Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 vs. Navi­gator 500 | What is the successor capable of?

The new year is off to a good start: Real­Wear laun­ched its new Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 smart glasses at the begin­ning of 2023. It’s the successor to the Real­Wear Navi­gator 500, which was presented just over a year ago.

Now the ques­tion is: To what extent does the Navi­gator 520 differ from its prede­cessor? Are the latest smart glasses from Real­Wear really worth buying? We have the answer.

 

Test: Real­Wear Navi­gator 520

As the model name already suggests, the Navi­gator 520 is rather the latest model within the Navi­gator 500 series and thus not a comple­tely new Real­Wear product. You can find our review of the Real­Wear Navi­gator 500 in our maga­zine.

So, there are many simi­la­ri­ties with the prede­cessor model, as a look at the hard­ware already shows.

 

Design & wearing comfort 

The Navi­gator 520 barely differs visually from the Navi­gator 500: The smart glasses have the same subtle, light­weight design to ensure comfor­table wearing even over several hours of work. In fact, the Navi­gator 520 weighs almost the same as its prede­cessor: 274 grams instead of 272 grams.

The smart glasses for industry have a modular design, which means that indi­vi­dual compon­ents such as the battery, camera or display can be easily exch­anged. Thus, the user is ideally equipped for diffe­rent tasks and chal­lenges.

Due to the excel­lent voice control, the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 only has three buttons plus a power button with inte­grated finger­print sensor. In addi­tion, the new model, like the Navi­gator 500, is equipped with four micro­phones, a camera inclu­ding a flash­light on the side of the head, and the so-called boom arm. To this boom arm, the display is atta­ched — and that is what signi­fi­cantly diffe­ren­tiates the Navi­gator 520 from its prede­cessor.

 

Hyper­Dis­play & camera

While the Real­Wear Navi­gator 500 still has the same display as the Real­Wear HMT‑1 — 854 x 480 pixel reso­lu­tion and 20° field of view — the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 offers a much better view with its new Hyper­Dis­play. It’s roughly equi­va­lent to an 8.4‑inch display.

• Bigger screen: Image infor­ma­tion is displayed without borders; the view is 20% larger overall.
• Sharper image: Thanks to the HD reso­lu­tion of 1,280 x 720 pixels, image details are clearly visible
• Higher contrast colors: The color repre­sen­ta­tion is charac­te­rized by better rendi­tion

Added to this are the 24° field of view and the signi­fi­cantly larger eye box of 14 x 14 mm. Further­more, the viewing distance can be extended to posi­tion the display further away from the eye. This means that the perfect viewing angle can always be set.

Like the Navi­gator 500, its successor also has a high-reso­lu­tion 48 MP camera. Videos are recorded in Full HD with a frame rate of 60 frames per second.

 

Control

There are no major inno­va­tions in terms of control: Like its prede­cessor, the Navi­gator 520 is controlled by voice, with the addi­tion of an action, forward and back button. However, these are hardly needed due to the excel­lently func­tio­ning voice control.

The user can send commands to the smart glasses in 17 languages — more languages are being added gradu­ally. These are reco­gnized and executed even with ambient noise of up to 100 dB (equi­va­lent to a jack­hammer at a distance of 5 meters).

The follo­wing languages are curr­ently available: German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portu­guese, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Chinese, Canto­nese, Indo­ne­sian, Japa­nese, Korean, Mandarin and Thai.

 

Storage & battery

The Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 also does not differ from the Navi­gator 500 in terms of storage and battery. Both smart glasses models are equipped with 64 GB of internal storage and 4 GB of RAM. The storage can be expanded by up to 512 GB via microSD card.

A hot-swappable 2600 mAh battery is included and can be replaced during opera­tion. Thus, the indus­trial smart glasses do not have to be restarted. The battery runtime is about 6–8 hours.

 

Scope of deli­very & access­ories

The stan­dard scope of deli­very of the Navi­gator 520 includes:

• 1x Real­Wear Navi­gator 520
• 1x USB‑C 3.0 char­ging cable
• 1x Work­band

Optional access­ories include the follo­wing:

• Hard hat clips
• Head straps
• Head­phones (with hearing protec­tion)
• Thermal camera
• Wind noise filter
• LTE / 4G Modem
• Batte­ries and char­gers
• Bags and cases

 

Real­Wear Navi­gator 500 price

The price for the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 is curr­ently 2,999.00 euros. Included in the price are instal­la­tion and support by Bitnamic.

 

Fields of appli­ca­tion of the Navi­gator 520 – Ideal for use in industry

Like its prede­cessor, the Navi­gator 520 is IP66 rated, making it dust­proof and jet water resistant. The Navi­gator 520 can easily with­stand falls of up to 2 meters onto concrete, as well as extreme tempe­ra­tures (can be used at ‑20°C to +50°C).

These condi­tions make the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 the ideal smart glasses for industry. It can be used both outdoors and indoors (unlike augmented reality smart glasses such as the Micro­soft Holo­Lens 2, which are prima­rily suited for indoor indus­trial or medical envi­ron­ments) and is mainly used in the follo­wing areas:

• Oil, gas, auto­mo­tive & heavy industry
• Cons­truc­tion sites
• Manu­fac­tu­ring
• Logi­stics

 

Advan­tages of the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520

Daily tasks such as commis­sio­ning machines and systems, main­ten­ance and repairs — espe­ci­ally those under extreme condi­tions — are made much easier by the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520.

