When Microsoft launched Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headsets in 2017 HP was one of the select partners to build a device, following that up in 2018 with a professional edition. Today, HP has announced its latest head-mounted display (HMD), the HP Reverb, with updated features and separate versions for consumers and enterprise customers.
The new virtual reality (VR) headset improves upon its predecessor in a number of ways, most notably upping the resolution from 1440×1440 to 2160 x 2160 per eye. The field of view (FoV) is also slightly wider at 114-degrees. Comfort has also been improved thanks to a light-weight design coming in at 1.1 pounds, even with integrated audio now built in.
Just like HP’s previous headset, the new HP Reverb still includes the same inside-out tracking the WMR HMDs are known for and Bluetooth to connect the wireless controllers. The main difference between the Pro Edition and Consumer Edition is what you get in the box:
HP Reverb Pro Edition
3.5m headset cable for desktop and mobile PCs, .6m headset cable for HP Z VR Backpack wearable VR PC (sold separately), 2 motion controllers, cleanable face cushion, 1 DisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort adapter. The Pro Edition has a 1-year limited commercial warranty.
HP Reverb Consumer Edition
3.5m headset cable for desktop and mobile PCs,2 motion controllers, 1 DisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort adapter. The Consumer Edition includes a 1-year limited consumer warranty.
“As the commercial VR segment is expected to grow to $34 billion by 2022, customers are seeking lifelike VR viewing to help open doors to new business opportunities in product design, training, and engineering,” said Spike Huang, vice president and global lead of VR, HP Inc. in a statement. “The time for commercial VR is now and adding HP Reverb to our broader virtual reality portfolio is an important step in addressing this growing market.”
“With more than 2,500 VR experiences available and counting, Windows Mixed Reality continues to serve as the home for cutting-edge innovations that are fundamentally changing the way we work and play,” said Alex Kipman, Technical Fellow, Microsoft. “The HP Reverb headset is an amazing example of the type of innovation we are seeing take place as we push forward and bring the next era of computing – the era of mixed reality – to the masses.”
The HP Reverb VR headset is scheduled to launch in April, with the Pro Edition retailing for $649 USD and the consumer edition retailing for $599. As further updates on HP Reverb are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.
HP today announced Reverb (formerly codenamed ‘Copper’) in March, the successor to the company’s first Windows VR headset. Reverb’s high-res displays raise the bar on pixel density among consumer VR headsets. Sporting a design that’s a significant departure from its first Windows VR headset, HP says that Reverb will launch on May 6th starting at $600.
Update (May 2nd, 2019): At the initial reveal in March, HP said it planned to launch its high-res Reverb headset in “late April”, but April has come and gone. The company’s website now indicates that Reverb will be released on May 6th. The article below has been updated with this information.
Original Article (March 19th, 2019), Updated: Reverb is HP’s second Windows VR headset. Though it will hook into the ‘Windows Mixed Reality’ platform at its core, it will also support SteamVR through an official plugin, just like other Windows VR headsets.
Image courtesy HP
Compared to HP’s first Windows VR headset, which has a 1,440 × 1,440 LCD display for each eye, Reverb bumps the displays up to 2,160 × 2,160, which is 2.25 times the total number of pixels. With the same 90Hz refresh rate and a similar field of view, the increase in resolution translates directly to greater pixel density, bringing a huge boost to sharpness and text legibility.
It’s an even bigger leap in resolution from the first generation of consumer VR headsets, like Rift and Vive, which use 1,080 × 1,200 displays per-eye, giving Reverb 3.6 times the total number of pixels in those headsets. The fidelity seen through Reverb’s lenses is further enhanced by the fact that the LCD display uses full RGB-stripe sub-pixels (which generally have a better fill-factor than OLED displays) which means less screen door effect than an OLED display of equal resolution.
Reverb will be the highest resolution headset in the ~100 degree consumer class when it launches on May 6th, followed behind by Samsung Odyssey and Vive Pro (both with a pair of 1,440 × 1,600 displays).
HP says that Reverb is primarily built for the enterprise sector, but they’re also making the headset openly available to consumers. The Reverb Consumer Edition and Pro Edition (let’s call them CE and PE) are identical in design and specs and both include controllers). The Reverb CE is priced at $600 and will have a washable fabric face cushion and one year consumer warranty, while the Reverb PE will be priced at $650 and come with a leather-style face cushion, an additional 0.6M cable (for use with VR backpack PCs), and one year commercial warranty that covers the headset in non-consumer settings.
Image courtesy HP
Reverb has new fresnel lenses which the company says will offer a wider field of view and a larger sweet spot than its predecessor. There’s no hardware IPD adjustment on Reverb; the nominal setting is 63mm, and software adjustments range from 55mm to 71mm, according to HP.
