I'm a big screen bigot.
I have been ever since the late '80s when I got my first 21-in screen. In that era of 14” 24 line 80 column monochrome monitors, a 21" 1280x1024 grayscale display was breathtaking.
My desire for large screens has only increased as our computer’s capabilities have increased. So I was delighted to hear about the XREAL One Pro’s huge display and field of view. Among the other cool reviews, Mr. Spadafora describes a slick mobile computing solution and Mr. Miller describes a smooth working environment with these devices.
The XREAL One Pro is wonderful, but it's not everything I was hoping for. It’s a friend zone device, not love at first sight. If XREAL could go full 4K on the display, now that would blow me away.
Getting Started
It took a bit to get my XREAL One Pro configured properly. It seemed to fit well, but the images had some blurriness and color edges. This initial fuzziness needed to be corrected with a diopter setting. You may need to adjust the nose piece. I went through all three choices, returning to the original medium nose pieces after several several experiments. It helped a lot to tilt the earpieces for a lower image placement.
There are several display modes and it took me a while to find the widescreen mode that is such a joy. It's a beautifully wide image with 3840x1080 resolution. That’s as wide as a 4K TV, but less than half the vertical resolution. Regardless, it would truly be an imposing device as a physical screen.
The XREAL One Pro shows only a portion of that display, but the head tracking system provides a view of the entire screen. That’s great for the image, but less wonderful for typing. I’m not the touch typist I could be, so I look at the keyboard .. a lot. With regular practice, I can probably learn to look down without moving my head, but I’m not there yet. These things would be easy enough to live with.
Comparisons
My main challenge with the XREAL One Pro’s widescreen mode is the limited number of vertical pixels. It’s almost as wide as my current display setup (just under 90%). But it is woefully short on vertical height, with not even half of my current resolution (42%). Combined, the available screen space is only 38% of my normal screen space.
As I said, I'm a big screen bigot. My current setup is three 27” Dell UltraSharp monitors set vertically, side by side. Each monitor is approximately a 3K display, with 1440x2560 resolution. Configured vertically side-by-side, that’s an effective display of (1440*3) x 2560 side. The total is 4320x2560, or just over 11 million pixels (11,059,200) . Configured at arms length (about 2 feet), this setup pretty effectively fills my entire field of vision. It’s an extremely effective way to show multiple browser windows without overlaps.
A snapshot from the Windows Display configuration gives a visual comparison of the resolution. The XREAL One Pro’s window (2) is indicated above the windows provided by the three Ultrasharp monitors (4), (3), and (1). The XREAL’s window is almost as wide, but not even half as tall.
The XREAL’s 3840x1080 resolution just can’t compete with the multiscreen resolution of 4320x2560 pixels. It is a huge improvement coming from commodity laptop screens, but it can’t replace my daily workstation’s display.
Conclusion
As much as I was hoping the XREAL One Pro might replace the multiple screens of my main development system, the currently available screen sizes just aren’t comparable.
I think the XREAL One Pro is a great device for mobile arrangements. I’m looking forward to following in the footsteps of Mr. Spadafora and putting together a fully mobile computing system.
And c’mon XREAL - make widescreen mode offer full 4K resolution. Maybe then those UltraSarp monitors can head off to retirement .. like my old 21” CRT.
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