HTC's Vive XR Elite Is a $1099 Meta Quest Pro Competitor - PCMag

HTC's caller standalone VR headset is poised to vie with the Meta Quest Pro.

The Vive XR Elite is the company's archetypal effort to bring a afloat untethered VR/AR acquisition to consumers aft its enterprise-focused Vive Focus 3 and video-glasses-style Vive Flow. It’s costly (though cheaper than the Quest Pro), but it shows plentifulness of potential.

The Vive XR Elite is simply a standalone headset, akin to the Vive Focus 3. It provides a afloat virtual world acquisition with six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) question tracking for some the headset itself and the included question controllers, without the request for immoderate wired connection.

It uses 90Hz LCDs to supply 4K solution (approximately 2,000-by-2,000 pixels per eye) with a 110-degree tract of view. It’s powered by the aforesaid Qualcomm XR2 processor arsenic the Meta Quest 2, and features 12GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.

The headset features a colour passthrough camera similar the Meta Quest Pro, enabling much immersive, full-color AR experiences compared with the black-and-white cameras of lower-end devices similar the Quest 2. It besides has a laser extent sensor for country scanning and incorporates built-in manus tracking truthful users tin power the acquisition without question controllers.

(Credit: HTC)

One of the astir absorbing aspects of the Vive XR Elite is its modular size, weight, and connectivity. It weighs conscionable 625 grams, oregon astir 1.5 pounds, with its artillery attached. That makes it astir 100 grams (3.5 ounces) heavier than the Quest 2 and 100 grams lighter than the Quest Pro. The headset tin relation without a battery, however, moving arsenic a tethered headset connected to immoderate compatible computer, phone, oregon immoderate instrumentality that tin output video implicit USB-C. Removing the artillery and switching the headband for the included glasses-like temples cuts the headset’s value down to conscionable 240 grams, fractional the value of the Quest 2.

While the Vive XR Elite has a colour camera similar the Meta Quest Pro, it lacks the eye- and face-tracking features of Meta’s high-end headset. Instead, Vive volition connection tracking accessories arsenic optional purchases.

The Vive XR Elite uses HTC’s ain Viveport integer store and service, and Viveverse 3D environment. HTC says that its VR level doesn’t harvest data, a important opposition from Meta’s VR headsets and that company’s plans for the metaverse and its past of collecting and utilizing lawsuit data.

While the Vive XR Elite is intended for consumers, it’s inactive a precise costly headset. At $1,099, it comes successful astatine the halfway people betwixt the Quest 2 and Quest Pro, and $100 much than the tethered Valve Index. Even without oculus and look tracking, it seems to beryllium a important upgrade from the Quest 2 with its much precocious sensors and much modular design.

The HTC Vive XR Elite is presently disposable for pre-order, and ships aboriginal this year.