Rokid Max & Station review: A perfect AR entertainment suite

Rokid Max now has a companion in Rokid Station running Google TV. Does this make the Rokid AR Max the best AR glasses in the market? Let’s find out.

The fledgling AR glasses market is gradually picking up pace. While AR glasses don’t offer a fully immersive experience like AR/MR headsets, they are instead designed for more practical purposes.

Rokid’s Max AR glasses are no different. Along with the new Rokid Station, the world’s first Google-certified Android TV Device for AR glasses, these glasses offer a unique perspective on personal digital entertainment.

While the Rokid Max AR glasses look like slightly bulky sunglasses, they come with Sony’s micro OLED displays, which project a 215-inch virtual screen, mimicking a theatre-like effect.

The Rokid Max uses “birdbath” optic technology, where the screen is pointed downwards, and we see a reflection. Since you’re not staring at a bright display close to your eyes, it is specifically helpful in consuming content for a longer duration.

We’ve had a chance to explore the Rokid Max glasses and Rokid station for a few weeks, and here’s what we feel about them.

Rokid Max AR glasses key specs

• Screen: OLED
• Resolution: 1920×1080 pixel RGB per eye with sRGB 106% color gamut
• Brightness: Up to 600 nits
• Contrast ratio: 100,000:1
• Field-of-View: 50-degrees
• Refresh rate: 120Hz
• Projected image: 215-inch
• Diopter Adjustment: 0.00D to -6.00D
• Two open-ear speakers
• Dual microphone array, Dual HD Directional Speakers
• 3DoF head tracking

Included in the box: nose pad, protective case, detachable cables, glass cover

Rokid Station key specs

• Storage: 32GB
• RAM: 2GB
• OS: Android TV 12
• Battery: 5,000 mAh
• Connectivity: Mini-HDMI, USB Type C, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 5
• Weight: 148g

Design

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Rokid Max AR glasses

The Rokid Max AR glasses look like a pair of fancy sunglasses, only thicker and bulkier than most. Even though they look heavy, they’re surprisingly light, and a few minutes into a movie or a show, you won’t even realize you’re wearing them.

That said, if you’re wearing these glasses in public, you might get odd looks from people trying to decipher what they are precisely. In any case, they raise curiosity, and we’ve had a few inquisitive souls approaching us and left awe-struck when we wore them while enjoying a movie on a train journey.

These priceless interactions make you realize that AR glasses have a large market to capture, and it just needs one big product to really bring them to the mainstream.

Coming back to the glasses, the Rokid Max is nothing short of an engineering marvel when you consider that the entire system is housed within the glasses. The down-firing display sits right above the eyes. There are two physical diopters to adjust visuals for people who wear prescription glasses. We used this feature every time and couldn’t be more thankful to Rokid for making it easy for bespectacled people. These dials can help you adjust visuals between 0.00D to -6.00D.

The right arm has physical controls for brightness and volume apart from down-firing speakers. A wear sensor in the right arm helps pause the content automatically when the glasses are removed. Dual microphones are located on top of both arms. The USB-C connectivity port is located at the end of the left arm, which is a great design choice considering the wire goes behind your ear and connects to the Rokid Station, your laptop, a phone, or a gaming console.

The overall build quality of the glasses is premium, and despite so much tech that goes in, it isn’t heavy nor has any part that feels flimsy.

Rokid Station

The Rokid Station is a compact multimedia box that is designed in a way that it can easily slide into your pocket. It’s slightly more significant than your palm but has smooth curves making it extremely easy to operate.

It resembles a remote control of a modern smart TV with six front buttons, a power button, the charging indicator LEDs on the right, and volume control on the left. These buttons are easily reachable and have tactile feedback when pressed.

Thanks to its size, the Rokid Station is easy to operate when you’re streaming content on the glasses, and you are not required to take off the glasses often to ensure the correct button is pressed.

It has a couple of ports at the bottom. A USB Type-C port can charge the 5000 mAh battery on the Rokid Station, while the Micro HDMI port can cast content to the glasses. Thanks to a separate charging port, you can keep using the Rokid Station while charging.

Rokid Max AR glasses features

The Rokid Max sports a Sony Micro OLED display that projects images downwards which is reflected in front of your eyes. You can watch content in AR mode, where the content is projected as a layer on top of what you see around you. Additionally, you can slap on a glass cover that offers a pitch-black environment for an unobstructed viewing experience. In both cases, the content consumption experience is unparalleled.

The massive 215-inch screen that you see is vibrant and colorful, mimicking a theatre-like experience. However, we noticed some aggressive chromatic aberration on the corners of the displayed content when we used the glass cover. It’s nitpicking, however, but it’s more pronounced while viewing darker scenes.

The Rokid Max AR glasses can cast content from almost anywhere. It can also be used as a personal multimedia device if paired with the Rokid Station and has an AR mode. The AR mode, however, only works with a handful of devices. The list of these devices can be found here.

