Chinese consumer technology company Oppo today unveiled a new wearable device designed to clip onto glasses called Air Glass.

The company describes the device as using “assisted reality” and not augmented reality: Instead of overlaying holographic objects on the user’s vision, it displays text and other 2D information. Users can call up information such as cycling directions, weather and real-time translations.

“Oppo has been exploring the possibilities of Extended Reality for a long time, and with Air Glass, we have finally created a smart glass product that is truly within the reach of consumers,” said Levin Liu, vice president of Oppo.

The device consists of a single pane of glass with a display, similar to a monocle, and is designed to snap onto custom frames offered by Oppo using magnets housed in the device itself. It comes with two frames, a round silver half-frame and black full-frames designed for people with corrective lenses. The company said that the design was “inspired by the wings of a cicada.”

“As its futuristic design suggests, Air Glass is set to revolutionize the way we view and consume information,” Liu said. “The easy-to-use display can present key messages we need right in front of our eyes. With Air Glass, the world will never look the same again.”

To power the “assisted reality” component, Air Glass uses a custom-designed Micro Spark Projector developed by Oppo, one of the most compact protection systems in the industry with a brightness of up to 3 million nits. It uses an optical waveguide to support two display modes with 16 and 256 levels of grayscale. In the provided videos demonstrating the product, the “grayscale” appears with a green hue.

Users will be able to control the Air Glass using an app on an Oppo Smart Watch 2 or any Oppo smartphone installed with ColorOS 11 using the Smart Glass App. And it features a large number of interactions, including swiping along the side, voice, gesture recognition and head motion.

At launch, the Air Glass will have a large number of connected applications including access to weather, calendar, health, a teleprompter, navigation and translation.

The translation feature can be paired between two users of Air Glass, allowing the voice input from one user to be automatically translated into the target language of the other user and displayed in the monocle. The product currently supports Mandarin Chinese and English two-way translation, with more languages to be supported soon.

The Air Glass is slated to launch sometime in the first quarter of 2022 but as a “limited release” and only in mainland China. The company also did not release any details as to the product’s pricing.

Image: Oppo