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No, it's just a Mirage: Lenovo's nerd-goggles-for-suits boasts 4K display but no need to be attached to powerful PC

ThinkReality? We'd prefer to think about anything but reality right now, thanks

Lenovo has whipped the covers off its latest take on VR-for-biz in the form of the Android-powered Mirage VR S3 headset with ThinkReality.

Following HP's second crack at the Reverb last week, Lenovo's new baby features a 4K display aimed at clearing up the blurry mess of how text tends to look in the normally lower-resolution VR world.

Unlike HP's pricier Reverb, the Mirage does not require a connection to a PC to handle processing duties and instead will last for three hours on battery.

With only a Qualcomm 835 SOC driving the thing, it is unlikely to set the world on fire performance-wise. Indeed, hardware such as the Oculus Quest also features an 835 (with a Adreno 540 GPU), albeit with lower-resolution panels.

It is difficult to avoid comparisons with Oculus hardware, although the Lenovo gear is soely for the enterprise and education market, and features an easy-to-clean face plate so it can be safely passed around. While VR may have enjoyed a recent uptick in usage thanks to one thing and another, the thought of sharing a headset in the midst of a pandemic is icky to say the least.

The headset, which was made in conjunction with Pico Interactive, bears a marked similarity to Pico's G2 4K. As well as running with a controller, the headset can also be used hands-free. Lenovo's version has a slightly nausea-inducing 75Hz refresh rate and 64GB of onboard storage. It will also accept an SD card of up to 256GB.

The announcement comes a year after Lenovo unveiled its wannabe HoloLens 2 in the form of the ThinkReality A6, based on Android Oreo and rocking 1080p per eye. The Mirage VR S3 is a full-on VR affair rather than the AR shenanigans of its stablemate. Both are managed through the ThinkReality platform.

The new headset is likely to land in Q3 and will cost under $450 (in North America). It comes as Oculus finally opened the doors to the public on its "Oculus for Business" programme replete with a heart-stopping price tag of $999 for the 128GB Quest. The consumer version (if you can find it) can be had for less than $500, but lacks those enterprise features.

It also makes a jolly good fist of playing Pistol Whip, although we doubt that will be in too many enterprise libraries. ®

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