Microsoft has revealed pay-as-you-go pricing for Xbox Cloud Gaming, with introductory packages costing $3.99 for 10 hours, $7.99 for 25 hours, or $11.99 for 50 hours. Starting in November, Game Pass subscribers will receive only 5 to 15 included cloud-gaming hours depending on their tier and will have to buy additional time — even to stream games they’ve already purchased. Gizmodo reports: Back in September, before these changes were announced, you paid full purchase price for a game that isn’t in the Game Pass library on the assumption that you’d be able to play it via cloud streaming. Maybe your hardware doesn’t meet the specs for this fancy new game. Maybe your gaming PC exploded/got stuck on a ship/had a component fail. Maybe you just want to be able to play it in bed on your laptop. Whatever. Now you find that in addition to the cost of the game you bought, you’re going to be paying by the hour to play it once your monthly allotment of hours is up. If this is you, I expect you’re not particularly amused. Thankfully, Microsoft notes that the playtime you purchase “remains available until it’s used,” so you won’t have to worry about losing any unused time between gaming sessions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Last year you might recall how Elon Musk’s far right wing extremism (and endlessly incoherent behavior) had many countries reconsidering their use of his low-Earth orbit satellite company, Starlink. It was driven by the fact that Musk had restricted Ukraine’s access to the service near Crimea because he personally opposed Ukraine’s military aims (defending itself from unprovoked invasion by authoritarians).

Competitors are lagging behind SpaceX on LEO satellites, though the events prompted Germany to help fund Ukraine’s use of alternative fledgling LEO satellite communications options, including Eutelsat. Other competitors, including Jeff Bezos’ Leo, should make market inroads over the next few years, but most deployments are far behind Starlink’s 11,150 orbiting LEO satellites.

Now the problem has popped up again, this time with a Wall Street Journal report that Musk pressured the Trump administration to throttle Ukraine’s Starshield (the military version of Starlink), undermining Ukraine’s ability to communicate and engage in military drone operations.

Musk is a cornerstone of a well-funded global authoritarian alliance and, like Trump, wants global authoritarians to succeed. Both Trump and Musk are upset with Ukraine’s efforts to target Russian oil production facilities (in part because even higher domestic gas prices threaten Republican midterm success, and the success of Musk’s unrelenting assault on democracy and foundational civil rights):

“Both Musk and President Trump have expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.”

Just a week earlier both Trump and Musk vacillated between pretending they didn’t know what was happening — to each trying to blame the other for the slowdowns, with Reuters originally insisting that the order to throttle Ukraine’s Starlink connections “came from the White House.”

Regular Starlink terminals have automatic network throttling protection if a connected vehicle operates in excess of 70 km/hr. Starshield, in contrast, is supposed to have no cap, but has been throttled if drones or vehicles exceed speeds of 90 km/hr. The throttling reduced Ukraine’s ability to use the network for both offensive and defensive drone operations, causing “tens of millions of dollars in losses,” Ukraine officials said.

At his right wing propaganda website formerly known as Twitter, Musk also tried to claim the order came from the White House:

But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting indicate that many sources believe the decision to throttle Ukraine’s connectivity ultimately came from Musk himself:

“During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts seeking a unified understanding and subsequent message that the company and Trump administration coordinated ahead of Musk’s directive, the people said.

Some U.S. officials say that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. But a person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses.”

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Trump has repeatedly feigned ignorance, as recently as Monday insisting “I don’t know who it was, but I’d like to find out.” The stage play is for the benefit of the dwindling number of Reagan-era Republicans who (correctly) find a U.S. alliance with Putin to be traitorous. Secretary of Defense head Pete Hegseth tried to falsely claim that Ukraine somehow violated Starlink’s terms of service:

“We haven’t pulled anything back. There are terms of service that ultimately need to be complied to. And that’s where Starlink has the option to make those decisions, but nothing’s changed from our view. We haven’t made any directives or anything like that,” Hegseth told reporters, adding that “we wish the Ukrainians, obviously, success.”

U.S. Secretary ‌of State Marco Rubio also issued statements implying that the White House wasn’t fully informed about Musk’s decision to unilaterally imperil Ukraine’s military operations. He also claimed that unilaterally harming U.S. ally military operations is apparently a decision for Elon Musk, not the White House, if you needed further evidence of just how comically corrupt the U.S. has become.

