Last week in Beijing, I had the great opportunity to try the Vivo Vision Discovery Edition, the new mixed reality headset launched by Vivo, one of the leading smartphone manufacturers. In this post, I’ll detail my first impressions of the device and also do some comparisons with Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro. I tease you that the headset is much better than I expected, so now you have to read the full post to discover why!
Prepare yourself for a lengthy and detailed post, in classical Skarredghost’s style. However, if you’re in a hurry, you can skip directly to the Final Impression section at the end of the article for a quick summary. Or if you like videos, you can watch the one below where I talk about the most important takeaways from my hands-on.
The written post is more detailed, but if you are into videos, this has all the most relevant insights!
Vivo Vision
Vivo Vision exhibited by the company during its announcement (Image by Vivo)
Vivo is one of the major smartphone manufacturers. So I thought it was great news when it announced its mixed reality headset called Vivo Vision. Since the beginning, it was clear that it was heavily inspired by the Vision Pro: the design of the headset was very similar, so were the interactions… and even the name was the same! Anyway, Vivo announced that the headset is much lighter and more affordable than Vision Pro, and this caught the attention of the whole XR press. The community started being curious about this device and wondered if this could be a valid alternative to Apple’s headset.
Unluckily, Vivo Vision is not available on the market yet, but a few days ago, Vivo started doing in-store demos in some locations in China. The device that is showcased is called “Vivo Vision Discovery Edition” because it is not the final version of the headset, but it is like a “release candidate” of it that still needs some polish. I am currently in China, so I did everything I could to try this headset and let you know how good it is. I succeeded in my efforts, and this article is the result of my time with the headset.
I have to say a big thank you to Cynthia from VRAR World for managing to get me a spot in the Beijing store, even if it was fully booked. She has been incredibly kind to me, and I am happy to return the favour by inviting you all to Shanghai for the VRAR Expo event she is organizing for next year.
Vivo Vision Discovery Edition Demo
The store demo I had of Vivo Vision lasted for 37 minutes (I know the exact time because I recorded it). It happened at a dedicated desk in the store where there were two Vivo Vision Discovery Editions to try. The first thing that the Vivo employees did after greeting me was to scan my face using a Vision headset that was on a pedestal, aimed straight at my face. The employee got my scan into a tablet connected with the headset, then from this scan understood which facemask to use. There are a few different facemasks with different sizes, and you must wear the one ideal for you, not only for better comfort while wearing the headset, but also because this way eye tracking works with optimal precision.
Vivo Vision headset scanning Cynthia’s face. The procedure was pretty quick. Sorry, Cynthia, if I pictured your face in the worst moment possible…
The fun thing is that since the headset is currently meant only for the Chinese market, the algorithm to calculate the right facemask did not work very well with my big Western nose, and the employee had to try various facemasks until finally the system said that the current one was good for tracking my eyes. At this point, the employee secured the headset well to my head using the straps, and I could start demoing the headset.
I watched my hands and then went through the eye calibration with the usual series of dots with three different brightness levels that Apple made popular. After that, I’ve been shown the following demos, which I played all by staying seated at a table:
- 2D/3D/180 VR/360 Video playback
- Photos, 3D Photos, Spatial Videos
- Environments and AR/VR transitions
- A short mixed reality demo with flowers I could touch with my hands
- A short mixed reality demo with some women coming out from the virtual world to the real world
- A little rhythm game reminiscent of Beatable (something like Guitar Hero with hand tracking)
- A little tabletop game where I had to fix some machinery using hand tracking.
Honestly speaking, I did not find any of the demos compelling enough to buy the headset. This is not because of the lack of quality of the device, but because, in general, for all these mixed reality headsets, there is no use case good enough to justify the money spent to buy them. Probably a big virtual screen to watch videos is still the best one up to date, and this is the reason why it is the first being showcased. The rest looks like a nice-to-have, maybe not enough to justify spending thousands of dollars on it.
Anyway, the shop clerks were incredibly kind, and the demos were also carried on by caring about the hygiene of the user: they installed a disposable facemask on the face cushion before giving the headset to me, for instance. They also followed everything we were doing through a companion app installed on a tablet on which they could see our visuals, and supported us through that. So kudos to Vivo for organizing demos the right way.
The companion app on the tablet was showing the Vivo employees what we were seeing. It also had a few buttons to control our experience, like, for instance, there was a button to close the current app
If reading this paragraph, you thought “but this is exactly how Apple also does its demos“, well, you’re not wrong: they also cloned this.
