An Austin startup best known for its VR software and mixed-reality workspace for other companies’ headsets now has its own hardware. The Immersive Viewfinder seems to sit somewhere between the Vision Pro Lite and the Xreal Plus: a lightweight, head-worn device that creates a high-resolution spatial computing environment on the cheap (well, relatively speaking).
Teased to death for months, Immersed founder Renji Bijoy finally revealed the Visor at an event in Austin on Thursday. The device, a little more than glasses but much less than a full headset, gives each eye the equivalent of a 4K OLED screen. It has a solid 100 degree field of view. It supports 6DoF tracking (meaning it responds to movement on different axes, not just simple head rotations) and offers hand and eye tracking and support for more than five screens in a virtual or mixed reality environment.
In the presentation, Bijoy revealed that the Immersed Viewfinder weighs only 186g, slightly less than an iPhone 16 Pro. It’s 64 percent lighter than the Meta Quest 3 (515g) and about 70 percent lighter than the Apple Vision Pro (600 to 650g). Weight and ergonomics have been drawbacks for many early adopters of VR and mixed reality. (That includes some customers of the $3,500 Vision Pro model.) So reducing the Visor’s weight to about the same as a high-end smartphone could, in theory, help him succeed where competitors have struggled. Part of that comes from (borrowing a trick from Apple) a wired battery pack you keep in your pocket.
But unlike those devices, the Immersed Visor doesn’t include an app store or onboard experiences like games. Instead, it’s tailored for work: connect it to your Windows, macOS or Linux computer (wireless or wired) and get things done on its immersive array of virtual screens. Its 6DoF tracking means you can stand, lean or twist, and the virtual screens will stay planted where you put them, rather than awkwardly following you around space.
Like the company’s workspace app for Meta Quest and Vision Pro, you can operate in either a live view of your space or a fully virtual one. (It includes nice virtual environments like a mountaintop ski resort next to a cozy fire.) You can also work with others in a shared space.
The device runs on the Qualcomm XR2+ Gen 2 chip, which debuted at CES 2024. The chip supports up to 4.3K resolution per eye and can handle content up to 90 fps.
Immersed chose an unconventional pricing scheme. The device starts at $1,050 to buy outright. But you can get it for $400 up front if you agree to a subscription model: $40 per month for 24 months or $60 per month for a 12-month term. Oh, and that the model doesn’t ship until “six months after” October, which is April 2025. If you want a device that starts shipping next month — that’s the “Founder’s Edition” — the price jumps to $1,350, or $700 plus the monthly subscription fee ( same prices as later delivery version).
In theory, the Immersed Visor could hit a sweet spot for many people curious about spatial computing who want something cheaper than the Vision Pro, with higher resolution than the Meta Quest 3, and that’s (perhaps) less like a beta product than AR glasses from Xreal. Whether it succeeds on those points, well, we won’t know until we get some hands-on time. As far as I can see, no major media outlets (including Engadget) have shared hands-on demonstrations of the device. As this year’s wave of absurdly hyped AI gadgets has reminded us, big promises mean nothing if you end up with a $1,000 paper press.
You can watch the preview below, and if that tickles your fancy, pre-order from the Immersed website.
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