Still remember Magic Leap? The US startup is preparing a follow-up to its first (underwhelming) augmented reality headset in the Magic Leap 2, which arrives in September.
The upcoming product was introduced on Tuesday, and Magic Leap says it’ll be the most immersive augmented reality device on the market. But it won’t be cheap. The Magic Leap 2 will start at $3,299 for the basic edition model.
For $4,099, buyers can own the Magic Leap 2 Developer Pro model, which has more access to developer software tools and other business-focused features. But at the highest tier is the Magic Leap 2 Enterprise, which will start at $4,999, and offers even more flexibility with how it can be used, along with “robust” enterprise functions.
The pricing is high, but Magic Leap is marketing the products to software developers and businesses that can afford it. This could include hospitals, factories, or airports looking for new ways to help employees access data on the job or train their workers, according to Fortune.
The big question is whether the second-generation headset can address the issues we found with the Magic Leap One, which arrived in 2018 to some disappointment. As an AR device, the goal of Magic Leap is to project and overlay virtual images over what you see in the real world, giving you a new way to experience mobile computing.
However, the Magic Leap One showed us that while the concept is certainly promising, the technology is perhaps decades away from maturity. In our review, we found the headset was “buggy, awkward, and not particularly pleasant to use for extended periods.”
At the time, the headset also had a scarce amount of software to support it. The other problem was the device’s price at $2,300, which dampened its appeal for normal consumers.
The Magic Leap 2 improves on the original headset by expanding the field of view from a mere 40 degrees up to 70 degrees, according to the specs. The computing has also been upgraded from an Nvidia Arm-based chip to an AMD 7-nanometer quad-core Zen 2 CPU. Meanwhile, the weight has been shaved from 316 grams (0.7 pounds) to 260 grams.
As a result, Magic Leap claims the new headset offers the “best-in-class image quality, color fidelity, and text legibility” while remaining light to wear. In addition, the device includes a new “dynamic dimming” function, allowing it to better display images in bright office environments.
The company plans on first selling the new headset in the US followed by additional regions.