Ok, now that you know how I was able to try the device, it’s time to dig into my impressions of it. Remember that since the device is still not finalized (it’s a Discovery Edition) and I was able to try it only for 37 minutes, this article only counts as a “first impressions” and not an exhaustive review. So take everything I’ll say with a pinch of salt.
Vivo Vision Specifications
These are the specs of the Vivo Vision (courtesy Road To VR):
- Weight: 398 g
- Height: 83 mm
- Thickness: 40 mm
- Size: 26% smaller than industry average
- Light seal options: 4
- Foam padding options: 8
- Operating system: OriginOS Vision
- Eye-tracking precision: 1.5°
- Fingertip gesture recognition: 26 degrees of freedom
- Vertical tracking range: 175°
- Panel type: Dual Micro-OLED
- Resolution: 8K binocular
- Color coverage: 94% DCI-P3
- Color accuracy: DeltaE
- Binocular brightness difference: ≤ 2 nits
- Binocular chromaticity difference: ΔE
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2
- GPU performance: 2.5x over previous generation
- AI performance: 8x over previous generation
- Panoramic video viewing
- Sports/e-sports broadcasts: Multi-angle and split-screen
- Virtual theater screen: 120 ft equivalent
Design
You know that, as an Italian, I like to evaluate the design of the headsets. The Vivo Vision tries to copy the aesthetics of the Apple Vision Pro, and in my opinion, Vivo managed to deliver a device that looks pretty elegant. The grey color of the body fits well with the black of the front face, and the result is a headset that looks good in pictures. But, I have to say, Apple’s elegance is on another level. Vivo looks more practical; it has more straight lines, while Apple differentiates itself with more refined materials and classy curved lines.
Try to compare this design of the Vision Pro with the following pictures of the Vivo Vision. You will notice that Apple still has a magic design touch that others can not copy (Image by Apple)
I took various pictures of the headset. From the top, you can already recognize some elements inspired by the Vision Pro, like the Reality Crown. You can also see the strap on the back and the air sink on the front.
From the bottom, you can instead see the two volume buttons on the right frame, and some of the tracking cameras of the device.
The front view reveals some tracking cameras.
The right side reveals another view of the strap, with one part going on the nape and the other on the top of the head. Notice that this strap is different than the one shown in the first promotional images of the headset.
On the left, you can instead see how the battery is attached to the headset. And yes, the mechanism to attach it is very similar to that of AVP.
From the back, you can see the two straps that help fit the headset to your head. You can also see the dots of the eye tracking around the lenses. In this photo, you can also notice the disposable white facemask that has been fitted to the headset to guarantee my hygiene.
Visuals
One of the sectors where the Vivo Vision truly shines is the visuals, even if with a few caveats.
Vivo talks about a “binocular 8K” display, which probably means having 4K x 4K per eye. I say probably because in our industry, the 8K number has been used inappropriately for too long. AVP has a resolution of 3660 x 3200 per eye, and I guess this headset has something similar. When looking at the pictures, you see no screen door effect, and the images have a crazy good resolution. I’ve been shown some amazing 3D and 180 VR videos, like one shot by Red Bull, and the definition was incredible. This means that resolution and pixel density are definitely great. Colors are great as well, even if I had the impression that they were slightly less bright than on AVP (but I’m not sure if it was just an impression).
Through-the-lens picture of Vivo Vision. If you look at the “hills” of the virtual environment, you can see that the definition and clarity are great
As for the field of view, it looked to me to be theoretically more or less in par with my Quest 3, maybe just slightly smaller. I say “theoretically” because practically, the sensation was of a lower FOV. The problem is that the lenses of this device have noticeable spherical aberrations (i.e., things look blurred) in the periphery. So you don’t see well across the whole surface of the lens, but only in its wide central part: this means that the actual field of view where you see things well is lower than the one you will read on paper. Hopefully, this can be fixed in the final version, because it impacted my experience with the device.
Another thing that was weird was that in a tiny region of the periphery of my vision, I could see the reflection of the world behind me. Usually, this did not impact my experience much, but it was strange and immersion-breaking.
Lenses of the Vivo Vision
I don’t recall having had problems with persistence of the visuals while rotating my head as I had when I tried the Vision Pro one year ago, though. This, for me, is a plus over the Vision Pro.
Vivo also offers magnetic prescription lenses for people affected by eye impairments, so you don’t have to wear glasses while wearing the headset. I have not been given info about the price and availability of them, though. I could anyway see that they were very easy to install, because the employees use them during the demos for customers who need them.
Left eye with the magnetic prescription lens installed, right eye still needing its lens
Installing the missing lens…
In general, I was impressed by the visuals, but I think there is still some work to do to give the user full spatial awareness.
