Amazing Gadget-Avegant Glyph

The Avegant Glyph is not a virtual reality device. I was told this over and over during my demo of the hardware. It's a media player, designed to give you a private screen for your existing devices. It doesn't offer an experience that engulfs you. The experience of wearing the glyph is more like sitting in a dark movie theater.

The fact that reality doesn't disappear is a feature, not a bug. I was able to watch movie clips and play games from an iPhone while still seeing the room above and below my eye line. It was comfortable to interact with people around me, and they were able to speak with me without feeling like I was closed off.

The screen itself also stood well above what other products in this space are offering. I took my glasses off to use the Glyph and was able to see the screens perfectly after spending a moment or two adjusting the focus and the interpupillary distance. The screen presented a beautiful image, with deep colors and no noticeable pixels.

"The Glyph recreates natural sight —there’s no screen," the official site states. "Avegant’s patented Retinal Imaging Technology uses advanced optics and microscopic mirrors to project images directly to the eyes. It’s more like seeing than watching."

You can learn a bit more about the technology in the video above, but the important thing to know is that the Glyph offers a wonderful image. I was able to plug the hardware into a standard laptop and comfortably read even small text. The detail and clarity of the image is very striking, and there's no proprietary software needed; if your console, laptop, phone or other device can output an image using HDMI, you can use the Glyph to view it. This makes it versatile, without requiring any extra work to view your content.

The hardware will provide around four hours of video on a single charge, and the built-in headphones handle the sound. You can even flip the device up on your head after flattening the screens and use the hardware as a standard set of headphones.

It's a portable media player, not a VR device. But as a portable media player, the performance and quality of the sound and visuals were outstanding. I could see using the Glyph on the subway in a way that wouldn't be possible with the Gear VR due to the loss of situational awareness.

While Oculus Rift has the VR headset market all sewn up before it is even launched, there is still plenty of space for headsets that offer an experience that strips out the virtual and focuses much more on the reality. This is what the Avegant Glyph is promising. It's a personal movie theatre that immerses you in the film, offering a 45-degree image to bathe your eyes in. The Glyph is packed with DLP (digital light processing) technology and while it may look like your headphones have slipped from your head over your eyes the results, according to those who have tried it at CES 2013, are incredible.