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Zeiss Cinemizer OLED 3D glasses (pictures)

Zeiss Cinemizer OLED 3D glasses may look futuristic, but despite their portability, their performance is far below expectations given the price.

Ty Pendlebury
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Ty Pendlebury
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1 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Overview

Every once in awhile yet another manufacturer attempts to create the video version of the iPod personal music player, but no one has cracked it. Though famed German optics company Carl Zeiss AG deserves credit for creating the lightweight, portable Cinemizer 3D headset, ultimately it, too, misses the mark.

While the Zeiss fixes several problems that I noted with the similar Sony's HMZ-T1 3D glasses -- size, weight, lack of portability, inability to adjust each eyepiece individually -- it's a worse product overall. The Zeiss glasses manage to combine a smaller, lower-resolution screen with much poorer performance and cost roughly the same price as the Sony.

Regardless of whether you're watching 2D or 3D content, the Zeiss introduces blue and red crosstalk effects, skies strobe and movement during 3D movies flickers. The earbuds that ship with the headset are dreadful and though there is a headphone jack it only works with iPod viewing.

Read the full review of the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED.

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2 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Overhead

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3 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

iOS adapter

The 30-pin adapter is available separately.
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4 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Lens dials

Each lens features a separate dial to focus on the image, and it works better than the focus on Sony's HMZ-T1 system.
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5 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Fit

The glasses are quite comfortable and lightweight.
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6 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Earphones

The included earphones are rubbish. Buy different ones.
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7 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

HDMI adapter

The Zeiss comes with a HDMI-mini-to-HDMI adapter.
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8 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

HDMI dongle

The dongle is removable and can be replaced with a 30-pin iOS adapter or future accessories.
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9 of 9 Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive

Risky business

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