Bigscreen Beyond should now ship within one week of ordering.
What Is Bigscreen Beyond?
Bigscreen Beyond is an ultra-compact and ultra-light SteamVR headset designed to enable truly comfortable long duration PC-based VR sessions.
Beyond is priced at $1000 or from $32/month, but doesn't come with positional tracking or controllers out of the box. It uses the SteamVR tracking system, so you'll need at minimum one base station - and ideally at least two - alongside your own input devices such as Valve Index controllers.
The headset comes with a simple cloth strap and no built-in audio. It doesn't even have a headphone jack, though it does have a USB-C port which can be used for audio devices. To add audio and improve comfort, Bigscreen sells a $130 Audio Strap accessory.
In our review of Beyond we praised its compact size and incredible physical comfort, which enables multi-hour VR sessions without the face pain of other headsets. However, we also pointed out flaws with the lenses, which introduce distracting reflections and blur in their quest to be as compact as possible. Beyond is the pioneer in a new era of headsets fully optimized for comfort, and others are aiming to follow it.
What makes Beyond the smallest and lightest shipping VR headset is the same reason it takes longer to ship. Each unit has its lenses fixed to match the distance between the customer's eyes and a face pad molded to the shape of their face, based on the iPhone face scan they provide when ordering.
When Bigscreen started shipping the first Beyond headsets to preorder customers just over one year ago, new orders faced many months of waiting from submitting the scan to having the headset, with even preorders slipping by months.
If Beyond's claim of now shipping within one week of the scan is true, it represents a significant milestone for custom-fitted headsets.
David Heaney
The announcement comes just weeks after the company started shipping the $130 Audio Strap accessory, which adds a rigid strap and off-ear speakers. Bigscreen claims the Audio Strap too will ship within one week.
In August 0.36% of SteamVR users were using Bigscreen Beyond.
