TCL’s Nxtwear G personal cinema is desperately close

Let me ask you a question: do you really you want to buy a pair of Personal Cinema glasses? As cool as they may be, they still feel like an artifact of a dystopia that hasn’t engulfed us yet. When the air is scorching and the sea is bubbling, you won’t be able to fit a 40 inch HDTV into your existence support pod, so these will have to do the trick. He barely screams “aspirational”.

It doesn’t help that no one – not Sony, Avegant, Royole or the like – has managed to make this concept work. Personal theaters have therefore replaced VR as the benchmark whenever someone needs to talk about a product that is always about to break through, and never has. But, while they are a solution seeking a problem and are historic, things may be about to change.

You see, TCL has been knocking on this particular door for years and now they are preparing to launch their first model. The Nxtwear G wearable display glasses solve many of the problems that have blocked these earlier attempts. They aren’t perfect, and you probably won’t want to buy a pair right now, but that’s the closest thing to this concept.

TCL’s Nxtwear G places two small screens close to your eyes to make you think you’re looking at a bigger screen. Rather than filling the glasses with tech, TCL placed two screens, a pair of speakers, and positioning hardware inside. This keeps the weight at a very manageable 130 grams (4.5 oz), much softer on your neck for long term wear.

Everything else, including power, is handled by the device you plug it into, and the list of compatible hardware is pretty long. You can use major Samsung, LG and OnePlus phones, as well as over 30 laptops and over 25 tablets and 2-in-1s. Essentially, TCL designed a plug-and-play external display for your head that should work fine with any DisplayPort compatible USB-C device.

The company has decided to swim against much of the misconception that we’ve seen with other personal theaters. Rather than trying to lock the user into a black void, to better replicate that tenth screen feeling in a multiplex mall, TCL wants you to see the outside world. Even when I tried out the prototype, in 2019, its reps said you should feel comfortable wearing it on public transport, interacting with people the way you do.

With every device I’ve tried them with, you just plug in the Nxtwear G and it all begins. If you’re using a compatible TCL phone, you’ll get a pop-up asking if you want to use mirror mode or PC mode, which sets you into Android’s desktop mode. The phone then acts as a touchpad so you can navigate with your finger, although if you want to do more than hunt and peck, buy a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

By also connecting it to my MacBook Pro, the machine recognized it as an external display and I was able to work and watch TV with my main screens turned off. I actually wrote part of this piece inside this thing, although I had to increase the zoom to insane levels to make sure everything was readable.

The Nxtwear G packs a pair of 1080p 16: 9, 60Hz micro-OLED displays that the company claims are the equivalent of a 140-inch display. It requires the usual suspension of eye disbelief, but the effect works here and the speakers do their job pretty well. It’s worth saying that they are basically streaming audio in all directions, so grab your Bluetooth headphones if, for example, your partner is really annoyed when they can hear you watching. Colombo when the two of you are in bed.

I’m not sure if you should expect near pixel perfect video quality from a pair of such tiny screens, but be warned that they won’t beat your smartphone. Admittedly, HD video looks good, but the small size of the screens means it’s really hard to see good detail. The colors were washed out, certainly compared to the images that were read on the TCL 20 Pro 5G and the MacBook Pro I was connected to during testing.

TCL’s pitch is to say that in addition to passive visualization one can also use the glasses to work and this is where I think TCL can have some success. Like I said, it’s possible to work with these, and it would make sense to use them if you had to view sensitive documents. When you’re working, say, on a train, it’s the perfect antidote for shoulder surfers and other car noses. Of course, for anyone who makes the inevitable joke about watching adult content without anyone noticing, have a cookie.

What TCL has managed to do is, on several occasions, solve the puzzle as to why you might want to use a home theater. There are times and places you can do this for both work (more or less) and play (in certain circumstances). Unfortunately, while the company was making great strides in resolving technical issues, they didn’t have a lot of time to devote to making the experience comfortable.

Your mileage may vary, but I found using these glasses to be a delightful experience until it got painful. It is, at the moment, impossible to use them for an extended period of time before something starts to hurt, either inside or outside of your head.

One of the more problematic design decisions TCL has made was to include a trio of nose pads that push the screen up and up. The idea is to keep the screens aligned with your eyes, but the unfortunate result is that you have to put the nose pads all the way down your nose. Like, to the point where you feel like, regardless of size, it feels like you’re wearing those metal clips to close your nostrils that professional swimmers wear at sporting events.

Then there are the Temple Tips, the part of the temples of the glasses that bend down to cling to your ears. While with regular glasses these tips are semi-plastic and can be adjusted by an optician (or at home, with a hair dryer and a little trickery), the temples of the Nxtwear G are rigid. Extended periods of wear means you’ll get two slices of hard plastic stuck in the soft, fleshy part of your head behind your ears.

The solution I found to alleviate both of these issues, at least for a moment, was to remove the nose pads completely and wear them like I would with regular glasses. After all, as a seasoned spec wearer, I accepted that the experience might not be as good – but I found it to be actually better. I had a full view of the screen and it was much more comfortable to wear for long periods of time. But, unfortunately, the reason the nose pads hold your schnozz’s glasses is to keep them from getting hot, as the Nxtwear G generates a decent amount of heat (no heat, heat, Warning).

And then, finally, there’s the problem of eye strain which, no matter how I wore these things, always meant I had to give up for significant periods of rest. Maybe it is because I am nearsighted and therefore my eyes are already weak and weak compared to the average personal cinema lover. But I doubt it and I suspect a lot of people can run the risk of eye strain headaches if they use it for too long at a time.

Now I bet you are thinking “Gee, if the price of these accessories were comparable to that of an accessory, I would take a pair just to see what it is.” I don’t blame TCL for needing to recoup some of the development costs for these things, but boy. These glasses are on sale at Oz for AUS $ 899, which is the best part of $ 700 in the United States. Heck, you can buy TCL’s new 20 Pro 5G for $ 500 and hold it close to your face and pat yourself on the back for your economy.

The jokes aside, I think TCL deserves huge credit for creating what can only be described as the best portable display ever. And if you can, I would say you should go give them a try, as my compromises in comfort may not affect you. And TCL deserves a healthy dose of making these things cheaper and a little less prone to pinching, because we’re so close. Honestly, if personal theaters are going to be successful, it will be because it follows the model that TCL has set. It just needs a few tweaks.