Comfort
Vivo Vision wins hands-down over Apple Vision Pro in the comfort section. The device is much lighter than AVP: it is pretty compact and it only weighs 600g. I did not have any discomfort related to the weight of the headset on my head or forehead for the whole duration of the demo. I took a picture of my face after having worn the device, and I had no red marks on it. I would have liked to have a longer session, of more than 1 hour at least, to evaluate the possibilities of long-term usage of the Vivo Vision, but unluckily this was not possible. Anyway, in my opinion, this can allow for a longer-term use than Quest 3, Quest Pro (the forehead killer), and the Apple Vision Pro. Kudos to Vivo for working so well in guaranteeing comfort to the user.
Selfie taken straight after the demo: there are no red signs on my face at all
The headset facemask is also pretty comfortable. It can be easily detached and attached by just pulling it from the headset and pushing it back. I did not investigate it much, but it seemed to me a mix of a magnetic and slightly mechanical mechanism. As I’ve said, there are different facemasks for different face shapes, and this helps in ensuring the comfort of the user.
The facemask detached from the headset
The back strap is comfortable, too. It opens into two smaller segments, one going over the head and one around your nape, as you can see in the picture below.
Grabbing my head from the top and the bottom, the strap was able to secure the headset to my head
The straps can be regulated like if they were pant belts: you slide the strap through a ring until it fits your head, and then you close it using some velcro that is on it. The strap is a bit elastic, so it is able to keep the headset fixed to your head.
Little velcro elements that help in securing the sliding part of the strap to the main band
The problem with this mechanism is that I found it a bit clunky to set up by myself: fitting the Quest 3 and Vision Pro is much easier in my opinion. For this reason, the first 2-3 times I had to ask the shop clerk to fit the headset for me. Later on, I started learning how to fit the straps myself, but they are a bit clunky to use.
The only real problem with me during the demo was that the headset is currently made for Chinese faces, and my nose is pretty big, so I could feel the headset being uncomfortable on my nose. I felt too much weight on it. It was not something painful like when I tried the Skyworth 4K some years ago, it was more a disturbance than a real issue.
IPD is mechanical, and it adjusts automatically, like on Vision Pro, as soon as you put the headset on and you press the main button.
You may wonder if the battery and the cable were a problem during my demos, but I don’t have a good answer for you. The whole demo was carried out with me seated at a desk, with the battery staying on the desk. This is not an ideal scenario to test the problems of a wired connection.
Tracking
Tracking cameras of the headset
When it comes to tracking, we have to evaluate three things about this headset: the positional tracking, the hand tracking, and the eye tracking.
Positional tracking was, in general, good, which is now mostly taken for granted on headsets. All the demos were seated, but to evaluate the tracking, I started to quickly move my head left and right. Tracking worked as expected, but I could perceive it was slightly choppy. I verified this in at least two demos of the headset. I don’t know if the problem was with the tracking per se, or the demos were too computationally heavy, and so the positional tracking was not fluid and reactive enough, but the fact is that I was not 100% satisfied with it. Vivo should work to make it more fluid.
I can’t fully evaluate hand tracking because no demo showed me a 3D model of the hand. But the pinch gesture was detected all the time, also when my hand was on the desk. When I grabbed an object in some games, the object always followed my hand, maybe with a slight lag. And when the system was in “VR mode”, I could see my hands and arms segmented from the real world in augmented virtuality, and the segmentation was kinda precise, even if the borders suffered from precision errors: some areas were cut too aggressively, others showed pixels from the background. In general, for what I’ve tried, hand tracking works, but more tests are needed.
The real hands are cut out in a good but not perfect way. For instance, you can see some white between the middle and ring finger of the left hand
Regarding eye tracking, again, no demo showed me the exact tracking position, but I could evaluate that in the menus, the pointer always selected exactly the item I was looking at. I was impressed because it seemed to work even better than the Vision Pro; I had fewer false positives, even when looking at objects in the periphery. So I can say that, at least for UI interactions, eye tracking was pretty accurate to me.
Audio
One of the speakers of the device
The device features two lateral speakers to let you enjoy spatial audio. There are also two volume buttons on the right frame to make you fine-tune the volume to your needs. You know that I’m not an audio expert, but from my experience, the audio worked very well. Selecting a high volume, I was also able to hear the audio of the experiences well, even if I was in a shop inside a commercial center, so a pretty noisy environment. Given the noisy location, though, I wasn’t able to evaluate much the bass levels.
Volume buttons on the frame of the device
Audio spatialization was also working well when I tried to rotate my head in 360 videos.
