Nope, it’s not called Snapdragon XR Gen 3, but Qualcomm did bring something big to the smart glasses party in its Snapdragon Reality Elite chip. And yes, this is the chip that is running inside Xreal’s Project Aura that I tested back at Google I/O.
In the company’s own words, it is set to bring “spatial computing into the AI era,” but I would say its real superpower is in unlocking my dream future of blurring those lines between the best VR headsets and smart glasses into one wearable.
Qualcomm (and I) know that ever since the end of the pandemic, the amount of people buying VR headsets has dropped and the appetite for that spatial tech in something the size of a pair of specs has grown massively. People really want to take their XR on the road without looking like a glasshole.
And with huge improvements to the performance and power efficiency, alongside a 160% boost in AI performance, this is the chip that can get us there. Let me explain.
By the numbers
The first thing I noticed during the briefing is that this is much more than a generational leap — it’s a whole reinvention with a new target in mind. Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 was solid in the likes of the Meta Quest 3 and Samsung Galaxy XR, but Qualcomm came with a new mission: turboboost everything, while making it much more efficient and cooler for different, smaller form factors.
On the performance end, you’ve got the ability to render a 4.4k resolution picture per eye with ray tracing thanks to that 60% faster GPU, and a 30% zippier CPU will keep app opens lightning quick too. There’s also a 10% improvement in latency between your hand and the screen, and new enhancements to video see-through (VST) improve the speed of tracking too.
As for the AI side of things, Snapdragon Reality Elite gives it the full beans with a 160% improvement in NPU performance — making it capable of running a full-blown large visual model (asking questions about/taking action on things you see in the world around you) with around a 1.7-second latency between asking and it starting to work.
Go puck yourself
All that’s fair and good, but if I’m being real, it’s that 20% longer battery life and the ability to run a whopping 12-degrees Celsius cooler that’s the big news for me. That’s the real key to unlocking a VR experience in a pair of glasses.
I was trying to figure out how Xreal was pulling off the impressive performance and power efficiency pairing I saw in Project Aura, and turns out the answer was right under my nose the entire time — this chip was in that puck!
But talking to Qualcomm some more, it’s clear this is a “hedging their bets” moment for the company, as the chip is versatile in how it can be used. Either it can go into all-in-one XR devices (maybe a Meta Quest 4? …provided it hasn’t been canned) or what the company is calling “disaggregated XR devices.”
This is a fancy way of saying “smart glasses” with the compute puck. Of course there’s still a fan in Project Aura’s puck, so cooling challenges remain, and this is still glasses-with-a-cable coming off of them because of it.
But we’ve now got the primo piece of silicon that can start to blend the worlds of VR headsets and AR glasses together for sure.
'That sweet-spot Goldilocks product'
When I spoke to Qualcomm on the briefing, I asked if this chip puts the company on the path towards taking that VR headset experience and stuffing into a pair of glasses. And while they’re keen to emphasize that “there’s still a place” for VR headsets, the company sees an “eventual convergence” of the two.
“If you look at the things Meta, Google and Snapchat have done, there’s very much a desire to make that sweet-spot Goldilocks product,” the rep added. And given Qualcomm has yearlong agreements with all of them, as well as investing in waveguide displays for glasses heavily, it’s all coming together nicely.
It’s what I’ve wanted for years — only to see limitations in the hardware, the software, and an execution problem when it comes to spatial computing (namely that it’s not as useful as actual computing or just using your phone).
With Reality Elite, the hardware problem goes a long way towards being fixed. With a new developer platform packed with software modules, compatibility with multiple AI systems and even white label hardware to test it on (the Snapdragon START program), that’s the software problem.
And hopefully the execution problem is fixed in due course alongside this, as more and more people flock to XR. The future’s bright, and I can’t wait to see it.
More from Tom's Guide
- I tested Google’s “Intelligent Eyewear,” and found the smart glasses that will defeat Ray-Ban Meta
- Meet X By XREAL — I’m testing the MacBook Neo of AR glasses that people can actually afford
- Windows laptops are entering their MacBook Neo era, but is Windows 11 actually ready for it? 8GB of RAM has me worried
