There was an incredible amount of buildup surrounding it’s release, many would say too much. But when you receive $2.3B in funding, for a product that no-one has ever seen and you show a whale breaching in a school gym while the kids go wild - you are left inspired.
Here’s a look at the whale:
And here’s a look at what the headset and peripherals look like:
Then to cut to the details you really care about, below is a list of the good, bad, ugly from all I’ve gleaned from others:
Pros
Mixed Reality (MR) is an improvement over Augmented Reality (AR) as it allows for real world knowledge (e.g. hide behind a chair, fall off a table, nudge with your hand, etc.)
Hand and object tracking for ease of interaction
Light and comfortable - early reviews appear to put this as the most comfortable headset around
No need to attach to external machine = portability
6 DOF (degrees of freedom) = movement in all directions
Speech to text (like Siri) = ease of communication
Eye tracking = limited currently, but could be a huge advantage for the future in helping us orientate move and learn from how we interact
Cons
Expensive $2,295 = certainly not for the average user
Low FOV (field of view) = 50 degrees = better than Hololens, but every review I’ve seen still states it’s way too small (more on FOV here)
Graphics look good - but no where near photorealistic as portrayed in the build-up commercials
You can’t wear with your glasses (yet)
In summary