Immersed changed Visor’s pricing strategy to $400 plus a subscription, instead of a full outright price.
Who Is Immersed And What Is Visor?
Immersed currently offers a free app for Meta Quest, Vive Focus 3, and Pico 4 that shows your PC monitors in VR and lets you spawn entirely virtual extra monitors, for up to 5 monitors in total.
Visor is a new headset fully designed around this use case, a lightweight streamlined device rather than a generalized headset for an ecosystem of applications and games.
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It was announced in August last year, described as a “strategic collaboration” with Qualcomm for the device, Intel for the PC functionality, as well as an “undisclosed AR/VR tech giant” that was supposed to be revealed last year, but still hasn’t been.
Visor is said to have 4K OLED microdisplays, inside-out tracking, HD color passthrough, hand tracking, eye tracking, and support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Immersed says Visor is built for “all day” comfort. Like Apple Vision Pro, it has a tethered external battery pack, but while Vision Pro weighs 600-650 grams, Immersed claims Visor weighs less than 200 grams.
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Concept of Visor’s software experience.
While Visor’s core use case is acting as a collection of virtual monitors for our laptop, Immersed says it will also have a standalone mode with a web browser, an “immersive home theater experience” that Immersed says will let you “stream movies and shows with friends”, and the ability to sideload OpenXR Android apps.
In September Immersed opened preorders for two models of Visor, one with 2.5K per eye OLED microdisplays (similar to Bigscreen Beyond) for $500 and another with 4K per eye OLED microdisplays (similar to Apple Vision Pro) for $750. Just two weeks later though, the startup canceled the 2.5K model, as it claimed 96% of people opted for the 4K model. And in November, Immersed increased the price to $1000, or $950 if you order before February 16.
The New Visor Plus Subscription
Instead of paying $1000 upfront when the headset ships, Immersed today announced a new subscription model for all new customers from February 26.
With Visor Plus, you pay $400 at shipping then a subscription each month, either $60/month for 1 year or $40/month for 2 years.
A subscribing buyer can return Visor after 30 days, but will be charged a 20% restocking fee, Immersed says.
To prevent people from simply acquiring the headset for $400 and never paying the subscription, Visor headsets that haven’t been fully paid off will require an internet connection every 30 days to validate its ownership status.
The Visor Plus subscription is not just for financing the device however, and Immersed is hoping even those who bought the hardware at full price will subscribe.
Immersed says the Visor Plus subscription offers the following benefits:
- “All Immersed Pro features (& early access to beta features)”
- “Lifetime Warranty (during membership)”
- “Curator Professional AI Assistant (Beta)”
- “Customizable 3D work spaces”
- “Discounts on Visor accessories”
- “VIP Co-working Spaces”
- “Carefully crafted co-working spaces facilitating global networking within your industry or job function.”
- “Priority support”
- “When Visor 2 is announced in the coming years, undamaged Visor 1 devices can be traded in for a discounted price.”
Immersed also today revealed the first images of the Visor battery pack, which it says will last 3 hours. The cable on the other end can attach to a laptop for data passthrough.
Immersed claims the first Visor units will start shipping in mid-2024, with further orders being shipped on a first come first served basis. The company draws comparisons to Bigscreen, another social VR startup with hardware ambitions. But while Bigscreen Beyond has actually shipped to customers and we had a hands-on demo of a prototype long before, we’ve still yet to see Visor with our own eyes, and the frequency of changes to Immersed’s hardware plan hasn’t inspired confidence that it will be ready to mass produce and ship a product any time soon.
UPDATE: Immersed announced after publication that the new subscription pricing model will replace the option to pay outright for new buyers from February 26.
