Nreal’s augmented reality glasses — which impressed us at CES back in January — will cost a surprisingly low $499 and are supposed to start shipping this year. The Nreal Light glasses plug into a Snapdragon 855-powered smartphone over USB-C, and Nreal promised at this week’s Augmented World Expo that they’ll be available to consumers in “limited quantities” later this year, then ship in mass-market quantities next year. A $1,199 kit for developers will include the glasses, a controller, and a dedicated computing pack that can substitute for a phone.

The Nreal Light glasses offer an experience that’s somewhere between a heads-up display and full-fledged, high-end mixed reality — while looking sort of like normal glasses. You can use them to watch video on virtual screens, but also to place virtual objects in the real world and look around them.

A full release is planned for 2020

Nreal is one of the first headset makers to participate in Qualcomm’s XR certification program, which is supposed to take advantage of 5G network speeds to offer high-quality streaming of games, software, or video to AR glasses. It’s announced partnerships with a variety of carriers, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Japan’s Softbank Corp., Korea’s LG Uplus, and Switzerland’s Swisscom.

We were fans of the Nreal glasses that debuted at CES — my colleague Nick Statt said the visual quality was surprisingly high for a light and unobtrusive device, although he didn’t find the tracking and spatial mapping as good as the competing (and far more expensive) Magic Leap One and Microsoft HoloLens headsets. Nreal says that it’s since improved the fit of the glasses and added multiple, unspecified color choices.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you should buy the Nreal Light when Nreal actually opens up sales. 5G networks and AR are both firmly in early-adopter territory, and $499 is cheap for smart glasses, but still pretty expensive for a niche gadget. Even so, it’ll be a good sign for Qualcomm’s XR platform if they actually ship in 2019 — and after seeing them at launch, we’re hoping to check out the finished product for ourselves.

Update May 31st, 12:30PM ET: Added mention of Augmented World Expo.