TL;DR: Unmatched sound meets unmatched comfort with these Sony WH-1000XM5 Noise Cancellation Headphones — now 52% off at just $189.99 (Reg. $399.99)

Headphones have never gone out of style. Though the devices we attach them to have gotten smaller, sleeker, and increasingly more addictive, there’s something about the humble over-ear headphones that has outlasted cassette players and iPods alike. But one thing has changed: headphones themselves are increasingly tech-enabled. Ready for a world class experience in sound technology and noise cancellation? Meet the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones.

Style meets function

It’s official: over-ear headphones are the coolest way to experience sound. AirPods and other inner-ear variations had their run, especially amongst the corporate and gym-going set, but they’re not versatile, and they have no sex appeal. Meanwhile, wired earphones have a sort of nostalgic coolness, but are more trouble than they’re worth. Over-ear headphones have it all. They look cool, they travel well from the workplace to the gym or your commute, and they have the added bonus of offering both sound and noise-canceling capabilities.

Block the world out with world class noise cancellation

Whether you’re listening to music, an audiobook, or a podcast, these luxe Sony headphones will make sure you hear ever whispered word. Thanks to their meticulous sound engineering, you can listen or talk easily with hands-free calling and multipoint connection across your devices. In the opposite mood? Enjoy the industry-leading noise cancellation in any environment. Use the intuitive touch controls to effortlessly switch between modes from speak-to-chat to quick attention mode or instant pause and play.

And thanks to this Grade A refurbished model, you don’t have to choose between quality and cost. These like-new headphones don’t make you compromise. Get all the benefits of high-tech sound with just 3 hours of charging for 30 hours of uninterrupted listening. You’ll never want to take them off.

Get these Sony WH-1000XM5 Noise Cancellation Headphones for just $189.99 (Reg. $399.99)

Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones (Refurbished)

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Across a whirlwind three days of Augmented World Expo USA 2025 in Long Beach, California, I tested out demos from some of the biggest names in XR, while also checking out prototypes from start-ups that could change the industry.

Well-known XR brands used AWE 2025 to announce major XR projects: Qualcomm announced an AR chip capable of on-device AI, Snap promised new, lightweight AR Specs in 2026, and XREAL shared more details on its Android XR-enabled glasses.

But I saw much more on the show floor. Here are all of the AWE 2025 highlights I saw or tested that people will find interesting!

A display that tracks your eyes without a camera

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Kopin Corporation focuses on enterprise products and display components. At their booth, I wore a lightweight surgical HMD and a night-vision AR helmet for soldiers’ targeting and guidance. I also checked out their ultra-bright microLED display, the in-vogue tech for AR glasses and smartwatches.

But Kopin’s most promising tech for consumers is its NeuralDisplay. It uses “traditional RGB pixels, image-sensing pixels, and advanced signal processing algorithms” to track your eye movement and neurological response in a functional VR display.

I saw the tech in action at AWE (and you can see a video example below). The Kopin engineer shone a flashlight into his eye, and the display immediately detected his pupil dilation and adjusted the brightness and contrast to prevent any discomfort.

Kopin’s NeuralDisplay Eyetracking Software – YouTube

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The version they showed off at AWE, built on OLED but compatible with microLED, can adjust the display’s content automatically to match the user’s gaze and simulate depth.

It can track data like the user’s blinking rate to judge if the person is fatigued or enable foveated rendering, all without needing any SoC processing power. And in the case of military applications (or FPS games), this tech could determine that the user isn’t looking in the direction of a threat and guide their gaze that way.

It’s still an in-progress prototype that needs silicon improvements to enable better color accuracy and sensitivity. But CEO Michael Murray said that they proved wrong the naysayers who “said we couldn’t pull it off,” and that companies like Meta, Apple, and Anduril will be very interested in licensing their patent so that they can shed the weight of their eye-tracking cameras. We’ll see if this happens!

Viture’s [REDACTED] XR glasses and Switch 2 gaming

I have to be vague about this entry, as Viture — maker of XR gaming glasses like the Viture Pro XR — showed me its next-generation glasses at AWE but told me I couldn’t reveal anything except to “tease” readers and “get them excited for what’s coming.”

To avoid any trouble, I’ll quote without comment this Tom’s Guide article noting that the next Viture XR glasses will “be the first to use Sony’s latest Micro-OLED panels” with a “sharper, brighter and wider field of view than the current Pros’ 46-degree FoV. It also suggested Viture will sell “multiple specs,” including one that supports 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF). Sure sounds promising, if true!

What I’ll tease is simple: Viture’s upcoming devices changed my perspective on XR glasses, and now I desperately want its new [redacted] glasses for my Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam Deck.

I played some Street Fighter on Viture’s Switch 2 using the Pro Mobile Dock, which attaches to the back to stream content to XR glasses while charging the console. And their enhanced hardware helped sell me on handheld gaming with a TV-sized screen while relaxing in bed with my handheld console — in a way last-gen XR glasses with dimmer, low-FoV displays never could.

