Augmented and mixed reality: smart glasses, AR apps, Microsoft HoloLens, Apple Vision Pro and real-world overlays.
In 2018 you held two plastic wands. In 2026 the headset reads your fingers, a wristband reads your nerves, and an AI agent reads the room. How input changed in VR and AR, why Meta's next headset ships without controllers, and why a Chinese company is strapping cameras to people's wrists to teach robots.
While Snap and Meta argue over $1,300 and $2,195 face computers, XREAL quietly shipped 62-gram glasses that turn any phone or Steam Deck into a 147-inch screen for $299. They are not augmented reality in the science-fiction sense. They are something better: a product.
On 20 October 2026 Snap named Robert Downey Jr. honorary Chief Customer Experience Officer for Specs, its $2,195 AR glasses. It is the most on-the-nose casting in tech history, and it might be the smartest thing Snap has done with Spectacles in a decade.
Lenovo launches the first phone featuring Google's Tango design
Build a new world on your kitchen table, see how furniture looks without the heavy lifting, measure your space without taking out a tape measure.
Storyfab reinvents video storytelling by giving you all the tools to create short films using virtual actors, decors and special effects and share them with everyone.
Augmented reality has long sounded like a wild futuristic concept, but the technology has actually been around for years.
it seems we're headed towards a future where the phrase my vision is augmented won't just mean that someone is doing the best JC denton impression
There was a fish in the bathtub. That was one of the first things we saw in the hotel room after we put on Microsoft’s developer-ready version of HoloLens, the augmented reality headset it believes will transform the way we learn, work, and play.