Ukraine says their satellite connectivity is still throttled, imperiling operations.

Ukraine’s relationship with Trump has soured (further) in recent weeks after the White House temporarily suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Trump’s also been broadly criticized for suspending Russia sanctions and greenlighting diesel imports from Moscow, something he apparently hoped would lower U.S. gas prices and save him from an expected midterm lashing for Republicans.

Obviously the world’s richest man, and Trump’s biggest billionaire donor, unilaterally making decisions that prevent a U.S. ally from defending itself from authoritarian aggression is positively grotesque. As is the non-transparent game of patty cake and finger pointing in the wake of the decision. As is any telecom provider leveraging its monopoly to exert this level of political control.

Musk’s decision to arbitrarily throttle Ukraine’s Starlink usage appears largely to be an act of ideological and financial self-interest. Higher gas prices mean midterm trouble for Musk’s preferred global ideology (authoritarianism dictated by the whims of mad oligarchs). Trump and Musk are also trying to drive Kyiv to the negotiations table with an eye on ceding significant territorial control to Putin.

Republican control of the White House has been immeasurably valuable for Musk. Not only is Starlink now tightly woven to military operations and funding, but a Republican rewrite of the 2021 infrastructure bill is driving what could be billions in taxpayer subsidies into the back pocket of the billionaire for Starlink service he had already planned to deploy without subsidization.

You’d like to think that future U.S. administrations realize that Musk is a very clear national security threat and act accordingly. You’d also like to think Musk’s extremism drives the evolution of more robust competition in the fledgling LEO satellite space. Preferably before Musk’s global authoritarian alliance completely dismantles what’s left of representative democracy worldwide.

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GovTech expects roughly 270 to 350 employees to be affected over the next two years, including a third round of layoffs.

The Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) has retrenched 38 employees, in the second of three planned rounds of layoffs. The cuts are meant to reduce reliance on vendors and let the team take greater ownership of its products.

The 38 affected roles were primarily structured around traditional project delivery, GovTech said in a media reply on Oct 22.

GovTech also reviewed other employees.

“Following the workforce review, 106 officers will remain in their current roles, while another 106 are eligible for conversion and apprenticeship pathways to transition into new roles,” said GovTech, adding that those doing apprenticeships will be supported throughout the transition process.

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The agency said it has prioritised retaining, retraining and redeploying its officers wherever possible, as it did in the first phase.

The first round of layoffs began in Jul, when 93 of GovTech’s 3,900-strong workforce were retrenched. The agency expects a total of 7% to 9% (roughly 270 to 350 employees in total) of its workforce to be affected over the next two years, including a third round. The exercise affects staff deployed to 23 government agencies.

GovTech said it will continue working with the Public Service Division, Skills and Workforce Development Agency, and Amalgamated Union of Statutory Board Employees to provide career coaching, job matching and placement assistance.

The agency said in Jul that retrenched staff would receive one month’s salary for every year of service, capped at 25 years, plus a three-month ex-gratia payment, and salary and benefits through a six-week handover and notice period.

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Explaining the need for the changes, GovTech chairman Chng Kai Fong said that critical systems increasingly demand in-house capabilities, so the agency can respond and adjust quickly to national needs.

As the world grows more digital, he said, modern technological development requires far more control and agility, and the need for critical government digital infrastructure has “grown tremendously.”

Left unchanged, he warned, “legacy systems become harder to secure, harder to change and more vulnerable to failure.”

GovTech needs people who can define problems, shape architecture, make sound build-or-buy decisions and defend its systems, Chng said. “Vendors will remain important partners, but accountability for our core systems now sits with us.”

He pointed to Singpass, Parents Gateway and CDC vouchers as examples: “These cannot be specified once, handed to a vendor and considered done. Teams must build, operate, secure and keep improving them, with full accountability.”

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The agency expects to employ more people at the end of the exercise, Chng said. “We need more software engineers, product managers, designers, data specialists and cybersecurity professionals.”

Checks by Vulcan Post on Oct 23 found around 276 open positions listed by GovTech on Careers@Gov, the civil service jobs portal, including software engineers, product managers, product operations specialists, data scientists and engineers, and designers.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: CMG

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Helion Energy, the Everett, Wash., startup racing to build the world’s first fusion plant, is expanding its semiconductor development and manufacturing efforts. The company today announced a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $175 million in funding for a three-year program to support R&D tied to semiconductor technology for commercial fusion energy.