So watch out soon for Viture’s upcoming lineup of XR glasses!

Niantic Spatial’s Visual Positioning System tour guide

Smart glasses with multimodal AI like Ray-Ban Meta glasses have you take a photo of an object or landmark to analyze it. But the eventual goal for AR glasses is to use GPS and gaze tracking to know with precision what you’re looking at, in order to provide accurate info. And Niantic Spatial is working on that system.

The former Pokémon Go makers took me to a street next to the AWE convention center where they’d applied their Visual Positioning System (VPS) and had me wear AR Snap Spectacles.

Their little XR assistant, Dot, then served as a tour guide. If I tapped my fingers together and asked about the mosaic artwork at my feet, it would describe the art style, artist, and city initiative behind it, with options to learn more. Or if I asked about the building across the street, it would tell me about its history as a comedy club.

The idea behind Niantic’s VPS is that they’ll build an educational AR equivalent to Google Maps that’s “independent of specific hardware vendors,” so Android XR and Meta glasses owners can learn about the world with “centimeter-level” geolocation. They have 1.5 million pre-mapped locations already, and they offer “private VPS” for companies to make their own AR educational tours; I’d imagine it working well for a museum, or a theme park like Disneyland.

The demo itself was a bit finicky. Dot occasionally refused to answer my questions, blathering on about whatever it thought I was next to. The Snap Spectacles battery reached critical lows after about 15 minutes of Q&A, with the display struggling with the sunny weather; it’s hard to say when AR glasses hardware will be ready for a city tour. But when it worked, it worked very well, and I could see both kids and curious adults loving this software…once the AR hardware is ready for it.

Sony’s premium XYN headset

The Sony XYN (pronounced “zin”), like Samsung Project Moohan, has the premium Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset with tons of RAM and micro-OLED quality. If I hadn’t already demoed Moohan last month, the insane 3552×3840 resolution would have blown my mind. But being able to get up close to a virtual book page and read every word without straining, or examine the details of a painting, is still beyond what any current VR headset can offer.

Sony also showed off subtle finger controllers that you can squeeze to select and move spatial content. Hand tracking works pretty well on most recent headsets like the Quest and Vision Pro, but having a wearable controller adds more precision so you’re not vainly struggling with missed camera inputs while trying to work.

Almost no one will end up using Sony’s premium XYN headset; it’s designed for “spatial content creation,” meaning only enterprise users willing to drop nearly five grand to create CADs will need one. But it’s still a promising sign of how immersive XR headsets are getting, and I love the flip-up display design for productivity.

Android XR smart ring controls

At the Qualcomm show booth, they had a space for KiWear, a smart ring reference design for gesture controls for AR, XR, and smart glasses. And it’s surprisingly accurate and intuitive.

Connected to RayNeo X3 Pro glasses, the ring could control the display UI using simple finger movements or rotations around your finger. The IMU could differentiate between pinches away from or towards you for different functions, and the built-in PPG could display health data on the glasses.

You can also reach the ring out to tap virtual objects or use the ring touchpad to select or scroll. It even worked for accurate gaming controls when playing Fruit Ninja.

Given that Qualcomm announced that Android XR will support smart ring controls, I wonder if the next Samsung Galaxy Ring will be more specifically designed for XR controls to pair with Moohan and its smart glasses. I was never sold on the idea of a smart ring controller, but the KiWear ring’s accuracy changed my mind.

All the other AWE 2025 highlights

bHaptics’ TactSuit Pro and TactGloves add haptics support for over 100 Meta Quest games, including many of our favorite VR titles. I’ve seen it at XR events for years but finally tried it at AWE 2025, immersing myself in a space demo where I repaired my ship and pet my purring cat.

Aside from the TactSuit making me a bit ticklish, I walked away impressed by the experience and how it helped me sink into the experience. My outfit would cost more than my Quest 3, and I’m not sure I want to feel discomfort during shooters, but I definitely think VR power users would get a kick out of it.

But if we’re talking immersion, I have to mention Anywhere Bungee VR, which won AWE’s Best in Show Playground award. You climb onto a contraption and literally tip over to simulate the feeling of bungee jumping off of a Tokyo Skyscraper, with wind machines to help simulate the real terror of falling.

I think this kind of contraption would be perfect as sideshows for VR exhibition centers like Sandbox VR, and I’d be curious to see what other extreme sports like skydiving or base jumping could be recreated in a setup like this.

Samsung showed off its new OLED on Silicon (OLEDoS) displays at AWE, including a 1.4-inch RGB panel that hits 5,000 pixels per inch and a brighter 1.3-inch, 4,200 PPI panel that hits a whopping 20,000 nits. For context, the Apple Vision Pro hits about 3,400 PPI, while Moohan allegedly hits 3,800 PPI.

