Day two of the annual Snapdragon Summit, hosted by chip maker Qualcomm, hosted the unveiling of the Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 – the company’s first dedicated augmented reality chipset – designed to better serve the AR experience through smart glasses and other similar wearables.
Qualcomm is already well established in the XR space (Virtual Reality/VR, Mixed Reality/MR, and Augmented Reality/AR), with the Meta Quest 2 and Pico 4 notably running on the company’s latest XR2 platform, while the fresh Meta-front set The Quest Pro headset – which plays with mixed reality lightly thanks to support for full-color transition – is one of the first headsets to run on Qualcomm’s upgraded XR2 Plus chipset. The experiences and devices the AR2 Gen 1 is supposed to support are a bit different though.
Until now, even existing augmented reality wearables such as Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 have had their size and form partly dictated by the size and power requirements of the current chipsets they run on. Despite approaching a look that more closely matches conventional everyday sunglasses, even the company’s own Snapdragon XR1-powered AR reference design has massive arms and unusual proportions to accommodate the XR1 chipset.
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Despite the somewhat misleading name, the newly unveiled Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 is Qualcomm’s first attempt at creating a dedicated AR platform that better fits the shape of the augmented reality glasses science fiction promised us; a head-worn AR system that doesn’t have to sacrifice the dimensions of conventional sunglasses the way previous attempts have done, while offering better connectivity and lower latency than previous devices.
Instead of placing a single SoC in the bridge or arms of a pair of smart glasses, the AR2 Gen 1’s three components are separated to reduce the platform’s overall footprint; making it easier to adapt to a wider range of formats.
Compared to the XR2, the AR2 Gen 1 has a 40% smaller PCB and 45% less wiring, and the new reference design Qualcomm unveiled at the summit placed the main AR processor in one arm, the connectivity module in the other, and the AR co-processor in the bridge.
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By offloading the heavier computing to the supporting device (such as a smartphone), the AR2 Gen 1 hardware can instead focus on delivering a faster and more responsive experience, punctuated by the same new FastConnect 7800 WiFi module found in the company’s newly announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, supporting cutting-edge Wi-Fi 7 speeds with less than 2ms latency.
What’s more, this focused approach means the AR2 Gen 1 also delivers 50% less power consumption and 2.5x better AI performance compared to the XR2 when it comes to tasks like object recognition and hand tracking.
Companies like LG, Nreal, Oppo, Pico, TCL, and Xiaomi have already committed to making their own AR devices running on AR2 Gen 1, with the potential for hardware-backed 6DoF tracking, eye tracking, and many other great AR features expected to arrive in the next wave of devices.
However, until those thinner, slimmer, more responsive AR2 Gen 1 smart glasses hit the market, check out or check out the best VR headsets you can (and should) buy right now.