Lenovo ThinkReality VRX Is A Mixed Reality Headset For Businesses With Pancake Lenses

Lenovo ThinkReality VRX is a standalone headset for businesses with color passthrough.

The company didn’t reveal many details or specs, but said it has pancake lenses, stereo color cameras for passthrough, and the battery in the rear. Pancake lenses support smaller panels with a shorter gap to the lenses, and thus a slimmer and lighter visor. Lenovo says the color passthrough makes ThinkReality VRX suitable for mixed reality applications.

The headset runs Lenovo’s VR Android fork and will have “a full suite of end-to-end services — from consulting and content creation through cloud deployment and customer support”, including remote education platform ENGAGE.

Lenovo has a relatively long history in VR. In 2018 it partnered with Google on the $400 Mirage Solo, the first standalone headset with positional tracking launched outside China – though it was overshadowed by Facebook’s $200 rotation-only Oculus Go. In the years since Lenovo has shipped rotation-only standalone headsets of its own for the education market, under the VR Classroom brand.

In the PC VR space Lenovo was one of Microsoft’s original partners for the 2017 Windows MR headsets, releasing the Lenovo Explorer based on Microsoft’s reference design. And in 2019 it partnered with Facebook on Oculus Rift S.

In August this year, Lenovo teased a ‘Legion VR700’ headset in a poster shared on social media in China, but there’s been no indication of that consumer-focused gaming headset coming to western markets.

Lenovo didn’t reveal a price for ThinkReality VRX but said it will launch in “select markets” later this year, then globally in early 2023. The headset will face steep competition: Pico 4 Enterprise and Meta Quest Pro also feature pancake lenses and color passthrough, as well as other features like face & eye tracking.