The funds are available through the CHIPS Research and Development Office. Under the deal, which remains to be finalized, Commerce would receive a $175 million non-voting equity interest in Helion.

Helion is also putting $50 million of private investment toward the semiconductor effort.

The semiconductor initiative has two focal areas:

• More than $100 million will support R&D and manufacturing in Everett, focused on next-generation, high-voltage semiconductors and advanced packaging, which integrates multiple semiconductor devices into modules for use in its systems.
• About $80 million will support R&D for next-generation semiconductor development in partnership with GlobalFoundries, a chip manufacturer with operations in Vermont, New York and overseas.

Helion is working to build a power plant that produces energy from fusion — smashing together small atoms in reactions akin to those that create the sun’s energy. Dozens of companies globally are chasing fusion, but none so far have shown that their technology can make more energy than is required to produce fusion in the first place.

Helion’s system uses powerful electrical pulses to form and compress plasma — an electrically charged gas — to create fusion conditions. As the plasma expands against the machine’s magnetic field, it induces an electrical current in surrounding coils. The system is designed to recover electricity directly rather than using heat to drive a steam turbine.

High-voltage semiconductors — which are designed to control electricity at high voltages without breaking down — play an essential role in the system and need to operate at optimal efficiency to capture as much energy from the system as possible.

“The CHIPS Act goal, but also specifically our component in it, builds out the high-voltage semiconductor supply chain here in the United States, both on the R&D as well as the manufacturing,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO, in a GeekWire interview.

The work in Everett is expected to create more than 100 jobs. Helion’s workforce already includes a small team of semiconductor experts, and the company will be hiring for roles including materials scientists, semiconductor engineers, technicians and assemblers.

“This investment expands domestic research, secures critical supply chains, and creates high-paying American jobs,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement.

Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act with leadership from Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, and President Joe Biden signed it into law in August 2022. The law included $52.7 billion for semiconductor manufacturing, research and related activities.

Helion has raised more than $1.5 billion from investors. The $50 million for semiconductor work includes private funds already committed to the company and new cash; Kirtley did not specify how much additional funding it’s receiving, but said it includes new investors.

Helion’s expansion into semiconductor work comes as it continues fine-tuning its fusion technology at its Everett facility. At the same time, Helion is building Orion, its commercial-scale fusion plant in Malaga, Wash., near the Columbia River. It has an agreement to supply Microsoft with electricity from the facility and is targeting initial operations in 2028.

“So that’s still the plan,” Kirtley said. “We’re building Orion components and operating our other systems internally, and the work continues in parallel with all of this.”

The company has semiconductors available for use in Orion, primarily sourced from overseas vendors, he said. Kirtley expects some chips developed through the initiative to be used in Orion, potentially late in its construction.

The semiconductor effort adds another development track as Helion pursues the daunting goal of commercializing fusion energy.

“As soon as the award kicks off, we can build out the manufacturing capacity and the testing capacity, and in a parallel, do the research and development into the next generation of semiconductors as well,” Kirtley said.

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Loomerang made its first sale less than 12 hours after it went live in June. A customer in Houston bought a shirt designed by Joe, an independent artist in Japan.

Four months later, the Seattle-based marketplace for artist-designed T-shirts has 40 artists from 15 countries and recently expanded to India.

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Loomerang works by handling everything but the art. Artists open storefronts for free, set their own prices, and get 60% of what’s left after manufacturing costs. The company prints, inspects and ships every order, for now out of co-founder Matt Koyama’s garage.

Koyama described Loomerang as an attempt to run a more responsible business in a capitalist system, one built around people who spend their lives working on a craft.

“How can we reward them for that rather than making them feel like they’re being pushed to the margins constantly?” he said.

Loomerang was started in early 2024 by CEO Vijay Roy, a nearly 11-year Amazon veteran. He and Koyama had worked together on Amazon’s print-on-demand book business. Koyama joined as a co-founder a few months later and went full time this spring after leaving Xbox. A third co-founder, Arka Majumdar, leads design.

The company is bootstrapped. Its 14-person team is spread across Seattle, Minnesota and Kolkata, India, and the founders aren’t taking salaries.

Koyama, who also spent time in gaming, sees the same pattern across creative industries.