Thanks to the effec­tive voice control, both hands always remain free for work on machines etc. This has a major impact on safety during chal­len­ging opera­tions, such as repairs at extreme heights.

With regard to remote service, the new Hyper­Dis­play of the Navi­gator 520 simpli­fies commu­ni­ca­tion between expert and tech­ni­cian, as descrip­tions and expl­ana­tions are much more clear. But even when working alone, for example when carrying out step-by-step instruc­tions, the user bene­fits consider­ably from the improved display of the Real­Wear smart glasses.

The low weight and hot-swappable battery ensure that the Navi­gator 520 can be comfor­tably carried and used for an entire working day.

 

The major advan­tages of the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 at a glance:

• Robust, dust-proof, jet water-proof, drop-proof up to 2 meters
• Ideal for use in indus­trial envi­ron­ments
• Excel­lent voice control  both hands remain free
• 17 languages available
• Noise cancel­la­tion up to 100dB
• High reso­lu­tion Hyper­Dis­play
• Indi­vi­dual adjus­table camera and display
• High photo and video quality
• High wearing comfort
• Long battery life
• Hot-swappable battery

 

Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 vs. Navi­gator 500 – Tech­nical data in compa­rison

	Navi­gator 500	Navi­gator 520
Display	20° field of view, 24 bit color LCD, 0,33 inch diagonal, also good reada­bility outdoors, WVGA 854 x 480 px	24° field of view, 24 bit color LCD, 0,35 inch diagonal, also good reada­bility outdoors, HD 1,280×720
Audio	4 micro­phones with active noise cancel­la­tion up to 100 dB, max. volume 94 dB	4 micro­phones with active noise cancel­la­tion up to 100 dB, max. volume 94 dB
Video	Up to 1080p @60fps. 6x zoom in HD, Codecs: VP8, VP9 and hard­ware enco­ding support for H.264, H.265 HEVC	Up to 1080p @60fps. 6x zoom in HD, Codecs: VP8, VP9 and hard­ware enco­ding support for H.264, H.265 HEVC
Steue­rung	Voice control incl. action, forward & back button, 17 languages available	Voice control incl. action, forward & back button, 17 languages available
Kamera	48 MP 4‑axis optical image stabi­li­sa­tion, PDAF with LED flash­light	48 MP 4‑axis optical image stabi­li­sa­tion, PDAF with LED flash­light
Schutz	IP66, MIL-STD-810G, 2 m drop test, dust-proof, water-jet-proof, usable at ‑20°C to +50°C	IP66, MIL-STD-810G, 2 m drop test, dust-proof, water-jet-proof, usable at ‑20°C to +50°C
Akku	6–8 hours, 2600 mAh / 10,0 Wh Li-Polymer, hot-swappable	6–8 hours, 2600 mAh / 10,0 Wh Li-Polymer, hot-swappable
Konnek­ti­vität	Wi-Fi, Blue­tooth	Wi-Fi, Blue­tooth
Betriebs­system	Android 11 (AOSP) + WearHF™ Hands-Free Inter­face + Enter­prise features	Android 11 (AOSP) + WearHF™ Hands-Free Inter­face + Enter­prise features
Prozessor	2.0 GHz 8‑core Qual­comm® Snapd­ragon™ 662 with Adreno 610 GPU – OpenGL® ES 3.2 & OpenCL™ 2.0	2.0 GHz 8‑core Qual­comm® Snapd­ragon™ 662 with Adreno 610 GPU – OpenGL® ES 3.2 & OpenCL™ 2.0
Spei­cher	64 GB internal storage / 4 GB RAM / microSD slot (max. 512GB)	64 GB internal storage / 4 GB RAM / microSD slot (max. 512GB)
Anschlüsse	3.5mm audio, 1 USB Type C	3.5mm audio, 1 USB Type C
Gewicht	272 g	274 g
Preis	2.530,00 Euro (incl. instal­la­tion & support)	2.999,00 Euro (incl. instal­la­tion & support)

 

Purcha­sing Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 – is it worth it?

Compa­ring the new Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 with the Navi­gator 500, not much has changed at first glance: Visually, hardly anything has been changed, and the same features are offered. There are also no inno­va­tions in terms of opera­ting system, processor, protec­tion and camera. Basi­cally, only one part of the new indus­trial smart glasses from Real­Wear has been changed: the display.

But this update is a signi­fi­cant impro­ve­ment. Good visi­bi­lity or reada­bility is essen­tial in prac­tical use — espe­ci­ally in remote service. Tech­ni­cians in the field need to be able to quickly under­stand what the next step in the main­ten­ance or repair process is. The new Hyper­Dis­play guaran­tees that.

We tested the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520 with our remote service solu­tion bitnamic CONNECT and found that trans­mitted images are actually displayed much sharper and with higher contrast. Details can be seen much better and the 20% larger field of view makes a signi­fi­cant diffe­rence.

Our conclu­sion: Anyone who has been using the Real­Wear HMT‑1 and is thin­king about upgrading should get started right away with the Real­Wear Navi­gator 520. Those who already use the Real­Wear Navi­gator 500 are faced with a more diffi­cult decision: Is it worth buying its successor?

Fort­u­na­tely, there is an alter­na­tive solu­tion: the Hyper­Dis­play is expected to be available sepa­ra­tely in the near future. Thanks to the modular design of the Real­Wear Navi­gator series, the boom arm of the Navi­gator 500 can be easily removed and replaced by that of the Navi­gator 520 inclu­ding Hyper­Dis­play.