TCL RayNeo Air 2 review: looking good, but the competition is pretty rough

In addition, the nose pads are adjustable too, and can be gently pushed closer or further away from the lenses, which is very handy.

However, no matter how I adjust the nose pads or frames, there is noticeable blurriness at the edges of the virtual screen, and this gets distracting pretty quickly, especially if you're watching a movie or gaming, and you want to see the screen corners clearly, not just the center of the screen.



And that's a shame, because otherwise the RayNeo Air 2's virtual screen is fantastic – it gets brighter than the average XR glasses we've seen, it has vivid colors that come to life, and impressive sharpness for 1080p. No visible pixels, or anything else that might ruin the visual experience.

According to RayNeo, we get a viewing angle of 46 degrees, and again – a 1080p resolution, which is on par with the competition, so nothing exceptional to note, nor anything to complain about here, besides the aforementioned blurry screen edges.

Device compatibility and companion app

As usual with any such XR glasses, if you wish to connect them to your phone, you'll want to have either an Android phone, or an iPhone 15, because a USB-C port is paramount. If you do, connecting the RayNeo Air 2 to your phone is as easy as plugging them into it,

The glasses immediately start mirroring the smartphone's screen, so now you can comfortably lean back in, say, your airplane seat, and watch a movie on a much bigger virtual screen, without having to hold your phone or even face it.

Connecting the RayNeo Air 2 with game consoles is similarly simple and straightforward. In my case, I went with the Steam Deck – you simply plug the glasses into its USB-C port, and you get a far sharper, brighter and bigger screen, while still dealing with a super portable gaming setup. There's virtually no latency, so gaming on the go with these glasses feels perfectly responsive.

Also, if you're on team Switch, it's worth noting that a dedicated Nintendo Switch "JoyDock" docking accessory for these glasses is expected to become available later this year.

While gaming with the RayNeo Air 2, the only thing that continues to bother me are the blurry virtual screen edges, and now the lack of an opaque lens cover, which competitor XR glasses, such as the Xreal Air 2 and Rokid Max do come with. If you use those, you can optionally put it on their lenses, to fully immerse yourself into your games or movies, without seeing through the virtual screen. It would've been nice to get a lens cover with the RayNeo Air 2 also, but alas.

Besides watching movies and gaming, you can make use of the RayNeo Air 2 as a productivity accessory to your laptop. Connecting them to a MacBook turns them into a second screen (or you can do screen mirroring if you prefer), and the same goes for PCs. If you're going with the latter, however, make sure that your PC has DisplayPort over USB-C, with Alt Mode support, because in my experience – a lot of them don't, and glasses like these won't do anything when connected to just any random USB-C port on your computer.

If you have an Android phone, you can go a step further from simple screen mirroring and actually have an AR (augmented reality) experience, with head tracking at all. You can do that by downloading the RayNeo XR app, again – Android only, which gives you an AR interface, somewhat resembling the Meta Quest's. Has an app dock on the bottom, a few built-in apps and experiences to choose from, such as a web browser, while your phone conveniently turns into a pointing device.



The whole thing is reminiscent of Xreal's companion mobile app, in that it's fun to play around with, but arguably doesn't add much value to the glasses. It's kind of just a tech demo that showcases the glasses' built-in (and generally unutilized) head tracking capabilities.

Sound quality

As always, we get dual speakers, one in each frame of the glasses, pointed down towards your ears. The sound quality is nice and clear, with crisp highs and clear, albeit anemic mids, and absolutely no bass. This is pretty standard for XR glasses at this caliber, so it'd be unfair to complain about it.

What's well worth complaining about, however, is the fact that the sound quality gets pretty bad if you turn the volume up. The speakers start distorting, and it just becomes plain unpleasant to listen to them.

To be fair, it's arguably a good thing to have the option of pushing these tiny speakers to their limits, but I doubt anyone will feel comfortable with the results, and most users would want to keep things at around 60% volume or less, so as to not have to listen to boomy distortion.

Verdict

The RayNeo Air 2 are well-built, light and stylish XR glasses, with a fantastic virtual screen, albeit with no shortage of caveats also, such as blurry screen corners, and at high volume – sound distortion.

They can serve you well for watching movies and YouTube videos on the go, or for big-screen gaming with your portable gaming consoles, so long as you can look past the aforementioned blurry screen edges.

Unfortunately, I could not, so it's hard for me to recommend these over similarly-priced competitors, such as the Xreal Air 2 or Rokid Max, which additionally come with hard cases and opaque lens covers, while the RayNeo Air 2 do not.

If TCL decides to keep the (currently limited-time) $299 price and positions these as a more budget alternative to the competition, it would be a bit easier to overlook their lack of included accessories, and impaired viewing clarity. But for the RayNeo Air 2's full $379 price, there are better options out there.

In any case, the RayNeo Air 2 will be available on Amazon in the coming days, and are already up for sale on RayNeo's website for a limited-time $299 price.