Chinese company Play for Dream launched a Kickstarter to bring its upcoming Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 headset to the west, including the US.
Play For Dream MR was announced back in June, but at the time the company only confirmed it was launching in China soon, Singapore and Malaysia in October, and then Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Japan sometime in 2025.
David Heaney
Now, the company plans to bring the headset to "anywhere in the world" via Kickstarter. Play For Dream was formerly called YVR and is an established headset company in China.The campaign goal is set to the equivalent of around just $5000 and offers significant discounts on the headset, suggesting Kickstarter isn't being used to fund the headset's development, but instead as a marketing and sales channel.
The campaign reveals the headset will have a retail price of $2000 for the 512GB model and $2300 for the 1TB model. But the company is offering backers significant discounts based on how early they back, bringing the headset's price to as low as $1200.
We should note that Kickstarter pledges are not preorders, and the company technically has no obligation to provide you with the product.
Play For Dream claims the first global units will start shipping in December, and that all headsets should be shipped within the first weeks of 2025.
Play For Dream MR Specs & Details
Play For Dream MR's design is clearly heavily "inspired" by Apple Vision Pro. But unlike the cheap Chinese knockoff we tried at CES in January, this new headset actually has the specs (though likely not the software) to rival Apple.
David Heaney
The XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, Qualcomm's most powerful XR chip yet, is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of UFS 3.1 storage, depending on the model you buy.
The headset features dual 3840×3552 micro-OLED displays from BOE, higher resolution than Vision Pro's Sony panels, with a refresh rate of 90Hz and 92% DCI-P3 color gamut, the same as Vision Pro.
Its pancake lenses offer a claimed field of view of 103°, and the headset has eye tracking for automatic IPD adjustment and foveated rendering.
In addition to eye tracking, the headset features high-resolution color passthrough with claimed latency of 14 milliseconds, a depth sensor, hand tracking, and Touch Plus-like ringless tracked controllers.
The headset's total weight is exactly the same as Apple Vision Pro, 650 grams, but the distribution of this weight is vastly different. A curved battery is built into the back of the strap, similar to the approach Meta Quest Pro took.
Play For Dream MR claims the visor itself, stripped of any strap or face cover, weighs just 288 grams. That compares to 478 grams for Vision Pro.
Image from Malaysian outlet Gamer Santai.
The battery at the rear of the strap can power the headset for just over 1 hour, and an included tethered external battery adds 2.5 hours for a total of 3.5 hours usage.
All in all, Play For Dream MR's specifications and design are what we might have expected from the reportedly canceled 2024 Quest Pro 2. Meta reportedly recently canceled even its 2027 Quest Pro 2 in favor of an ultralight headset with a tethered compute puck.
Play For Dream MR doesn't run Horizon OS, or even Pico OS or Google's upcoming Android XR. It runs Play For Dream's own Android-based platform, and also supports SteamVR streaming via your home Wi-Fi network (similar to Virtual Desktop, Steam Link, and Air Link on Quest).