My phone camera couldn’t possibly capture the visual quality, but I could lean up against the display and see levels of color, detail, and brightness that blow most current VR headset displays out of the water. So it’s exciting to see Samsung Display challenge Sony in an XR display arms race.

Highly anticipated: Sony is once again timing the re-release of a Last of Us game with a season of the popular television series. With both arriving next month, the company has published a familiar-looking list of PC features and system specifications. Hopefully, The Last of Us Part II Remastered will perform more smoothly at launch than its predecessor.

The PC system requirements for The Last of Us Part II closely resemble those of the first game’s PC conversion (and, oddly, Spider-Man 2’s, minus the ray-tracing specifications). However, the sequel’s storage requirement has increased significantly to 150 GB from the original’s 100 GB, likely due to its substantially longer story mode.

Graphics card requirements remain largely unchanged. To achieve 60 frames per second at 1440p, Sony recommends an Nvidia RTX 3070 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800.

Click to enlarge

Hopefully, the spec sheet indicates that The Last of Us Part II won’t repeat its predecessor’s texture memory issues, which notably disadvantaged the 8 GB RTX 3070 compared to its 16 GB AMD counterpart. This discrepancy likely explains why the first game recommended an RTX 2080 Ti, which performs similarly to the 3070 but features 11 GB of VRAM.

The new game’s system specifications do not explicitly mention upscaling, but it supports AMD’s FSR 4, which should offer significantly improved image quality on AMD’s new RX 9000 GPUs compared to FSR 3.1. Although DLSS support officially only extends to version 3.1, Nvidia users can likely enable DLSS 4 through the desktop application.

Interestingly, The Last of Us Part II also has slightly lower CPU requirements than its predecessor. Mid-range 8th-generation Intel processors or Ryzen 3000 CPUs should comfortably handle 60 fps gameplay. While the game hasn’t yet received Steam Deck verification, the previous entry eventually did, and Sony has confirmed optimization of the sequel for handheld PCs.

Adjustable graphical settings include textures, LOD distance, volumetrics, shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, and more. The game supports ultra-wide aspect ratios (21:9, 32:9, and 48:9), haptic feedback for DualSense controllers, and DirectStorage.

Both the PC and PlayStation 5 versions will simultaneously receive four new maps for the “No Return” survival mode and two new playable characters – Bill and Marlene. Although the game won’t require a PlayStation Network login, connecting an account unlocks the PlayStation overlay, trophies, and points redeemable for in-game skins.

The Last of Us Part II will launch on Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 3 for $49.99. The second season of the TV series, which covers events from the sequel, begins streaming on April 13.

Forward-looking: Now that the PlayStation 5 Pro is here, attention is turning toward Sony’s next generation of its console, the PlayStation 6. There’s been plenty of speculation about when it will arrive, and according to Shuhei Yoshida, the former Sony exec who was head of SIE Worldwide Studios, we could be waiting until 2028.

Yoshida worked at Sony for 38 years, 31 of which were spent at PlayStation. After leaving the company on January 15, 2025, he gave a lengthy interview to GamesBeat.

Among the topics covered was console cycles. The publication notes that during his tenure at PlayStation, the gap between console launches was around five or six years, but it’s getting longer.

The PlayStation 4 was released in November 2013. And while the PlayStation 4 Pro launched in 2016, the PlayStation 5 didn’t get here until November 2020, seven years after its predecessor. For comparison, there were only five years between the original PlayStation (1995) and PS2 (2000). The PS3 launched six years later, in 2006, and the PS4 landed seven years later.

Yoshida notes that if Sony sticks with a seven-year gap, the PlayStation 6 will arrive in 2027. However, he feels that date is a bit too early. “The PS5 generation was slowed down because of manufacturing issues,” Yoshida said, adding that a 2028 date “feels right to me.” He highlighted that based on a leak from Microsoft, the next Xbox console could also launch in 2028.

The former exec also said that the PS5 generation was “slowed” due to manufacturing issues stemming from the pandemic and global chip shortage. When asked about long cycles, the post-pandemic industry slowdown, and all the layoffs, he called it an “overreaction to the COVID situation.”

“Companies invested too much, including ourselves. Then we had to face reality and make adjustments. If you take out the COVID years you’d have smoother growth over the years.”

The PlayStation 5 had its best-ever holiday period in 2024, shipping 9.5 million units – only slightly behind the PlayStation 4’s best quarter in FY2017. The console has now sold over 75 million units, while Xbox Series S/X sales are around 28.3 million and showing little growth.

Last month, a leaker claimed that the chip design for the PlayStation 6 is essentially complete and nearly ready to enter the manufacturing phase. In keeping with Sony’s development cycle, the design completion would likely put the console’s launch date in 2027.

The same leaker previously said that Sony may be working on two SoCs for the PlayStation 6, speculating that one could be for the console and the other for either a new PlayStation handheld or a less-powerful version of the PS6.

Masthead: Robin Edqvist