Pimax Portal is a Hybrid VR Headset with a Nintendo Switch-style Handheld at Its Core - Road to VR

Pimax, the China-based creators known for its fleet of large-FOV PC VR headsets, announced a caller merchandise successful its lineup that’s acceptable to straddle a fig of instrumentality classes acknowledgment to its convertibly betwixt a Nintendo Switch-style handheld and snap-in VR headset display, replete with 6DOF tracking.

Called Portal, Pimax is archetypal pitching the instrumentality via a Kickstarter campaign successful what it calls a planetary pre-sale lawsuit starting November 15th.

Following the precocious announced Pimax Crystal, Portal is the company’s 2nd standalone VR headset with an onboard processor—a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2—and it’s slated to instrumentality the company’s VR-centric merchandise enactment successful a drastically antithetic direction. Boasting handheld gaming, smartphone-style AR, and 6DOF VR, Pimax is acceptable to straddle aggregate instrumentality classes astatine erstwhile with Portal, dubbing it a “metaverse amusement system,” oregon ‘MES’ for short.

Handheld Gaming & Smartphone AR

Pimax is offering 2 cardinal flavors of its Portal handheld (sans headset), which looks a spot similar a transverse betwixt a Nintendo Switch and a Steam Deck: a ‘standard’ mentation priced astatine $300 for 128GB retention and 256GB for $400, and a mentation with a QLED show priced astatine $550, promising a 5.5 inch HDR surface with 4k solution and 144hz refresh rate.

We anticipation to larn much precise specs adjacent week arsenic it hits Kickstarter. There’s nary merchandise leafage disposable for now, lone the hour-long reveal which aired yesterday, hence the dodgy screenshots. Those are a batch of buttons connected those magnetically attached controllers.

Image courtesy Pimax

While being a Snapdragon XR2-powered handheld, the notable summation to Portal is its 5 cameras; 1 successful the mediate and 4 positioned connected each country of the handheld. Those are meant to drive some the smartphone-style AR capableness and 6DOF VR room-scale tracking.

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax is boasting a ton of features with Portal, including analogue triggers, mappable buttons, “low latency” input lag, modular compatibility with Android, autochthonal HDMI compatibility for wired SteamVR gameplay, Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6.0E, 60 GHz WiGig module compatibility, microSD slot, and a big of other worldly that we’ll get into below. That’s a bunch.

That’s thing successful examination to the genuinely dizzying array of features and usecases—you mightiness telephone ‘Pimaxian’ astatine this point—as the institution is again throwing retired a agelong database of attractive-sounding accessories, overmuch similar its original Pimax ‘8K’ headset Kickstarter successful 2017.

Portal View, Horizon, Social Edition: Snap-in VR Headsets

Taking a leafage retired of Google’s handbook, Pimax is pitching Portal arsenic a benignant of Daydream-style instrumentality acknowledgment to its quality to drawback into a headset shell, which admittedly goes 1 measurement further by including a artillery successful the rear for longer artillery beingness and amended on-head balance.

The alleged Portal View besides features snap-in controllers which is simply a beauteous intriguing mode of dealing with Switch-style controllers and plugging them into a Touch-esque formfactor. Remember, that 4k show really pares down to 1,920 x 2,160 per-eye, putting it astir the aforesaid solution arsenic Meta Quest 2.

Among its usage arsenic a standalone 6DOF VR headset, Portal View besides includes optional lenses truthful you tin either person what Pimax calls a modular VR acquisition with 100-degree FOV lenses (27 ppd), oregon a 60-degree FOV specifically for watching movies (40 ppd).

Pricing isn’t wide yet, though Pimax says the modular Portal with View headset ammunition volition outgo $450 portion the QLED Portal headset + ammunition volition outgo $600.

Portal Horizon is the larger FOV mentation of View, which promises a 140-degree FOV (20 ppd). But wait, there’s different headset. Portal Social Edition includes look and eye-tracking, though that’s said to beryllium ‘in the works’. There’s nary connection connected what either Horizon oregon Social Edition volition cost.

Accessories Galore

Pimax’s Portal ecosystem is ushering successful a ton of accessories. Portal is supposedly acceptable to support unreality gaming services similar Xbox Game Pass and Nvidia’s GeForce Now via a WiGig 60GHz plug-in module. Sensible, if not a small precocious successful fading unreality gaming craze.

The institution hopes you’ll besides elite to bargain its dedicated Mini Station mini-PC, which features an AMD 6800U processor, 32 GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD truthful you tin watercourse contented to Portal locally, oregon usage its autochthonal Wi-Fi 6E oregon further 5G module to unreality game.

Image courtesy Pimax

You tin besides bargain a larger surface and controller housing, which lets you drawback the Portal and its supplied controllers into the assemblage of an 8.8-inch clocked astatine 120Hz.

Image courtesy Pimax

Not lone that, but the institution is besides creating an further 5,000 MaH artillery module that plugs into the larger surface housing.

And a dock for Portal to crook it into a TV-based gaming system, utilizing up to 4 of its controllers for multiplayer console-style games.

Image courtesy Pimax

People who’ve followed on cognize Pimax’s creativity and enthusiasm is seldom matched with its quality to get merchandise retired the door. Whether we spot each of these accessories materialize remains to beryllium seen, arsenic the full merchandise ecosystem Pimax is pitching present is ambitious to accidental the least.

Still, Pimax is simply a existent institution with existent products, truthful we’ll beryllium pursuing on with the Kickstarter to spot what makes the chopping artifact and what becomes conscionable different amusive accessory backers volition person to hold for.