Magic Leap, One of the Biggest Flops in AR, Is Back with Smart Glasses

Magic Leap is back.

The tech company, now owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, today revealed a prototype for a pair of Android XR smart glasses made as a "reference design for the Android XR ecosystem," and announced it had extended its partnership with Google. The AR glasses have thicker-than-normal frames, but not ridiculously so, and seem to have a camera. But that’s about all we know: there's no word on availability or what the glasses actually do.

While Magic Leap didn't reveal a ton of concrete details about its new shades, it did say they combine "Magic Leap’s waveguides and optics with Google’s Raxium microLED light engine" with the goal being an all-day AR wearable.

"Magic Leap and Google’s collaboration is focused on developing AR glasses prototypes that balance visual quality, comfort, and manufacturability," the company said in a statement.

Magic Leap and Google's spotty history in AR

That all sounds good, but both companies have stepped into AR in the past and released products that fell far short of expectations. Back in 2018, there was a lot of excitement among tech-heads about the Magic Leap One, but the $2,295 augmented and virtual reality headset fizzled, selling an estimated 6,000 units in six months. Magic Leap abandoned Magic Leap One back in 2024, but it's apparently ready to jump back in with something new.

Google has an even deeper history in AR that didn't catch on, having released Google Glass in 2014 with a great amount of hype, and basically abandoned the product in 2015 after privacy concerns and limited functionality resulted in disappointing sales.

To be fair, both Google Glass and the Magic Leap One had potential, but may have been ahead of their time—mid-2010s hardware couldn’t deliver on the possibilities at a price that was reasonable. It's a different world in 2025, when everyone from Apple to Meta to dozens of smaller players are hoping to release killer AR glasses.

The AR-smart glasses space is getting mighty crowded, but the goal isn't really this generation of smart glasses, it's the next one. The game-behind-the-game for the tech companies is creating a pair of smart glasses that are functional and flexible enough to replace your phone entirely. In some ways, we're tantalizing close to a pair of shades that can replace all other screens—the displays in glasses like the XReal One are amazing. But other technical limitations, like a battery that will last a reasonable amount of time, and an intuitive control system, are still on the horizon. For now.

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