The requested test review of Dream Glass Flow was carried out during travel over the weekend. Here is what I found out:
In the airport lounge
First, let me say this: I own an Oculus Quest 2, but I have given up wearing it in public or traveling with it...... Finally, there is a AR glass that can be worn in public! I like the way the glasses look. Plus, it is indeed very very light. The only indication that the glass is a smart AR glass is the cable.
I wore the glasses and watched news videos on the glass screen while eating breakfast in the airport lounge. That was really cool! The glasses offer great potential to multi-task and interact with the real world while wearing them. For instance, see the following demo video:
With a low-light background, screen clarity and color contrast were okay. The video screen begins to fade away as soon as you look at brighter backgrounds without any shade. I'm not sure if it is a design issue or if it is supposed to happen that way. It would be awesome if the glass could deliver consistent high-contrast and visible screen images even when facing the sun.
My solution to this problem is to put on a full-light-proof glass cover. It completely blocks out any light from the outside. The screen is clear and vibrant no matter where I look. Check out this demo video to see what I mean.
On the flight
While cruising at 36,000 feet, I tried one of my favoriate mobile games, Rise of Kingdoms. It played smoothly on my glasses. I didn't feel any game lag or delay that I had initially anticipated.
Now let’s move on to the juicy part!
For years, I've felt that cell phone screens are just too small for 3A games like Rise of Kingdom. My fingers are too big and thick to command and move arround multiple tiny troops on a cell phone screen. That's why I am interested in using Dream Glass Flow to play mobile games on a portable and larger screen. While it is probably too early to say that Flow has hit a home run, the glass screen has worked as I expected so far!
Check out the video below to see how crisp the screen is! I picked up some character details from the Flow screen that I had never seen or paid any attention to before on my Iphone screen. The color performance of the glasses screen, on the other hand, was as good as my iphone. The smoothness of the motion pictures, as noted by others, is also impressive.
But there are some issues with my test product. The speakers on both beams were trash, as they provide very basic sound quality. I gave them 4 out of 10 in terms of performance. The connection cable should also be eliminated in upcoming product series to make these glasses truly cable-free.
Other considerations
For the initial connection, it was easy to connect the glass to my laptop. I used the TypeC-to-HDMI adapter in the test package.
Battery consumption of Flow is ok. I watched one movie, played some ROK during the 3 hour flight and the glass only consumed something between 1/4 and 1/3 of the total battery capacity of my iPhone. So, my guess is that a fully charged Iphone 14 pro max can carry the glass for 9-10 hours.
I also played around with the Cloud Computation Box for 3 hours, and after that, the battery was down from 4 bars to 2 bars. The total battery life of the Cloud Box is probably around 6 hours.
As for privacy, I had to complain that if I put on the half-transparent glass surface cover, people could see what I was watching from the outside. This was not mentioned in your IGG campaign! Please let people know about this!
For the other three glass covers (two frosted surface covers and one full-light-proof glass surface cover), the screen was not visible to the outside. Thus, as long as you don't use half-transparent glass surface cover, the viewing content is protected from prying eyes.
The demo 3D videos were spectacular! Way better than any of my past experience in 3D movie theatres. Thanks to the 3D video viewing player in the cloud computation box, it was confirmed by Dream Glass customer service that we could upload our own 3D side-by-side videos and watch them with the glass!
Conclusion
To me, Flow is not just a portal screen. Its high glass transparency, multi-tasking potential, and 3D video projection capability make it more than a "glorified portable 4K screen". It is clearly on the right path to be something great!
As a frequent traveler, I have attempted many portable device to do exactly what Flow is capable of doing during a trip. None of them have ever come close. For now, I am happy to wear Flow for news, live streaming, movies and games on a train, flight or taxi when cell phones or heavy laptops are the only devices to carry out the same tasks.
So, I am going to keep test glass along with the test box, and please send me a pair of my orderred glass as well. Thank you!
