Rokid Max review: Not quite AR, but a wearable 215-inch screen is still awesome

Tech brands have been throwing around the idea of augmented reality (AR) headsets and eyewear for nearly a decade. There are even substantial rumors that say Apple has a mixed-reality headset coming sometime this year. Unfortunately, up until this point, the products have been either exorbitantly priced to the point of being beyond niche or they're affordable and practical to use but don't actually augment any reality.

Chinese company Rokid's newest eyewear, the Rokid Max, fits into the latter camp. It's billed as a pair of AR smart glasses, but augmented reality applications are few and far between, and the existing ones are in need of polish. Instead, the Rokid Max is best used as a portable, wearable screen that "floats" in front of the wearer's face. The good news is that the Rokid Max is very good at doing this, and the best product of this type to do so yet.

About this review: This review was written after a month of testing the Rokid Max provided by Rokid. The company did not have input in this article.

Rokid Max: Pricing and availability

The Rokid Max is available for preorder now on Rokid's official site for $439 for just the glasses — down from $599 MSRP — or $508 for the glasses and wireless adapter. It will be available on Amazon in late April.

Hardware and design: Thinner, lighter, with adjustable diopters

The Rokid Max are glasses with a pair of Micro-OLED displays in each eye, and when plugged into a device like a smartphone or laptop, can project visuals that appear in front of the wearer's eyes like a floating screen. The Max is Rokid's second-generation product following 2021's Rokid Air, and it joins an increasingly crowded market of consumer-grade AR glasses, with products from established tech brands like Lenovo and TCL, as well as hot Chinese upstarts like nReal (the latter is currently the market leader in this category).

I've tested the most recent AR glasses from the aforementioned brands, and Rokid Max can claim supremacy in several areas. The first is that they're the lightest AR glasses yet at 75g. They're also the thinnest when measured from the front of the glasses to the inner part that touches the face.

The Max also has adjustable diopters, so those with near-sightedness can twist the dial at the top of each display to adjust visuals between 0.00D to -6.00D. I have 20/20 vision and do not need glasses, so I personally had no use for them. But my friend with near-sightedness tried it and confirmed she could adjust visuals, so she didn't have to wear contacts to see clearly.

There's the aforementioned directional speaker system located on the top and bottom of each arm, which pumps out fuller audio than the same speakers from nReal Air, TCL NXTWEAR S, or Rokid's previous glasses. Of course, if you want full immersion, you'll still want to use wireless earbuds.

The pair of Sony Micro-OLED screens pump out FHD visuals equivalent to having a 215-inch screen placed about 20 feet away. Like other recent AR glasses, the displays use birdbath optic technology, which sees the screen pointed downwards with the visual reflected back to our eyes. This design eases eyestrain significantly (there isn't a display pointed right at your eyeballs) and gives off the illusion the screen is further back (20 feet away), so you don't feel like you're sitting front row of an IMAX theater. The screen was large enough to fill up most of my vision, but not so much that it feels overwhelming.

There's no good way for me to share the visual content I can see in article format, so the best I could do is stick a camera behind the glasses and snap photos. Rest assured, the actual visuals I see are much sharper and more detailed than what the photos below show.

By default, the visuals are displayed over the real world, which you can see through. But Rokid includes a lens cover that allows you to project the visuals onto a black space. I prefer the latter, as it's much more immersive. If I'm in a dark room, it really feels like I have a huge floating screen hovering above my face.

Visuals pumped out by the Rokid Max cover 106% of the sRGB color gamut according to Rokid. I wasn't able to test this myself, but I wore these to edit videos on my MacBook, and the colors were close enough to resemble my 2023 MacBook Pro's display. The glasses are mostly a plasticky affair (as are more glasses), and they fit comfortably, with removable nose pieces and hinges that allow the glass arms to open wide.

Buttons are kept to a minimum. There are two on top of the right arm: one for adjusting screen brightness and switching between 2D/3D playback modes, and a volume rocker that does what the obvious. One area Rokid differs from other glasses I've tried is it has its own volume control separate from the phone's internal volume. I think I prefer nReal's approach where adjusting the volume rocker on the glasses directly controls the phone's actual volume. It just seems less complicated.

