Welcome to Holiday Office Hours From the Labs, a collaborative multimedia project in which Lifehacker, CNET, ZDNET, and Mashable harness the power of our merchandise evaluation lab and our editors' ability to recommendation the finest gift-buying recommendations possible. In this episode, we're talking televisions.
I lately did a profound dive into TV betterment history, checked out what was on shelves for 2026, and I concluded that the finest current TV you can provision this twelvemonth is, actually, a brace of sunglasses. The XBX by XReal video display glasses are basically a TV you can shove in your pocket. Check them out:
I looked former traditional sets for a brace of reasons. First, since as much as we all affection a awesome display or movie, who really buys person a TV set as a gift? More importantly, there's the nature of tv itself. Since it was invented in the delayed 1920s, tv norm has been measured by how big the display is and how apparent and brilliant the image is, but in 2026, a nothing-special 4K tv delivers an depiction that is pixel-invisible to a representative viewer, and most of us don't have living rooms big adequate to need a display bigger than 65 inches. I think the innovation in the area is going to arrive from the form aspect and the use case, and what improved form aspect is there than a brace of sunglasses?
These glasses provision the equal of a 142" TV viewed from throughout the room. It's difficult to difference resolution to traditional TVs—technically, the display is 1080p in all eye, but since the TV is fair millimeters from your eye, it looks much clearer than that. The highest brightness is 1,600 nits, brilliant adequate for most rooms, and there's a totally opaque shield if you need it. The refresh charge is a keen 120Hz. They assistance HDR10 and real-time SDR-to-HDR upscaling, recommendation billions of colors, and it's all in a bundle that weighs lone 62 grams.
Then there are the use cases. It can act as a distinct detect for your computer; you can observe a distinct display than your roommate without bothering them; but most of all, these are awesome for flights. There is no circumstance in existence that calls for a big display TV additional than a cross-country airplane flight. Slip these on alongside a brace of headphones, and you can fly to Boise in your own private, virtual theater.
They plug correct into any equipment that supports USB-C video, there's no power division to recall to charge, and they disbursal small than $300. In another words: They're the ideal TV current for the holidays, equal if they aren't technically a TV.
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