t only took 3 months for a new Quest Pro competitor to be announce and it is here in the form of the HTC Vive XR Elite. Here’s the deets.

1920 x 1920 per eye resolution and 3840x1920 combined on its pancake lenses

6 Dof inside out tracking

90 hz refresh

UP TO 110 Degrees for the FOV

Dual microphones for echo cancellation and the speakers are embed in the ear tips, and unfortunately no mention of a headphone jack

The classic snapdragon xr2 is the chipset with 12 gigs of memory and 128 gigs for storage.

The headset holds 4 tracking cameras, a 16 mega pixel RGB camera for color passthrough a depth sensor for increased room scale tracking and object handling, g sensor, gyroscope and a proximity sensor.

You’ll have the joy of stepless IPD ranging from 54-73mm

The 26.6 watt hour battery which is the most interesting piece of this headset in my opinion is hot swappable and will last just around 2 hours.

For connections you’ll have 1 USB 3.2 gen 1 type c for peripherals like the swappable battery and another for a connection to power or a PC.

With the battery the headset weighs in at 625 grams

The vive XR elite will have Bluetooth 5.2 and wifi 6 and 6e it certain countries.

With those wireless connections you will be able to use android app streaming from your phone on to a virtual screen while using a game pad connected to your phone.

The XR elite also has connectors for eye and face tracking modules looking to launch later this year. 

And the controllers are what we saw withthe vive focus three which are pretty much your standard 6dof controllers. The headset is compatible with the vive wrist tracker as well

Now lets talk price. The XR elite will be $1100 dollars and if you preorder before february 15th youll get 5 games for free which include Green Hell, Les Mills Body combat, Unplugged Figmin XR and Glimpse. The headset is marked to ship this march

To me the XR elite looks like a decent step into the future of headset designs with a swappable battery and being able to get a face and eye tracking module separately to save cost is a great pro consumer move. And we all know how valuable the ability to have a stepless IPD is. Would I buy one? Honestly I haven’t seen anything thats worth moving on from my quest 2 yet. For me when looking for a new headset it comes down to the cost and how that relates to an upgrade in resolution and field of view. And the XR elite just isnt’ quite enticing enough for me.
Are you excited for the XR elite? Are you gonna jump in that pre-order line? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll catch you in the next quickie!