“The best stuff comes out of the indie space because these are the people that are willing to take risks, to invent, to revolutionize,” he said.

We caught up with Loomerang for this edition of GeekWire’s Startup Spotlight.

In 50 words or less, give us your startup’s elevator pitch?

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn’t. Loomerang connects people with the artists and stories behind their clothes: a tattoo artist in Seattle, a painter in Pune, India, an illustrator in Ibaraki, Japan. Artists launch apparel brands for free and keep most of the profit. We print, inspect and ship every shirt.

What problem are you obsessed with solving?

Starting an apparel brand is expensive. You need inventory, a manufacturer, a storefront and a way to reach customers. Most talented artists can’t take that risk. The ones who license their work to big brands usually get a small cut. We want to flip that by removing the upfront cost, handling production with real care, and making sure the artist keeps most of the profit.

What surprised you after talking to customers?

Almost nobody knew who designed their clothes. The exceptions were luxury pieces from designers who were already famous, or a shirt someone bought directly from an artist at a market or art fair. Those people could tell us the artist’s name and why the piece mattered to them. We’re trying to give every Loomerang purchase that same feeling.

How has AI changed the way you build your company?

We’re very intentional when using AI, because it’s a threatening presence for many of the artists we work with. We don’t use it to make art. We use it behind the scenes in our code and operations, and in tools that help artists with practical work like upscaling files. Keeping our overhead low means more of each sale goes to the artist.

What’s one thing people misunderstand about your startup?

People think it’s too good to be true. Artists pay nothing to join and keep 60% of the net profit on every sale. The first question is usually, what’s the catch? There isn’t one. The fashion industry has trained artists to expect a small cut of what their work earns. We think that’s backwards.

What’s the toughest decision you’ve made in the past year?

Holding off on new products. We planned to add hoodies and crewnecks before the holidays, but we decided to prioritize our artist roster and our quality promise. We’d rather ship fewer things we can stand behind than have a wide product range we aren’t fully ramped up on.

What’s the one piece of advice you give to other entrepreneurs?

Build something that creates value for people instead of taking it from them. It’s slower and harder, but those are the kinds of companies we need in today’s world. Technology keeps making it easier to cut people out. The best businesses will find ways to bring more of them in and lift them up.

We’ll know our company has made it when… 

An independent artist’s first thought for launching a brand is Loomerang, not a big platform that pays them a fraction of what their work is worth. When artists in Seattle, Pune and everywhere else make a real living through us. And when “who made this?” becomes a normal thing to ask about your clothes.

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iPhone Duo preorders are showing up at customers’ doorsteps ad in Apple Stores as Apple’s first foldable rolls out worldwide.

Two of the first customers at Apple Jing’an in Shanghai, and their dogs – image credit: Apple

Apple opened preorders for the iPhone Duo on October 16 ahead of its October 23 release date. It didn’t take long for release dates to slip and eventually stabilize in mid-January.
Deliveries typically begin in Australia and New Zealand, then Asia, Europe, and North America. Apple Stores generally open at 8:00 AM local time to cater to launch-day enthusiasts.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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The iPhone Duo is finally here. Apple’s first folding smartphone arrives seven years after Samsung pioneered the category with the Galaxy Fold. That gave Apple plenty of time to refine the hardware behind closed doors rather than in public view—and the results show: The Duo is a pretty dang good foldable.

Whether your Duo just landed on your doorstep or you’re still weighing that $1,999 price, here’s what you need to know before unfolding it.

Apps Aren’t Optimized—Yet

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The iPhone Duo is a new shape and size for Apple, so many of your apps likely aren’t optimized to show up properly on the unique 5.4-inch outer screen or the 7.6-inch inner display. Apple also changed how navigational elements appear on the Duo, aligning them on the right rail instead of centering them on the bottom like every other iPhone.

Apple apps, redesigned for the Duo, look great. Many third-party apps look like the Google Home app in the picture above: a strip down the middle with thick, black bars on the sides. Several major app developers have already optimized their apps for iOS 27.1—Slack, Instagram, DoorDash, and WhatsApp, for example—but I’ve noticed that even some optimized apps like Instagram can still have broken user-interface elements. It will take time for every app in your library to work perfectly across these new screens.

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It might be a good thing that the Duo is back-ordered for several weeks. By the time you snag yours, app developers will likely have caught up to the new device, and you might enjoy a richer folding experience.

