Lenovo launched an all-in-one virtual reality headset, ThinkReality VRX, that's aimed at enterprise use cases including employee training, collaboration and design. Lenovo's announcement lands days ahead of Apple's mixed reality headset that will reportedly launch at WWDC June 5.
While Apple's headset for developers is likely to garner headlines next week, enterprise VR will be a core topic at the AWE USA conference this week.
Enterprise use cases for VR make the most sense to date as consumer adoption has been slow. Meta has bet big on the metaverse and its Oculus brand, but the effort hasn't delivered returns.
Lenovo's ThinkReality VRX starts at $1,299 and will be powered by the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 processor. Lenovo is also including the ThinkReality VRX in its device as a service offering. Lenovo already offers the ThinkReality A3, an augmented reality headset.
ThinkReality VRX, which also had hand controllers, includes the following features:
- Slim form factor with pancake optics and a 6900 mAh battery that's positioned for weight distribution.
- A venting system that channels heat from the display away from a user's face.
- Support for mobile device management programs.
- Support for Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform and OpenXR-based SDK.
- Android 12, 95-degree field of vision, 4-camera 6DoF optical tracking, 12GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and 2280 x 2280 resolution per eye.
On Lenovo's fourth quarter earnings conference call, Kirk Skaugen, president of the company's infrastructure solutions group, said omniverse and metaverse are part of the growth strategy.
"We're in collaboration with Microsoft and Nvidia and we are currently installing and building the world's largest Omniverse instance in the cloud. And I think we're very excited about that. We're working with some of the largest automotive companies in the world as they build new factories for their electric vehicles new digital twins for the factories, planning next-generation smart cities, planning next-generation 5G networks. So Metaverse, Omniverse is a critical part of our AI story. And of course, Lenovo is unique because we can do Edge to cloud and pocket to cloud. So we have the AR/VR devices. We have the workstations, where the servers only have the storage, which means we're simplifying that for our end users."
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