Oculus Go Price Slashed by 25% to $149
by Anton Shilov on January 17, 2020 10:30 AM EST
Facebook has announced that it has permanently slashed the pricing of its entry-level Oculus Go 32 GB VR headset to an ‘impulse buy’ level of $149. The move will make virtual reality more accessible for those who want to try basic VR gaming and video playback, but are after something more robust and with better support than various flavors of Google’s Cardboard VR.
Starting today, the Oculus Go 32 GB is priced at $149, whereas the 64 GB version costs $199. In other countries where the VR headset is available, prices have been slashed ‘comparably’ as well, according Oculus VR parent company Facebook.
The Oculus Go is the most basic standalone virtual reality headset available today (at least when it comes to three major VR HMD makers). The device has a 5.5-inch display panel with a 2560×1440 (538 ppi) resolution as well as a 60 – 72 Hz refresh rate (application dependent). The HMD is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 SoC (four Kryo cores running at 2.15 – 2.3 GHz, Adreno 530 GPU with ~500 GFLOPS performance, 64-bit LPDDR4 memory, 14LPP) paired with 3 GB of RAM, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and 32 or 64 GB of NAND flash storage that cannot be expanded using an SD card.
As far as battery life is concerned, the the Oculus Go is equipped with a 2600 mAh battery that provides up to two hours of gaming, or 2.5 hours of video playback.
Since the Oculus Go is a standalone VR HMD, it has built-in speakers as well as the 3-degree-of-freedom tracking (3DoF) for the headset and the controller, but does not support positional tracking at all. To that end, the Oculus Go cannot offer the same level of immersion as the Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, or even the Vive Focus which feature positional tracking.
It is evident that the Oculus Go was developed to be as cheap as possible and all of its tradeoffs are consequences of such design approach. From Oculus VR perspective, the low price and availability of proper content might popularize virtual reality in general among consumers not ready to invest hundreds of dollars in a more advanced gear. To that end, it will be interesting to see how a $50 price slash affects market performance of the Oculus Go.
Related Reading:
- Oculus Go Now Available: Mainstream Standalone VR Headset Starts at $199
- Oculus Announces Oculus Go: Untethered VR For $199 USD
- Oculus Quest Announced: A 6DoF Standalone VR Headset
- Oculus Rift S VR Headset: An Upgraded Virtual Reality Experience
- Oculus Announces Six Week Sale of $399 Rift + Touch Bundle
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Midwayman - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
Still think devices this low end amount to 'poisoning the well'. It'll get people to try VR, but they'll dismiss it as a gimmick without the full tracking experience.Dragonstongue - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
For sure.IMO if they want stand alone type VR they really really should focus on getting run time up higher as the "up to two hours" of gaming is quite small IMO.. if they could get to double this at this price, that would be "reasonable"
VR for ME still is a gimmick, given have to wear things on face to experience it, when they can figure out a way to have such projected in a darker room that would be the "stepping stone"
as it stands, it is an expensive gimmick that really has little to show for what should be available to it, i.e design, blueprinting and so forth, the sky is the limit, but not when need powerful system just to use it and/or net connection to "enjoy" no better than what standard systems can currently give you.
just another thing to fall apart and require replacing in my books.
VR is not for everyone, no doubt, as it stands, how many of the millions/billions of things sold annually come even close to VR being "mainstream" my guesstimate, a very very very small amount.
They need to work harder and give more to them if they want to see it come "full circle"
^.^
webdoctors - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
Ya, its very much like the self driving car entrants where the bad experience turns ppl off and hurts everyone.Threska - Thursday, January 23, 2020 - link
Except "hurts more" is a different level than VR.nandnandnand - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
Low-end standalone headsets will get a lot more interesting once they start using eye tracking for foveated rendering. That should cut the necessary GPU performance for high resolutions and framerates.ET - Monday, January 20, 2020 - link
It's a gimmick with the full tracking experience, too. :) But really, with the Quest on the market, I don't think that consumers in general will have a problem accepting that this entry level VR is different.Personally I love my Go more than I love my Quest. There's quite a bit that's good about it as an intro to VR, certainly at this price. The Go feels like a complete low end device. The Quest feels to me like a 'need a little more work' device.
Alistair - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
was hoping for an APU upgrade more than a price dropmilkywayer - Monday, January 20, 2020 - link
Yup. Im not spending money on a low tier device as my first VR experience. I also don't wanna spend $700ish so I'll wait for a v2 of this with more power and better display.Ceph - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link
Absolute garbage, avoid at any price.peevee - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link
What is it used for?