Say Goodbye to Face ID

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Nearly a decade ago, Apple introduced Face ID as the future of the iPhone, eventually replacing the fingerprint-based Touch ID. So it might be confusing to hear that Apple’s first folding phone doesn’t have Face ID at all and instead relies on the older biometric authentication method. (Likely because Face ID tech takes up too much space in the thin iPhone Duo.) Touch ID never disappeared—Apple has used it on the iPhone SE and still features it on iPads and MacBooks—but this is the first time it has returned on a flagship iPhone.

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The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around power, prediction, geopolitics, accountability and the future of digital life.

The series was published in two parts each week over five weeks, with each installment building on the one before it. The series is now concluded. The complete essay will be brought together in a single PDF edition, providing the full argument in one place, published shortly.

Part X: After the Platform Age
The final part brings the argument together. The question is no longer simply what comes after Big Tech, but whether the future of the internet can be built around a different distribution of power, one in which technological scale is matched by accountability.

There is a revealing moment in almost every period of historical transition when people begin asking the wrong question. What comes after Big Tech? Will artificial intelligence displace social media? Will decentralized technologies restore the openness of the early web? Will new regulatory frameworks fragment today’s digital giants? Will smaller online communities replace planetary platforms?

These are important questions, but they all assume that the future consists primarily of finding a new set of dominant actors. History encourages a different perspective. Periods of profound transformation are seldom defined simply by who inherits power. They are defined by changes in the architecture through which power is organized.

That is why the coming reckoning should not be understood primarily as a prediction that today’s largest technology companies will collapse. Some may become even larger. They will continue investing in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, and other technologies that will shape the next generation of innovation. The more important question is whether the terms of their power are beginning to change.

For much of the platform era, users were treated primarily as consumers. Governments treated the companies primarily as markets requiring regulation. The companies themselves treated social harms largely as problems of product design, trust and safety, or compliance.

The emerging challenge is different. It asks whether users are also rights-holders. Whether platforms are also institutions with duties that cannot be reduced to terms of service. Whether corporate responsibility can be determined solely by what a legislature has explicitly required. And whether an industry that has become central to social, economic, and political life can continue insisting that responsibility ends wherever existing regulation currently stops.

These questions may ultimately prove more consequential than another attempt to identify the next dominant technology. Because the future of the internet is not simply a question of which company wins. It is a question of whether the people who depend upon digital systems have meaningful power over the institutions that shape their lives. This is where the original architecture of the internet remains relevant.

The internet’s greatest achievement was not that it prevented concentrations of power. It did not. Nor was it that it eliminated conflict, inequality, or abuse. It did none of those things. Its achievement was that no single institution was supposed to become synonymous with the network itself.

That principle now needs to be recovered in a different form. Not by imagining that the internet can return to an earlier age or by romanticizing decentralization. And, certainly, not by assuming that technological innovation alone will correct the problems technological power has created.

The next internet will require something more difficult: institutions capable of correcting one another. That includes legislators, regulators, and competition authorities. It includes courts. It includes civil society and independent researchers. And, most importantly, it includes users themselves. The point is not to weaken technology for the sake of weakening technology. The point is to ensure that technological power remains answerable to the societies in which it operates. That is the distinction that matters. The alternative to Big Tech is not necessarily small tech. The alternative to concentrated power is not the absence of power. It is accountability.

Perhaps that is the real reckoning now approaching. Not the collapse of the platforms, not their sudden repentance or, the moment when their founders rediscover the idealism of the early internet. The reckoning will come when the companies discover that scale is no longer sufficient to define the terms of responsibility.

Child safety may be where that process becomes impossible to ignore. It should not end there. If the emerging principle is that powerful technology companies can be held responsible when their products create foreseeable and preventable harms, then that principle must eventually extend to the wider question of what users are owed. Not only safety – but agency. Not only protection – but dignity. Not only compliance with the law as it currently exists – but accountability proportionate to the power these companies exercise over the conditions of modern life. That is not an argument against innovation. It is an argument against the increasingly implausible belief that innovation exempts powerful institutions from responsibility.

For a generation, Big Tech invited us to believe that the future of the internet could be contained within a handful of platforms. Those platforms transformed communication, knowledge and human connection in ways that deserve recognition as some of the most consequential technological achievements of modern times. But achievement is not immunity. The internet was never Facebook; it was never Google; it was never Amazon; it was never Instagram, TikTok, or X. Those companies shaped an era. Some will continue to shape the next one. But the internet has always been larger than its most powerful inhabitants.

