Last November, when HTC announced its standalone Vive Focus headset was coming to the West, we said that a better one was coming.
Well, a better one cometh: HTC has confirmed it's launching the new Vive Focus Plus on 15 April. The Plus comes with updated controllers, better lenses, an updated headset - and a price tag. Ouch.
That makes it more than the existing Vive Focus. However, like the Focus, the Focus Plus is being pitched to the commercial space rather than at consumers. So unless you have a business use case for it, this one's not really meant for you, neither is the Vive Enterprise Advantage package for businesses that HTC is selling alongside the headset for .
Read this: The best VR headsets in 2019
The biggest change over the Vive Focus is those controllers: whereas the Vive Focus controller supports three degrees of freedom - everything rotates on a single spot; pitch, yaw, and roll - the Vive Plus supports six degrees, which means they support depth of movement, so they can be fully tracked around the room.
As for the headset, there are new fresnel lenses designed to reduce the screen door effect. Otherwise it's really more of a tweak with a bit more weight distribution across the forehead - presumably making it more comfortable to wear. It's the same 2880 x 1600 AMOLED display as the standard Vive Focus.
HTC does have a consumer-friendly standalone headset - the Vive Cosmos - coming later this year, but if you can't wait then we'd recommending checking out the Oculus Quest when it launches this spring. Facebook's alternative has a $399 price tag and is designed as a gaming, consumer-friendly system. The company is also launching the Oculus Rift S in the spring, also for $399, which is designed as an improved version of the tethered Rift.
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By Hugh Langley
Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.
Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.
Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.
He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.