HTC teases a small, lightweight AR/VR headset to be unveiled at CES

HTC’s Vive offers excellent VR headsets at several price points – the high-end Vive Pro 2, the mid-range Vive Cosmos Elite, and the recent Vive Flow. None of them can do AR, but the company has a plan to catch up with the likes of Meta’s Quest Pro.

The plan includes an as-yet-unnamed headset with VR and AR capabilities that will be unveiled at CES on January 5. HTC Global Product Manager Shen Ye spoke with The edge and revealed some details about the helmet.

There will be front and side cameras and support for the controller (with six degrees of freedom) as well as hand tracking. The cameras will offer color passthrough, making mixed reality applications possible.

The helmet will be autonomous and will have a battery life of 2 hours. When designing it, the goal was to make it small, light and comfortable. Ye says the headset will be used for gaming, entertainment, exercise and even business tools.

Since it compares to the $1,500 Quest Pro, this will be a flagship offering. The company says its headset will be better than Meta’s with benefits like higher dynamic range on the cameras, which will allow users to read text on a laptop or phone, for example.

It’s unclear if there will be inward-facing cameras for eye-tracking, but it seems to be more about whether they’ll be built-in or available as an add-on. HTC also takes a cautious approach to privacy, which is a growing concern with these headsets (and may be an advantage over Meta’s offerings).

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