The next chapter may be defined by something even more important than technological change: the reassertion of the principle that those who use the internet are not merely the raw material from which platforms create value. They are the people to whom those platforms must ultimately answer. That is the reckoning. And this time, Big Tech may not be able to lobby its way around it.

Konstantinos Komaitis, PhD, is a veteran of developing and analyzing Internet policy to ensure an open and global Internet.

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An 85-inch television used to sound enormous. RayNeo apparently looked at that and decided we were thinking too small.

The new RayNeo GT Max AR glasses use dual Micro-OLED displays to create a virtual screen measuring up to 307 inches, with a 59-degree field of view, 120Hz support, native 3DoF spatial tracking and a four-speaker audio system tuned with Bang & Olufsen. There is also Dolby Vision, although with an important qualification: RayNeo says native Dolby Vision playback requires the GT or GT Max to be paired with its new Pocket TV Pro streaming device.

That makes the GT Max considerably more interesting for eCoustics readers than another pair of smart glasses designed primarily to photograph lunch and ask an AI assistant where you parked the car. This one wants to be a television — a very large television that happens to sit directly in front of your face.

Who Is RayNeo?

RayNeo was incubated by TCL Electronics and already offers multiple generations of AR and AI eyewear. Counterpoint Research says RayNeo held a 41% share of the Birdbath/Flat-Prism AR glasses segment in Q1 2026, ahead of VITURE and XREAL.

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That category is also moving quickly. Counterpoint reports that global AR-glasses shipments increased 136% year over year during Q1 2026, even as traditional VR headset shipments declined 17%. Consumers appear increasingly interested in lighter, more specialized eyewear rather than heavier headsets built around fully immersive virtual reality.

RayNeo’s GT Series leans directly into that shift by concentrating on movies, streaming and gaming rather than trying to become an all-day spatial computer. That narrower focus may actually make the product easier for consumers to understand.

RayNeo GT Max: The Hardware

The GT Max uses RayNeo’s Peacock Optical Engine 3.0 Max with dual 0.6-inch Micro-OLED displays delivering 1080p resolution per eye. RayNeo provides three virtual-screen sizes — 227, 267 and 307 inches — and claims brightness up to 1,200 nits.

The glasses weigh 78 grams, putting them in a very different physical category from something like Apple Vision Pro. RayNeo will also offer the GT Max in three interpupillary-distance sizes: Small for users below 64mm, Medium for 64 to 67mm and Large for those above 67mm. Custom prescription-lens inserts will also be supported.

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Those details matter because comfort and optical alignment are not small issues with display glasses. A product that looks spectacular for ten minutes but becomes uncomfortable during a two-hour movie is not much of a home theater replacement.

Keeping the Picture Where You Want It

A dedicated Zone 360 3DoF processor handles head tracking. Three-degree-of-freedom tracking follows rotational movement — pitch, yaw and roll — and RayNeo provides three viewing modes depending on how and where the glasses are being used.

Pinned Mode keeps the image fixed in one location, while Follow Mode allows the display to move naturally with your head. Steady Mode is intended specifically for moving environments such as trains and airplanes, where constant motion can make a virtual display far less enjoyable.

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That last mode could prove more useful than some of the giant-screen marketing. Anyone who has tried to watch a movie on a laptop during turbulence knows that a huge virtual image becomes considerably less impressive if it appears to be attempting an emergency landing of its own.

Bang & Olufsen Handles the Audio

Both GT models use a quad-speaker system co-tuned with Bang & Olufsen, along with head-tracked spatial audio. RayNeo also includes a directional Whisper Mode designed to reduce how much sound reaches people sitting nearby.

How convincing any of that sounds will require an actual review. Open-ear speakers built into glasses are not going to replace a good pair of headphones when isolation, bass extension and maximum dynamic range matter, but integrated audio makes considerable sense for casual movie watching, gaming or streaming when wearing headphones is inconvenient.

The B&O involvement also suggests RayNeo understands that the audio cannot simply be treated as an accessory to the display. If you are going to sell the idea of a private movie theater, the soundtrack has to do more than politely emerge from two tiny speakers near your temples.

