Virtual reality already has plenty of barriers to entry. So Lenovo has a different solution: a headset that doesn’t need a separate phone or PC, powered instead by its own steam and Google’s Daydream VR.
Announced overnight, the Lenovo Mirage Solo is a standalone VR headset that’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 CPU and 4GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 835 is a 10nm chip that was released in the middle of last year, and it’s the same CPU found in the Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL, Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+, Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium, HTC’s U11, the LG V30 and more.
On top of that, Lenovo has wedged a headphone jack, dual mics, a 1440p LCD screen and 64GB of storage. Support for Google Daydream means you’ll be able to access Google’s entire VR library at launch, and the headset will have a 110 degree field of view.
The controller will just be the stock Google Daydream controller, however, which could be an important point of difference for the Oculus Go. That said, Google and Lenovo did announce that the Mirage Solo will be able to play a new Blade Runner game titled Blade Runner: Revelations, set 4 years after the original film.
It’s scheduled to launch in the second quarter, although there’s no word on whether that’s just an international launch or just in Europe and North America. As for the price, I’ve pinged Lenovo’s local team for more info. Reports on the ground are saying the Mirage Solo will cost around $US400, putting it in the same bracket as PSVR. That might be a bar too high for some people, but we’ll how the tech shapes out when it hits our shores later this year.
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