While a compatible smartphone powers AR Mode, we had many phones to try this feature. Unfortunately, the newly launched and super powerful RedMagic 8S Pro wasn’t supported, but thankfully, we had a bunch of Samsung flagship devices to test this out.

The AR experience needs to be improved, and the bundled app needs some work. You also have an app store to download VR games and apps. We tried downloading a few but could only make a handful of them actually work.

Rokid Max AR experience

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The bundled Rokid app is only helpful when setting up the glasses. However, once you connect the glasses to a compatible smartphone, you can unlock AR experiences. The app could be much better and easy to navigate. Once you tap on the AR Space tab; you have three options – Recommended, My App, and AR mode.

The recommended tab takes you to a list of AR apps and games you can download, My app shows the apps you’ve downloaded, and AR mode allows you to interact with the installed apps. The AR Mode again has its App repository, which strangely asks you to go to the “Mobile phone’s app store to get the app.”

If you download the apps/games using the Recommended tab, it downloads the apk file directly on the phone, which seems fishy. When we tried playing Reflex Unit 2, we got an alert saying it was an evaluation version, and after multiple attempts, the game didn’t start at all, although we could hear in-game music and had game controls showing up on the phone. Another app also offered a similar experience.

Besides these, you can view your content, like images and videos, in the 3D mode and watch content in 2D, LR3D, and UD3D settings. The VR settings here include 2D, VR180, and VR 360. However, there is little that you can do as the app controls need to be improved.

Rokid Station features

The Rokid Station is a portable Android TV box on Android OS 12. It is straightforward to set up and even comes with its Bluetooth-powered remote. Oddly, we felt the remote could have been avoided as we were only required to use it once while setting the Rokid Station. After the setup, it’s just lying in the box. However, it might be helpful to plug the Rokid Station into a standalone display.

Since it runs the official version of Android TV 12, you can visit the Play Store, download your favorite streaming app, and even watch YouTube on a large screen. Oddly, it doesn’t have Netflix, and we’re unsure why it is missing. That said, you can always side-load apps if you want.

Rokid Station battery

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The Rokid Station comes with a 5000 mAh battery lasting around five hours. If you lower the brightness on the glasses, you might get some more juice, but why compromise when you can charge the Rokid Station using a power bank or directly as well?

It can also double up as an emergency power backup if your phone runs out of juice or can help you transfer files from one device to another.

Watching content on Rokid Max and Rokid Station

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Watching movies, web series, and documentaries using the Rokid Max plugged into the Rokid station offers a perfect personal entertainment setup. The audio from the glasses is beamed towards the ear and is loud enough so that it doesn’t disturb others in the room.

If you want a more immersive listening experience, you can always connect a pair of wireless earbuds. Since the Glasses do not have any battery or computing prowess, you’ll have to pair the buds with the Rokid Station. The process is as simple as pairing any Bluetooth device with your Android-powered smart TV.

You can even download movies on your preferred platform, like Prime Video, or transfer content to the Rokid Station for consuming content on the go.

A person with myopia or far-sightedness can easily tweak the vision using adjustable diopters, making removing your prescription glasses and consuming content easy. While this enables you to use the Rokid Max for content, it doesn’t help you interact with other stuff around you. If your degree of myopia exceeds the 0.00D to -6.00 diopter adjustment, you can buy Rokid Max Lens Inserts from the official website.

Gaming performance

You can use the Rokid Max and Station combo to play Android games on the Play Store. All you need is a wireless controller that you can pair with the Station, and you’re good to go.

You can connect the Rokid Max AR Glasses with your gaming PC/laptop or Steam Deck for an immersive gaming session. The 120 Hz refresh rate can make your gameplay even smoother if you have the rig to run it.

We played games like Forza Horizon 5, Fifa, Call of Duty, and others, on our Windows gaming laptop, and the overall experience was nothing short of amazing. Playing games on such a massive screen is highly immersive and one of a kind.

Since the glasses do not cover the eyes fully, you might still get distracted by stuff (especially pets) moving close to you. We’d suggest using the plastic cover to get a blacked-out background for a better visual experience.

The Verdict: 4/5

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The Rokid Station and the Rokid Max AR glasses are the perfect partners. Together they offer a great multimedia experience. Be it watching games in the room when your partner or kids are asleep or watching your favorite web series while preparing coffee in the kitchen, it’s almost perfect.

The glasses can be used with your PC or laptop for gaming and work, proving an ideal companion. However, the AR features have let us down and need improvement.

While there are many use cases for these glasses, and if you have a compelling one, this combo could be a great investment, at least for your entertainment. 

That said, the only loose end here is in the AR experience, and if that is improved, the Rokid Max AR will be too compelling a device to ignore. 

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