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Dolby Vision and Pocket TV Pro

The Pocket TV Pro is a portable Google TV streaming device designed specifically for the RayNeo ecosystem. It uses an Amlogic S905X5M-J processor with 3GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and expansion support up to 2TB, while its 6,500mAh battery is rated for up to 5.5 hours of continuous streaming.

More importantly, this is the device RayNeo requires for native Dolby Vision playback through the GT and GT Max. The Pocket TV Pro also supports RayNeo’s real-time AI conversion of SDR content to HDR through its Vision 4000 display processor.

So if Dolby Vision is one of the primary reasons you are considering the glasses, the Pocket TV Pro is not merely an optional accessory. It is part of the specific playback chain required to get that feature, and RayNeo has not yet announced final U.S. pricing for the streamer.

We recently looked at Apple’s effort to give Vision Pro a stronger reason to exist through live 8K immersive baseball. Vision Pro remains extraordinary technology, but it starts at $3,699 and asks consumers to buy into Apple’s much broader concept of spatial computing. Its appeal lies in creating immersive experiences that conventional televisions cannot reproduce.

At the other end of the market, Ray-Ban Meta emphasizes cameras, AI, communication, music and everyday wear rather than immersive video. Counterpoint says Meta held nearly 84% of the global display-less smart-glasses segment in Q1 2026, which demonstrates how much traction that lighter, everyday-wear approach has already gained.

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RayNeo is pursuing a third path. The GT Max does not need to replace your laptop, photograph everything you see or become an AI assistant living beside your temple. Its primary job is considerably simpler: give you a very large private display that fits into a travel bag.

There may be something refreshingly sensible about that. Not every piece of wearable technology needs to reinvent computing, social interaction and human consciousness before lunch.

Who Is This For?

The most obvious customer is a frequent traveler. A 78-gram pair of glasses capable of creating a cinema-sized image has obvious appeal on an airplane, train or in a hotel room where carrying a television generally creates problems with the overhead compartment.

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The GT Max also makes sense for portable gaming, particularly for people using handheld PCs or other compatible video sources who want something substantially larger than a seven or eight-inch display. There is another potential audience among people living in apartments, dorm rooms or other small spaces where installing a large television or projector is impractical.

Streaming is another obvious application. Paired with Pocket TV Pro, the system effectively becomes a wearable Google TV display, which could make it useful in situations where a conventional screen is either unavailable or undesirable.

What the GT Max does not replace is the social aspect of a television or home theater. Your spouse, kids or friends cannot share the same image unless everyone owns their own pair of glasses, and nobody is passing popcorn around a single headset. Large televisions and projection still win rather decisively when more than one person wants to watch.

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Specifications Compared

	RayNeo iO	RayNeo GT	RayNeo GT Max
MSRP	$499	$329	$429
Primary Function	Ambient Heads-Up Productivity & AI	Portable AR Media & Gaming	Cinema-Grade AR Display
Chassis Weight	33g	68g	78g
Optical Engine	Firefly Nano (0.085cc MicroLED)	Birdbath (BB)	Peacock Optical Engine 3.0 Max
Field of View (FOV)	23.5°	46°	59°
Display Sizing	Heads-Up Text Overlay	Up to 231-inch (136″/201″/231″)	Up to 307-inch (227″/267″/307″)
Audio Configuration	Visual-First (0 Speakers / Bone Conduction + 4-Mic)	Quad-Speakers (Co-Tuned by B&O)	Quad-Speakers (Co-Tuned by B&O)
Tracking & Controls	Smart Crown Dial & Head Gestures	Zone 360 Native 3DoF Chip	Zone 360 Native 3DoF Chip

The Bottom Line

Apple wants Vision Pro to become a new computing platform, while Meta wants smart glasses to become something people wear all day. RayNeo is making a much narrower pitch with the GT Max: what if you just want a huge private screen?

That may be the product’s biggest advantage. There are still important questions about comfort, optical sharpness, sound leakage and how convincing the image feels after two hours of use, but the application is easy to understand and does not require consumers to buy into a completely new computing ecosystem.

Apple will put you inside Yankee Stadium for $3,699. RayNeo would rather put the movie theater in front of your eyes and let you finish the flight. For a lot of consumers, that might be the easier sales pitch.

Price & Availability

The RayNeo GT and GT Max are available as of September 4, 2026 for $329 or $429 at Amazon, respectively.

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