This article is more than 1 year old

Leadtek Xeye movie-viewing goggles

Films in your face

Review Many dubious products have stumbled on the rocky road to true innovation. Before the mobile phone reached mass-market saturation, yuppies lugged around lumps of plastic that were closer to army field radios than items of desirable personal technology, writes Jonathan Bray.

Leadtek Xeye

Once, Sony marketed the infamous shoulder-mounted 'ghetto blaster' as the perfect portable music companion, before kick-starting a whole industry with the very first Walkman.

And there have been numerous attempts at making TV- and movie-viewing portable, from those unwatchable pocket LCD TVs of the 1980s to the portable (and more practical) DVD players and laptops of today.

Step forward, then, Leadtek's Xeye headset, which the company claims is the next step in the evolution of the "personal cinema".

Xeye places two tiny OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display, one in front of each eye, each with individual focus controls and diopter adjustments to create the illusion that you are watching one enormous screen. But this device is the size of a pair of sunglasses - a fairly ugly pair of sunglasses it has to be said, but almost as portable and compact. There's even a pair of in-ear headphones wired into the arms to complete the cocoon-of-entertainment effect.

Leadtek XeyeIt certainly sounds a tempting prospect. After all, why would you want to squint at a mere 2in mobile phone screen to watch a movie while you're on the train or plane when you can have the equivalent of a 50in cinema display in your pocket?

Well, you would because the technology isn't there yet, not on the evidence of this product anyway. And even if you can get past the fact that using one of these makes you look like Star Trek: The Next Generation's Geordie Laforge on a bad-visor day, there are a multitude of impracticalities that kybosh the Xeye's likelihood of success.

First of all, the thing is just plain uncomfortable. Rather than simply hooking the arms over your ears as you might with normal shades or glasses the Xeye's arms curve out to the side forcing you to sit them on top of your ears, which doesn't make it a particularly stable or secure fit - one shake of the head and the hefty view unit at the front soon starts to wobble.

Next page: Verdict

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like