The recently announced Viture Pro smart glasses offer a significant upgrade in brightness and clarity compared to the original model. I’ve been testing them for several weeks and was pleasantly surprised to discover a unique feature that allows me to use my iPhone like a spatial computer. I’ve been searching for a reliable mobile desktop solution that enables me to work from anywhere without sacrificing the multi-screen convenience of my home office workstation. The Meta Quest 3 came close, and I’ve tested all the top smart glasses to find a practical solution. This time, I put the Viture Pro to the test as a pocketable laptop replacement.
Viture’s new trackpad mode addresses a common issue in display smart glasses: the lack of simple and accurate cursor control. While many models offer mobile apps with multiple browser windows, they often fall short in terms of productivity features. Viture has solved this problem with its innovative trackpad mode. I’ve attempted using Xreal’s excellent Air 2 display glasses with my phone, but it’s cumbersome to switch between holding the phone to move the cursor and putting it down to type on my Bluetooth keyboard. Viture’s default setting transforms your phone into a virtual laser pointer, similar to Xreal’s Nebula app, which is suitable for casual browsing and video watching. However, when I’m working, the iPhone keyboard isn’t the optimal solution. Nothing beats a physical keyboard for fast typing and editing. Similarly, a mouse or trackpad is essential for precise control without lifting your phone.
Viture’s SpaceWalker app now includes a Trackpad mode that allows me to tap and drag on my iPhone’s screen to control a cursor that appears on the Viture Pro’s virtual screens. After pairing a Bluetooth keyboard to my iPhone, the combination functions like a spatial computer.
The Viture Pro displays are the brightest available, boasting a remarkable 1,000 nits. This makes them exceptionally easy to use indoors. When working outdoors or in intense lighting, the electrochromic dimming feature can reduce ambient light by 99.9%. To illustrate the readability of text with the Viture Pro, I’m currently sitting under five daylight LED bulbs that are 60-watt equivalent, with a window about a foot to my left. I can comfortably use the glasses without activating the dimming features, although it proves helpful when using them outdoors.
While VR or AR utilize image processing to angle and warp virtual displays to simulate a 3D hovering effect, display smart glasses like the Viture Pro simply present a flat virtual screen aligned with the actual OLED panels, resulting in exceptionally crisp text. Viture also includes diopter adjustment dials for further fine-tuning the sharpness, even for users with myopia.
Viture’s SpaceWalker app, which enables multiple virtual displays, runs on an iPhone. This sets the Viture One and Pro apart from competing solutions from Xreal, RayNeo, and Rokid, which only have Android apps. I needed an adapter to use it with my iPhone 13 Pro Max, as it has a Lightning port instead of the more modern USB-C port of the iPhone 15. After connecting the adapter and glasses and opening the mobile app, I was greeted by a giant screen floating in front of me. The home screen displays a news feed in the center, preference settings in a left sidebar, and a few apps on the right. While most apps are designed for media consumption, I was primarily interested in the browser. I write in Lex.page, a secure online text editor, before transferring my articles to their final location for the last touches. I like to keep Gmail or a social media website open for communication with colleagues, and the third window is dedicated to research on the topic at hand. It’s akin to having three bright, crisp 1080p monitors perfectly positioned without any glare or dust interfering with my view.
Compared to my two vertically stacked 1440p monitors, I have ample screen space and clarity. The spatial computing experience is enjoyable, but a few minor issues prevent me from using this setup full-time. While the trackpad mode supports pointing, clicking, and scrolling, it lacks right-click or drag functionality for selecting blocks of text. I’ve adapted to using the arrow keys on my keyboard to select text.
Viture’s SpaceWalker app recognizes head rotations, sliding another screen into view as I turn left or right. The tracking is generally good but not as reliable as a VR headset. Occasionally, I have to reset the view with a button below the trackpad. To avoid unwanted shifts in my view, I’ve turned off head tracking. In this mode, a two-finger swipe scrolls the screens or chooses a window from the bottom dock. Trackpad mode is a new feature, so I’m optimistic that Viture will continue to refine the experience.
Given that most of my work takes place in a browser, the Viture Pro comes very close to serving as a laptop replacement. However, while the Viture Pro’s iPhone app is unique among smart glasses, there’s also a SpaceWalker app for all my other devices. I can connect it to my Samsung Galaxy S20 phone, MacBook Air, and Windows PC. The Android app is quite similar to using Spacewalker on an iPhone, with the browser being my most used app. However, some web apps encounter issues with the SpaceWalker browser. For instance, Google Sheets displayed a warning about browser incompatibility, and I couldn’t access the bottom tabs to switch spreadsheets. It would be ideal if I could use Chrome or Safari, but Viture required a custom solution for the virtual displays.
The experience when connecting to my PC or Mac is distinctly different, unlocking various display modes, such as vertically stacked screens, a combination of horizontal and vertical screen orientations, and an ultrawide screen. I can run any browser or app installed on these devices. Although connecting my iPhone to the Viture Pro isn’t the ultimate mobile productivity solution, it’s an incredibly compact and useful combination. For work purposes, I would still prefer connecting smart glasses to a MacBook or Windows laptop to access any app and keep my head up while working, significantly expanding my desktop space.
The Viture Pro are among the best smart glasses available, and the development team is responsive to feedback, updating the SpaceWalker app to address issues and add new features. If you own an iPhone and are interested in smart glasses with displays, Viture is the brand to consider. They offer three models: the Viture One Lite, One, and Pro. The Viture Pro boasts the best displays, but I found the standard model to be very good as well. You can find all the details and specifications on Viture’s website.
