We may earn a commission from links on this page.The future (should there be one) won't play out on a screen. I’m not talking about a future in which we have ditched technology to live like cavemen, but a future where we have hucked our screens (laptops, phones, and TVs) in the trash because we don't need them to watch TikTok anymore—we can just use smart glasses. This future feels closer than you might think. The latest generation of smart glasses is on the verge of being able to replace all the glowing rectangles we stare at, a change that could prove as transformational and culturally disruptive as the spread of smartphones two decades ago. What might this brave new world look like? I don't like waiting around for the future to arrive, so I decided to give myself a preview by replacing all my screens with a pair of XReal One Pro smart glasses for a day. Could a single pair of dorky looking but impressively tech-packed specs do the jobs of my computer monitor, television, and iPhone? Even the best smart glasses aren't there yetBefore I begin, a caveat: The XReal One Pros are excellent, probably the closest thing on the current market to an “every-screen” wearable device, but they're not designed for the all-day immersion trials I put them through. For the purposes of this experiment, I’m comparing XReal One Pros to an imagined ideal, so it's not exactly surprising that they sometimes weren't able to live up to my dreams.Productivity: Potential versus reality Credit: Stephen Johnson XReal One glasses don’t require any technical set-up, at least when paired with a USB-C video-enable device, so I started my screenless workday by sliding the cord into the USB-C port on my MacBook and getting to work. It takes a few minutes to get used to writing on a virtual screen, but then it feels natural. The XReal One's display is more than bright enough in normal lighting, and it can be set to be way larger than my laptop’s actual screen. There's no noticeable lag between my physical inputs and the virtual screen, either.. But once I settled in, I noted the XReal's display was slightly slanted. The longer I used it, the more annoying it became. No matter what I did, I couldn't straighten in out. I finally realized it wasn't a technical issue: The screen was crooked because my nose is crooked. I never realized this before. I was able to adjust the frames to correct for my facial asymmetry, but it did highlight the kinds of new things we'll learn about ourselves in the screenless future—and how insanely precise the engineering will need to be to make it work. My nose being crooked wasn't the only drawback of working screenlessly. Onscreen text was not as clear as it would be on a real monitor, and there’s a weird, constant "shimmery” effect in your peripheral vision. These issues might be a problem if you're undertaking graphically detailed work, but for mundane office tasks, I experienced no issues. I even used my smart glasses on a Zoom call with Lifehacker's Managing Editor Meghan Walbert. It required me to use a secondary camera to broadcast, and I looked like a geeky Stevie Wonder, but the call itself went great. Here's what I looked like: Credit: Stephen Johnson Overall, for most job-related tasks—answering emails, researching on the web, making Zoom calls— you can totally replace your screen with glasses. For a couple hours, anyway.Comfort is a problemXReal One Pro glasses house an X1 chip to enable their augmented reality features, which are impressive, but that extra processing power means they do heat up noticeably over time. The area of my forehead just above the frames was definitely noticeably hot after an extended period, though I wouldn't say it hurt, exactly. The eye strain, though? That was painful. Wearing the glasses for an extended period reminded me of all the times my mom told me not to sit too close to the TV. Well, mom, I strapped on a pair of glasses that project extremely bright light directly into my eyeballs at a distance of about a half an inch, and you were right: It did hurt my eyes. Not permanently, I hope—but I did eventually have to switch off the glasses and pull out the cord, just to give my eyes a break. I kept the unpowered specs on my face, though—I assume that's what we'll all be doing in the future, right?A real-world reality check Credit: Stephen Johson I didn’t last long using XReal One Pros as "dumb glasses." It’s possible to wear them as “regular” spectacles—I have prescription inserts and everything—but the prism screen obstructs too much of your vision to be practical for walking around your house, let alone driving or going anywhere in public (plus, they look kind of silly.)This isn’t really the XReal’s One’s fault—they're not meant to be used as regular glasses—but it highlights a technical hurdle currently preventing us all from strapping into real-life heads-up displays for the duration: The “regular eyeglasses” part has to work as well as the “display” part.Gaming is where the magic happensAfter spending the rest of my work day minimizing my time wearing the glasses to avoid eye strain, I fired up a video game to relax. This is where XReal glasses shine: There's no noticeable input lag, and the ability to change the size and placement of your virtual screen to suit whatever you’re playing is never less than amazing.I’ve been getting into flight sims lately, and using XReal’s ultra widescreen feature to play X-Flight is crazy cool. The setting uses the XReal One Pro’s built-in 3DOF capabilities to create a virtual display that seems to curve around you in space, like a much larger version of one of those fancy gaming monitors. Once you get used to not seeing the screen in your peripheral vision—the Xreal One Pro’s field of view isn’t big enough to fully surround you—the experience is truly like nothing else. The display doesn’t feel like it’s floating before your eyes, but like it’s physically there, making in-game flying and driving games particularly immersive.Movies and music I wish I could show you how awesome these are. Credit: Stephen Johnson Paired with a mobile device (I used XReal’s Beam Pro, but any newer smart phone will do) these glasses are a killer way to stream video. As an extremely lazy person, I loved having the option to lie flat on my back and project a screen above me. The virtual screen looks just as bright and clear as my TV, particularly in a dark room, but unlike a physical TV, you can change its size and your "distance" from it with a couple button presses. You can also set it on “follow,” so if you turn over on your side, the screen will still be there in front of you. Full sloth-mode unlocked!The glasses are great for watching a movie in private too, although there is a little audio bleed, especially in a quiet environment. Speaking of the audio quality, it’s good, but suffers from the lack-of-bass all “open-air” audio setups tend to exhibit. If you want to listen to full fidelity music or truly experience a film’s audio, you have to pair your Bluetooth headphones to whatever device you've plugged the XReal One Pros into. (The integrated speakers are perfectly adequate for undemanding audio like phone calls and podcasts.). The verdict: A sometimes frustrating peek into the future As a matter of fact, I AM from the future. Credit: Stephen Johnson Overall, I found my 24 hours ofscreenlessness both enlightening and frustrating. The augmented future is tantalizingly close, but for now, we're still in an awkward transition phase where the technology sort of works, but isn't quite ready to be fully integrated into our daily lives. The XReal One Pro smart glasses excel for specific uses—immersive gaming, watching movies on an airplane—but they don't offer the seamless, all-day functionality they need to truly replace our screens. Still, after drowning my eyes in them for a full day, I'm more convinced than ever that smart glasses of some sort will eventually replace every display. We just need to be patient as we wait for the future to arrive.