Lenovo G0A20001WW Explorer Mixed Reality Headset

Until the Mixed Reality headsets came out, the only options you really had were buying a $400 Oculus or $600 Vive, and they essentially held a duopoly on the market, refusing to reduce pricing. Thanks to the magic of the free market, the mixed reality headsets have quickly become an affordable entry-level headset as the prices have begun hitting $200 on Amazon (1/2 the price of Oculus, 1/3 the price of a Vive). For a fraction of the price, you'll be receiving the bulk of the "virtual reality experience"The Lenovo headset specifically is the best Mixed Reality offering available, besides the much more expensive Odyssey. It offers 110 degree field of vision, whereas the other headsets are just at 100. The Oculus and Rift offer 120 and 145 respectively. I believe all the Mixed Reality headsets besides the Odyssey offer 2880x1440 resolution (better than the Vive and tied with Oculus) with 90hz refresh rate. While comfort is a personal metric, I find this headset to have a very comfortable fit to it. Another reason I chose this headset is that people reported that it works great for people with glasses, and I can confirm that they do. In summary, you get a resolution on par or better than the industry leaders and you compromise on your fov with this headset for a fraction of the cost, and for what it's worth, I've had no trouble with 110 fov. It's pretty negligibleThe real compromise of this headset isn't the fov at all really, it's the tracking. The Mixed Reality headsets use two internal cameras to track your controllers and the results are functional but leave a lot to be desired. If you raise your hands above your head, it'll lose track. If you drop your hands all the way to the ground, it *can* lose track. If you throw your hands behind your body, it'll lose track. When you use this headset in practice, you'll observe that it calculates the trajectory of your movements and do a good job of guessing where you threw your hands. You can swing your hands behind your body in fluid motions and it'll figure it out, but you have to move them back in front of the cameras or your hands will wonk out on you until you do return them. In essence, there's a bit of an art to moving your arms fluidly that you'll want to learn but on the whole, it is functional.This is the real compromise of the headset, and it's up to you if you're willing to spend a lot more money on headsets that don't have this issue.There is an upside to this flaw. Because the tracking is all done internally, this headset is very easy to setup. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on "lightposts" either, sensors that you place around your room to externally track your movements.You also don't need 4 4.0 USB ports to manage your headset alongside a massive amount of batteries to power the whole operation. You just plug the Lenovo into your hdmi and USB, and you're good to go in basically 10 minutes of installation. The controllers themselves use 2 AA batteries, so 4 between the both of them, and you may want to invest in rechargeable batteries if you intend to use this a lot as it'll save you money in the long run. I went with EBL 8 Bay AA AAA Battery Charger with AA 2800mAh (4 Pack) and AAA 1100mAh (4 Pack) Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries for a battery charger and purchased 8 additional batteries EBL 8 Pack High Capacity 2800mAh AA Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries, Battery Case Included which brought me up to 12 rechargeable alongside the 4 AA that come with the charger station. It's a totally optional move, but I digress. The quick plug and play functionality of this headset also makes the Mixed Reality headsets far more portable. Finally, Grab Steam VR for Mixed Reality to play Steam VR games, many of which are free.That just about covers everything. The head movement is very fluid all around and the bulk of your hand movements are going to be in front of you where the tracking is great, and the whole thing feels very fluid. The prices on Amazon seem to fluctuate pretty dramatically so you should know that they've hit $200. The Acer is supposed to also be a great option but has 100 fov instead of 110 namely. Hopefully you can grab a pair when the prices go low!

Firstly I really appreciate that this is one of the best WMR headsets in terms of field of view and resolution being as high as the much more expensive Vive range, and overall it's been a really good experience. Although perhaps worth mentioning that you need to have Windows 10 Home or Pro for it to work properly - I had an Enterprise version and had to re-install with Home, because there is currently no support or ability to get WMR drivers installed into Enterprise.In terms of ergonomics, the padding on the inside of the headset around the nose comes a bit loose, and if you're not careful can rub against the inside of the lenses, which might smudge them, so best to always give them a wipe with a lens cloth before each use. Also the cables coming around to the right-hand side and dropping from there means that you end up with a slight pull on that side of the headset, and if you're not careful it might tilt sideways on your head in use - my wife especially noticed this as her head is smaller and so the headset does not fit quite as snugly. If there was a strap over the top of the head which had the cables running down to drop from the back of the headset, this could be avoided.Regarding picture quality, the resolution and focus is generally really good - in the center of the frame. When playing games that hold your focus well, you don't notice it being blurrier away from the middle of the lens, but in applications like Steam VR environments or Google Earth VR where you might be trying to look around with just your eyes as opposed to always moving your head (like you would normally) it becomes more noticeable. Also in Euro Truck Simulator 2 when I was trying to check my wing mirrors, I had to turn my head right around to look the opposite side, as opposed to being able to glance out the corner of my eye. This is something shared with all headsets, not exclusive to this one, but something I did not realise at first. However in a game like Subnautica where the character in the game is also wearing a mask (for diving) it isn't something you notice at all.Battery life is hard to judge, because there appears to be a bug in the windows drivers for WMR controllers at the moment where the battery levels is not being assessed correctly - with a multi-meter I can tell that the batteries (it comes with 4xAA batteries for use with the controllers) are fully charged, but Steam VR tells me that the right one in particular is depleted. I wonder if this is something that could perhaps have been worked around if it had used rechargeable Li-Ion cells with a docking station to hold them when not in use and charge them when necessary, as opposed to relying on AAs.

EDIT: The cable developed a short after about 3 months of use, Sent it to lenovo for repair(You pay for shipping yourself), And after receiving it, support claiming they never got it for about two weeks, And spending another 4 weeks "in progress" without an update I am question if I will ever get it back.So if you want a 4 month VR trail run at the cost of 260 bucks then this product is for you.It's a pretty good headset overall. Very comfortable and no real issues with long term use. I like it overall better then the vive because the resolution is that much better despite the tracking issues below.The following issue might just be a software issue with Windows Mixed reality as a whole.My only compliant is the tracking. While it's good most of the time it has issues with a lot of people in the same room and tends to lose tracking when getting close to the ground such as picking someone up off the floor.It also seems to take it a bit to refind the controllers if it loses track of them.