What you need to know
- Vivo’s mixed-reality team has supposedly reached over 500 members and the company is going all-in on a new headset.
- At an event Dec. 31, the company revealed plans to prototype a mixed-realty headset with features that could surpass Apple Vision Pro.
- The headset is said to deliver “high-fidelity prototype experiences” in a few cities in late 2025, but there’s no word on when a Vivo headset would be available for purchase.
The race to build the best mixed-reality headsets is heating up, and we’re starting to see just as many cryptic, unreleased prototypes as widely-available products. The market will gain one more prototype in 2025, as Vivo announced plans to reveal a mixed-reality headset late next year at an event Dec. 31, 2024. Vivo has lofty goals for the headset, and wants to dethrone Apple Vision Pro in a few areas, according to information relayed by Digital Chat Station (via GSMArena).
Aside from a generic teaser image, Vivo didn’t share any details about its future headset. An unveiling is slated for next fall, sometime in September and October. At this stage, Vivo’s mixed-reality headset will almost certainly be a prototype. In fact, Vivo says that it expects to offer “high-fidelity prototype experiences" with its headset in select Chinese cities by the end of 2025.
Of course, aside from a confident pledge that Vivo’s mixed-reality headset will top Apple Vision Pro, Vivo doesn’t have anything to share about how it will achieve that goal. Vision Pro, while considered a commercial failure by Apple’s usual standards, is still lauded for its impressive hardware and feature set. That’s likely why Vivo is targeting Vision Pro, especially in its home country of China.
It is worth noting that Vision Pro, released in February 2024, will be well over a year old when Vivo supposedly plans to best it with its own mixed-reality headset at the tail end of 2025.
Although the company gave us a general idea of when a prototype Vivo headset will be revealed, there’s no word yet on pricing or general availability. It isn’t the only company to tease a mixed-reality product you can’t buy yet — and likely won’t be able to for a long time. Meta teased Orion earlier this year, a pair of MR glasses too expensive to mass produce. More recently, Samsung showed off Project Moohan, which will be the first Android XR headset to debut next year.
Being that so little is known about the Vivo headset, it’s probably best to approach it with a bit of skepticism. Pricing and availability have been huge barriers to mixed-reality tech to date. Meta’s Quest headsets are affordable but not necessarily top-tier, while Apple Vision Pro has great hardware and costs a fortune. It’s unclear where Vivo will fall, or if it’ll be somewhere in the middle.
