Sony's Newest Mixed Reality Headset Is an Apple Vision Pro Competitor for Business
Hands-on: It has a Qualcomm chip inside and a unique ring accessory. We took it for a spin at CES 2024.
- Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
- Although still awaiting his Oscar for Best Picture Reviewer, David does hold certifications from the Imaging Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology on display calibration and evaluation.
CNET's David Katzmaier wearing Sony's industrial VR headset with pointer (left) and ring accessories.
Sony's got a new VR/AR headset, but maybe not in the way you might think. Sony already has the PlayStation VR 2, but it has debuted a new standalone, spatial content creation-focused mixed reality headset at this year's CES show in Las Vegas. Developed with Siemens, the headset has a very different target audience: engineers who might also be considering the Apple Vision Pro.
The mixed reality headset, with a flip-up visor and a couple of wearable input tools, is focused on content creators and professionals. The hardware, coming later in 2024, uses Qualcomm's new Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 chip that will also be in Samsung's expected headset this year. The headset also features Sony's own micro-OLED displays, which have an impressive 4K resolution per eye.
Sony's headset doesn't look goggle-like: Instead, its flip-down design floats the display tech over the eyes, allowing for some peripheral vision on the sides.
The headset has two 4K resolution micro-OLED panels for sharp, high-contrast images.
I haven't had the chance to check it out myself, but my colleague David Katzmaier gave it a spin. Here's what he says about the experience.
The headset is really comfortable. It fit with no problem over my glasses, and I appreciated having peripheral vision around the edges to guide me as I walked around the room untethered. I was able to understand and use the simple pointer control almost immediately to manipulate the virtual world accurately.
Sony's demo consisted of a virtual museum space with an array of objects -- a painting, a page from a book, a photo and more arrayed in the foreground. Using the pointer I grabbed the book page and brought it right up to my face, filling my field of view, to test resolution. The 4K micro-OLED displays didn't disappoint. Text was clearly legible, sharp and with excellent contrast. There was also a virtual camera that I used to take pictures of the museum, manipulating it in space and clicking the shutter button to create images.
What impressed me most about the headset was the image quality and natural feel of the virtual world -- I didn't experience any discomfort or nausea. At times with quick movement the image lagged or stuttered, and I'd have liked to see a more visually interesting demo, but the hardware itself was lightyears better than my Quest 2 at home. Unfortunately, my prototype unit didn't recognize the little ring accessory, which supposedly allows a user to pinch and manipulate objects more accurately.
The headset's visor flips up. It's designed to be simple to pop in and out of.
The Apple Vision Pro has ramped up interest in high-end mixed reality headsets, and Sony's headset is joining a similar type of landscape. Sony's headset, which is also standalone, will rely on software tools from Siemens' Xcelerator platform designed for business.
This headset looks like it's aiming for uses in exactly the same spaces that AR headsets such as Microsoft's HoloLens used to target: as a way to model and explore 3D designs before deploying them, and possibly for training and simulation purposes, too.
The Sony headset comes with two controllers, a pointer (left) and a little ring.
Sony's headset shows some interesting promise in the accessories. Neither Apple nor Meta has developed any wearable controller accessories for mixed reality yet, although it would make sense for wearables that are mixed reality-ready to start emerging in the next few years.
Jan 11, 2:50 p.m. PT: Updated with hands-on impressions.