Performances
Vivo Vision uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen2+, which is the latest chipset by Qualcomm. Performances seemed good in general, but it is also true that the games I’ve been shown had so simple graphics that they could have also run on a Game Boy, probably. The impression I had is that the performances are good, but can’t compete with the ones of the Vision Pro: the M2 chipset is ahead of Qualcomm chipsets for now.
Battery
The external battery has been “heavily inspired” by the battery of the Vision Pro, too. It is an elegant grey brick that is connected with a special circular connector to the side of the headset.
Top view of the battery
Bottom view of the battery
Me using the headset, with the battery staying on the desk. Notice the circular connector through which the battery is attached to the headset
Talking about battery duration, I’ve been told you can expect something like 2 and a half hours of usage, which is enough if you want to use this headset to watch a good movie.
Passthrough
The quality of the passthrough vision of the Vivo Vision is definitely good. The resolution is good, and you can clearly see the people and the objects around you, and also read some texts. It’s hard to make comparisons without having had the other devices close to me, but I had the sensation it was slightly worse than Apple Vision Pro’s one, and slightly better than Quest 3’s one, but with worse ability to read the text than Quest 3. Probably Vivo added some filtering to the passthrough images, because colors seemed to me a bit darker than in reality, and I had the impression that also borders were marked a bit more, probably to make reading text easier. There was also a slight watercolor effect. In general, the passthrough visual definition was good, but I think they can make it better with some software updates.
The real problem with the passthrough, in my opinion, was the persistence: if I kept my head still, the AR vision was great, but when I rotated my head, all the visuals started to have huge motion blur, until I stopped my head, upon which they became great again. This is the same bug I noticed while testing the Apple Vision Pro. I’ve found it incredibly annoying. So, passthrough is good mostly for static experiences, but degrades a lot for experiences that require active movement.
User Experience
Main UX
The UX of the Vivo Vision is almost identical to that of Apple Vision Pro. There are no controllers, and you interact with the system using gaze-and-pinch: you look at elements with your eyes and then pinch with your hands to click on them. You can also keep your hand pinched and move it to perform a drag or swipe operation. I already explained in my review of the Vision Pro why I am not a big fan of this solution: long story short, eyes are made to look and explore and not to interact, so using them for interactions is unnatural and sometimes frustrating. Anyway, the system kinda worked, and thanks to the good quality of eye tracking and hand tracking, I had no big issues with that.
Main Menu of Vivo Vision. I guess you have already seen something similar…
The home menu is almost identical to Vision Pro, too. The menu is triggered by pressing the top button of the headset. You can scroll between the various screens by performing the swipe gesture. If an immersive app is open while you return to the home, a little window offers you the possibility of closing it.
2D windows can coexist in your virtual space, and you can move and rotate them however you want, like on Vision Pro. Under every window, there is a little circular button to close it and a white segment you can grab to move the window. This has also been copied from Apple.
Reality Crown
The main button of the headset. It can be pressed to recall the main menu, or rotated to transition between VR and AR
The top button of the headset can be rotated to choose how much real reality vs virtual reality you want. Rotating the crown, you can make virtual reality occupy only a certain arc in the 360° of vision around you. You can so have the right blend of passthrough vision vs virtual environment that you want.
When you are in the main menu, this means choosing between the passthrough that makes you aware of the surroundings or a completely virtual environment. In my demo, the virtual environment was about some natural hills with water and vegetation (you can see it in the image of the main menu above). It was not fully realistic, but a bit “fantasy”. I could also hear the spatial sound of the environment, like the chirping of birds. It was very well made and intriguing to see, but it did not cause me the same WOW effect that Apple’s environments gave me.
Content
Cynthia trying the applications on the device
These are some comments I can leave about the content that I’ve tried:
- 2D/3D video playback: Thanks to the high resolution of the device, videos are great to watch. Whether they be immersive videos, VR 180 videos, 3D videos, or 2D videos, they all looked great. For flatscreen 2D/3D videos, you also have the option to watch them on a big screen in a virtual environment that completely isolates you from the distractions of the real world
- Photos, 3D Photos, Spatial Videos: You have a Gallery app from which you can watch all types of photos and short videos. These also looked great. For the spatial videos, you can choose to watch them in a small square window in front of you, or to watch them in a more immersive way with the video close to you and the rest of the world around you that gets blurred. You can record 3D photos and videos either with the device itself or with some specific Vivo phones with 3D cameras (there are currently three models of this kind). I asked if Vivo Vision is compatible with media captured for the Apple Vision Pro, and I’ve been told it is. There were also some sort of 360 panorama pictures, that have not impress me, though.
