You’ve probably heard plenty about all the virtual-reality (VR) headsets that will be weighing down nerdy heads later this year: Very expensive goggles that you can put on and, by turning your head, look around inside your video games.

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The subject of today’s lesson, however, is not a VR headset.

It’s the Avegant Glyph ($700), the finished 1.0 version of a successful Kickstarter campaign, which I reviewed in its prototype form two years ago. (The company’s name is constructed from the founders’ last names spelled backwards: Edward Tang and Allan Evans.)

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The idea is sweet: Imagine a pair of great-sounding headphones whose headband rotates down over your eyes to become a 65-inch TV screen floating in space right in front of you. Suddenly, you’ve got a whole darkened movie theater all to yourself.

What you see looks something like this:



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You can watch movies, TV shows, and games, or even work on your laptop using this “screen” as your monitor. The whole idea is to let you watch things in private, whether at home or on long plane flights.

(And what kind of things would you want to watch in private? The company winkingly mentions the nudity in Game of Thrones, but we all know what kind of videos they’re really talking about.)

Getting ready to Glyph

The Glyph really is a contraption. It weighs about a pound, so figuring out how to hang that thing on your head comfortably for hours is a challenge that Avegant hasn’t completely solved.

First, you choose a nose piece — one of four snap-in, rubberized bridges to accommodate a range of nasal formations.

Then you put the Glyph on and press an ejecto-button to make the eyepieces pop out of the band.

Next you adjust the distance between the left and right eye holes, using two separate sliders. Then you have to focus each eyepiece independently, turning a ring around each eyepiece as you close the other eye.

Finally, if it feels too heavy on your head, you can attach a strap that goes over the top of your head. That, and a not-so-protective felt bag, are all part of the Founder’s Edition kit.

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Let’s not beat around the bush: The thing looks ridiculous. You thought Google Glass drew stares? This thing makes you look like you’re a member of the Geordi La Forge Fan Club.

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And even with all of that fussing, I was never able to make it comfortable to wear for a long time.

If you want to use Glyph just as a pair of headphones, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Just retract the eye cups, pull out the nose piece, replace it with a flat spacer, wrap a comfort wrap around the headband (to prevent the hard plastic eyecup cylinders from penetrating your skull), adjust the headband, plug in an audio source, and listen away.



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