I Review VR and Display Glasses, and These Are My Favorite Prime Day Deals Right Now

I’ve been testing VR headsets and smart glasses for well over a decade at CNET. That’s a lot of time with a lot of things on my face. As always, you don’t need things like VR or smart glasses in your life. But there’s a particular subcategory of smart glasses, better known as tethered display glasses, that are surprisingly useful for travel and fun for portable movie-watching and game playing. Much like VR headsets, these glasses aren’t meant to be worn all the time. And, unlike many other smart glasses, they don’t have cameras onboard by default.

Amazon’s Prime Day sales are here Oct. 6 and 7, and as always, it’s a grab bag of deals and recycled sales that have been around before. Three things caught my eye, though. One’s a very good deal, and the others are notable sales that are likely to be around even after Prime Day is gone.

TCL’s more “budget” RayNeo Air 4 Pro glasses cut some features, but the display is impressive. / Scott Stein/CNET

Best budget display glasses get a little cheaper

RayNeo Air 4 Pro

The going price for good entry-level tethered display glasses has fallen to $299 this year, a price shared by RayNeo’s Air 4 Pro, Xreal’s A01 Plus (which I’ve started liking even more) and the Viture Pro 2, which has some prescription adjustment built in (I’m still reviewing those). But this big price drop on RayNeo’s pair makes them the least expensive but still really good glasses I can remember. They cut some corners on extra features and lack major display size customizations, but they have an excellent, bright pair of micro OLED displays, decent sound and a compact design, and they work via USB-C with any device that can output video over its USB-C port. They’re 20% off, and at $239 ($60 off), they’re worth picking up.

Really good display quality in a portable glasses-like form.

Xreal’s budget display glasses look good and feel comfortable, although they cut a few features for the price. / Scott Stein/CNET

I love these too, and also on sale

Xreal XBX A01 Plus

Xreal’s lightweight budget display glasses have nearly the same feature set as the RayNeos above, but I also love that they have an antishake mode that helps stabilize movie viewing on the go. They’re a tad more expensive than the above deal, but I love how ultra-compact they feel on my face. They’re 15% off right now, costing $254 ($40 off).

Lightweight, great display and antishake mode for travel make these great lower-cost display wearables.

Still the best budget VR headset, and a game included

Meta Quest 3S 256GB bundle with Gorilla Tag

Meta’s toyed with the price of its always-low Quest 3S VR headset for a few years, sometimes dropping it and sometimes hiking it up like every other product lately. It’s likely to be on sale this holiday, too, going by previous VR history. The 128GB Quest 3S is on sale for 15% off at $297 (originally $349), and includes Gorilla Tag extras (if you play that game). There was also a 256GB Quest 3S with the excellent game Batman: Arkham Shadow included, for $382, but it’s sold out. You can still get a 256GB bundle with Gorilla Tag. Meta has a new headset coming out next year, but it’ll be $1,300. The Quest 3S remains the best deal in VR by far.

A good bundle with extra storage and a great game, with hardware that’s still worth it.

Or do you wait?

In my opinion, Prime Day sales are hard to judge. Sometimes a deal rolls through that’s unique. In this case, that might be the RayNeo Air 4 Pro. But often, products go back on sale through the holidays in various forms. I don’t think these will go much lower than the prices they’re at now, but there’s a chance these deals will be back again, too.