- A short mixed reality demo with flowers: Some flower petals came out from above, and I could touch them with my hand, and they reacted to it. Pretty lame demo, if you ask my honest opinion
- A short mixed reality demo with some women: The demo was in passthrough AR, and there were two Chinese women flying in a virtual portal in front of me. After they played some music, one of them flew out of the virtual portal and came close to me. I could touch her hand, and some petals came out from our touch. It was a very simple demo to show how to blend the various realities. If Apple has dinosaurs, Vivo has pretty women… as an Italian, I appreciate the choice, but the demo was not very impressive, to be honest
- A little rhythm game reminiscent of Beatable: While a song was playing, I could see some colored circles coming towards me along three rails, and I had to tap with my hands on one of the rails when the circle on it was close to me to play the right note of the song. A nice game, even if it was not very useful to showcase mixed reality
- A little tabletop game where I had to fix some machinery: There was a platform with an amusement park on it, and I could move and rotate it with my hands so that I could position it where I wanted it to be in the world around me. After that, a cute character asked for my help to fix some machines, and I could do that by grabbing with my hands some gears and positioning them in the right place. Again, nice tech demo, but not very compelling to show the capabilities of the headset.
In general, content was the biggest problem for me: all the demos were made by Vivo itself, and none of them was even close to being a system-seller. So either you are convinced to buy the device by the photo/video capabilities (which are great), or I doubt you will be interested in it (unless you are a tech enthusiast or a developer who wants to use it for work, of course). Vivo works with the OriginOS Vision operating system, meaning that it has its own dedicated store. In my humble opinion, it would be better for Vivo to partner with Google and run Android XR; this way, it can get a lot of interesting content for its headset. Creating a content portfolio is hard, and a partnership with Google would solve a lot of issues in this sense (even if it would bring business issues, because it would mean that Vivo has no revenues from the sold applications). It has to be evaluated if this partnership may make sense in China, where Google is limited, but at least in the West, that would be great.
Price and availability
At the Vivo Store in Beijing
Vivo has shared no information about the price and availability of the device. Currently, Vivo Vision Discovery Edition is only available to try in selected cities in China.
We may speculate that it launches next year. Vivo executives have hinted at a ¥10,000 price tag (~$1,400), which is less than half the price of Vision Pro. It is not clear if the headset will only be dedicated to the Chinese market or will also launch in the West… I guess anyway that if it launches here, there may be some IP troubles, starting with the name “Vision” which I guess is trademarked by Apple.
Vivo Vision vs Apple Vision Pro vs Play For Dream
Trying the Play For Dream headset at CES
Having tried all three devices, these are the main differences between Vivo Vision, Apple Vision Pro, and Play For Dream:
- Vivo Vision is a copy of the Apple Vision Pro: they are both purely all-in-one mixed reality headsets. Vision Pro is slightly better, more refined, and gave me a few WOW moments. Vivo Vision is a bit rougher around the edges, but it is also more comfortable and much cheaper
- Play For Dream is more of a mix of Vision Pro and Quest Pro. It has controllers, so it feels more like a mix of both worlds, a bit more inclined towards the Quest Pro/Quest 3 side of things. Play For Dream is more suited for gaming, and Vivo Vision is more for multimedia. Play For Dream’s battery drains very fast; Vivo Vision does not have this issue. The rumored price of Vivo Vision is also cheaper than Play For Dream.
Final impressions
Both me and Cynthia came out with a good impression of this device
Vivo Vision is a good clone of the Vision Pro: Vivo took heavy inspiration from it about everything, from the design to the UX, not to mention the name of the headset itself. I’m personally not a big fan of this approach, but probably Vivo wanted to speed up its entrance in the market and preferred to just take inspiration instead of doing something new. I hope they will do something different for the next device.
It may not be very original, but for sure it is a good device, much better than I expected. It features high-quality visuals, a good passthrough vision, and good audio quality. The headset is also quite small and lightweight, and it is more comfortable to wear than the Apple Vision Pro. It is not perfect, though, and for sure it is less refined than Vision Pro: its positional tracking can scatter a bit, for instance, and its passthrough has some motion blur problems. But its biggest shortcoming is content: with Vivo trying to go with its own operating system and store, it risks lacking enough good content to make the headset compelling to buy.
As for the price, the rumored price of $1400 is still expensive, but much more affordable than the price of the Vision Pro and the estimated price of the Samsung Moohan headset. If Vivo manages to fix the issues of its headset and to launch it worldwide, the Vivo Vision can become a serious competitor to the other more famous devices.
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And that’s it for my tests with the Vivo headset! If you enjoyed the article, please consider supporting my efforts by sharing it with your peers on social media and registering for my newsletter so you don’t miss my next article! And for every question or comment you may have on Vivo Vision, feel free to use the comment section below.
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