The Max has no internal storage or chip. Instead, it draws power and content directly from the source device. The connection is made via a USB-C cable, which plugs into the end of the left arm, but there's also an option to use a wireless projector. But this latter method isn't truly wireless. You still have to plug the Max into the projector, it's just that the projector itself is untethered from the source device, like your smartphone.

For the most part, using the Rokid Max is a plug-and-play affair. You should be able to mirror the screens of most modern smartphones as soon as you plug them in. Some phones, like Samsung, will even ask if you want to turn on Samsung DeX. As mentioned in the intro, screen mirroring is the best way to use these glasses, and thankfully, it works well.

Software: You don't need it for now, but the potential is there

Rokid built a companion app for the glasses, available only on Android for now (but Rokid said iOS version is coming). The app will launch an AR platform that looks like an iOS homescreen in landscape format. From here, you can open various apps that can be displayed in front of the virtual space. You can "map" these onto specific sections of your field of vision, so you can have, say Instagram hovering in the upper left, a web browser sitting below, and a Twitter feed on the right side. These windows don't just sit in a single pane, you can push some further back or closer to you, as the space feels infinite (or at least as far as your eyes can see). The glasses include sensors for 3DoF (three degrees of freedom) head tracking, so you can even "look around" by turning your head if you want to place more windows out of your direct field of vision.

The experience is cool but in need of refinement. You control the UI with your phone screen, which acts as a touchpad, but there's a minor but noticeable lag between your finger swipes on the touchpad and what you see on the screen. And most of the apps are basic for now. For most platforms (like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube), you have to log on to the actual website in the web browser and continue that way. It would be much better if there were dedicated apps.

One area where Rokid could be ahead of competitors like TCL and nReal is that its platform does have a small selection of AR games for download. I couldn't try the games during the review period due to the platform not being ready, but Rokid promises they will be ready by the time the glasses are officially on sale.

Why you should use the Rokid Max

As I've said a couple of times already, I mostly ignored the AR platform due to the software needing polish. Instead, I just use the glasses to mirror my phone or laptop screen. While this is hardly the AR experience being promised, I find the ability to have a large portable screen very useful.

For example, I work off laptops at coffee shops often, and when I plug in the Rokid Max, not only do I get a larger display than what my laptop offers, but the screen can be kept at normal head level without me needing to look downwards. This is much better for my neck and posture.

The Rokid Max has also become a must-carry item for me when I go on flights because the display is much better than most airplane screens. Just pre-download content from Netflix or Amazon Prime to your phone before a flight, plug the glasses in, wear a good pair of wireless earbuds with noise cancelation, and watch movies much better than you ever had before.

And as weird as this may sound, I also enjoy wearing the glasses in bed to watch movies. I don't have to prop an iPad by the bed or hold a phone over my face. I just lay flat on my back and have the screen hover in front of my face.

Should you buy the Rokid Max?

You should buy the Rokid Max if:

• You want an immersive, portable display to consume content on the go
• You do a lot of work off laptops and could benefit from having a larger screen that's head level

You should not buy the Rokid Max if:

• You already own the nReal Air (the Rokid Max is better, but not by that much)
• You expect actual augmented reality applications that you can use right away
• You are on a tight budget

I am aware that these glasses do not deliver on the promises of augmented reality and all the benefits that it may one day bring. These glasses right now are just wearable screens, but I'm OK with that. I have a lot of use for a portable large screen that doesn't take up much space in my bag. I work off laptops and fly enough that I find these genuinely useful, and I would absolutely buy a pair myself whenever this review unit has to go back to Rokid.

But I'm not sure most people would shell out $439 for just a portable screen. So perhaps they should wait until the product matures even more, or it goes on sale. I do think the future of AR is bright, considering Apple seems so assured of it. We're just not quite there with this current crop of glasses.