy Weir specifically for the platform, and Fallout: Factions, an XR adaptation of the popular board game.

Why It Matters

AURA represents one of the most concrete steps yet toward mainstream Android XR adoption — a real product, a real price ceiling, and a real launch window, arriving at the same event where Snap revealed its own standalone Specs glasses. The race for consumer AR glasses just got considerably more interesting.