Ben Schoon flew with a pair of XREAL One Pro glasses plugged into a Galaxy Z Fold 7, and the seatback screen lost. Writing for 9to5Google, he describes a 157-inch display floating in front of him that follows his head, comfortable across a few hours, and small enough to go back in a bag afterwards. He also used the glasses with a MacBook and a Redmagic Astra 2 tablet. He had been skeptical of the whole category and says the Vision Pro has never appealed to him at all.
What the glasses are is a screen. They carry no computer of their own, the on-board controls and software are limited, and Schoon puts it plainly: you cannot do anything without your secondary device. Everything the glasses show is fed to them down a cable.
That architecture is why his experience changed depending on what was on the other end of the cable. Google TV gave him trouble on the Redmagic tablet and ran fine on the Fold over DeX. Fandango at Home also struggled on the tablet. The 3D conversion mode never worked on the Redmagic at all and was solid on the Fold. XREAL's 3DoF tracking, which he rates highly on the ground, drifts in the air and gets worse with turbulence. None of that is a fault in the glasses so much as a report on the device you happen to own.
He is clear that they still look odd. They stick out too far from the face to pass as ordinary glasses, and the cable running down from them makes it obvious something is going on. His point is comparative rather than flattering: he would never wear a full headset on a plane because it is too bulky and too strange, and these clear that bar while not clearing the one that matters to most people. Setting the glasses up takes a minute of dialling in before films look right, and mirroring a MacBook gave him a full-size working canvas that the seat in front could not ruin by reclining.
Then there is the price, and his own conclusion is the interesting part. He would not pay $600 for the One Pro just to get a big screen he can pack. He would pay $299 for XREAL's A01+, and he rates the $450 1S as working about as well for the uses he is describing. A reviewer who enjoyed a product and would buy the cheaper one instead has told you where the value sits in a lineup.
Both he and XREAL point at the same missing piece. XREAL Aura runs Android XR, which would give the glasses software of their own rather than borrowing whatever is plugged in, and Aura is still set to accept a plugged-in device as well. Aura arrives later this year. The One Pro, the 1S and the A01+ are on sale now, and every one of them is a display waiting for a computer.