HP quotes the Reverb’s field of view at 114 degrees diagonally, but has somewhat confusingly told us that this isn’t the actual measurement, but instead represents what they believe is “indicative” of the headset’s field of view. From my hands-on with the headset, it feels in the same FOV class as the Rift, Vive, and PSVR, but maybe on the lower end of the group. I’ve reached out to the company for further clarification on their FOV figures.
Image courtesy HP
Aside from resolution, HP says that a major focus of Reverb is comfort. While the original HP Windows VR headset uses a ‘halo’ style headband and lacks integrated headphones, the Reverb has a decidedly more Rift-like look with an overhead strap, semi-rigid spring-loaded side straps, and compact headphones built in. The headphones are removable with a flat-head screwdriver, and a 3.5mm cable dangles from the back of the headset for easily connecting third-party headphones.
The Reverb headset weighs in at 500 grams (1.1 pounds), excluding the cable—just above the Rift and Vive’s ~470 grams.
Image courtesy HP
While the design overhaul seems like mostly a win for Reverb, it has come at the expense of the convenient flip-up visor functionality on HP’s first Windows VR headset.
Like all Windows VR headsets, Reverb makes use of inside-out tracking via on-board cameras. The cameras calculate the position of the headset by looking at the environment around the user, and also track the movements of controllers by looking at the glowing LEDs. In our experience, tracking performance is good with this system, but it’s not uncommon for controllers to get momentarily ‘lost’ when looking away from the controllers (because they may momentarily exit the camera’s field of view). Reverb uses the same Windows Mixed Reality controllers used by other Windows VR headsets.
HP says that Reverb’s inside-out tracking system is virtually unchanged from the original, with the same placement and resolution of tracking cameras. For that reason, we expect that tracking performance will be mostly unchanged from other Windows VR headsets.
While the first HP Windows VR headset uses HDMI and USB 3.0 plugs, the Reverb uses DisplayPort 1.3 and USB 3.0, and also includes integrated Bluetooth which means that the host PC doesn’t need its own Bluetooth connection.
Image courtesy HP
In the enterprise space, where the company expects the headset to be most appealing, HP says the Reverb is well suited for engineering product development, design reviews, architecture/engineering/construction reviews, location-based entertainment, and maintenance/repair/overhaul training. While the Reverb CE will be sold ‘as is’, HP is trying to define itself as a VR solutions company, and says it is ready and willing to work closely with enterprise customers to equip them with the hardware, software, and services to make VR a valuable part of their workflow.
HP is officially announcing the next-generation of its Windows VR headset line: the HP Reverb. The HP Reverb releases in April and costs $599 for the consumer edition and comes with two Windows VR controllers. The commercial edition of the headset costs and includes a longer warranty, a leather face cushion for quick wipe downs, and an optional short cable for use with backpack PCs. HP invited me to their Palo Alto, CA office a few weeks ago to try it out.
This PC VR headset has a 2160 x 2160 per eye resolution (making it a 4K headset at 4320 x 2160 combined) with dual 2.89″ LCD panels and Fresnel-Aspherical lenses. It’s got a 114-degree field of view and uses the same two-front-facing-cameras for tracking that you can find in other existing Windows VR devices.
Naturally, I have a lot of VR headsets. Just looking around my desk, nearby shelves, floor, and immediate surrounding area I count ten different VR HMDs across half as many platforms. And as someone that wears glasses all-day every day usually, comfort is a massively important feature. So far the PSVR, Oculus Go, and Oculus Rift have been my favorites from a comfort perspective — until now. I need to spend more time with it still to be sure, but the Reverb might beat them all.
HP today announced Reverb (formerly codenamed Copper), its new VR headset which aims to deliver enhanced resolution and comfort. With a more thoughtful design and pixel-packed displays, Reverb sets a new bar for Windows VR headsets.
Having jumped into the VR space back in 2017 with a handful of others under Microsoft’s watch, HP’s first VR headset was pretty much identical to the headsets which launched from Acer, Dell, and Lenovo.
With Reverb—which will succeed the company’s first VR headset—HP is driving the design much more directly, though it is still building atop the Windows Mixed Reality platform (and inside-out tracking technology).
To that end, the company officially announced Reverb today, which will be sold as a Consumer Edition ($600) and a Professional Edition ($650), and launch in late April.
HP’s first VR headset (left), Reverb (right) | Photo by Road to VR
I recently visited HP at their Palo Alto campus to check out the latest Reverb prototype for myself; this is an updated version compared to what I saw back in February.
Let’s skip right to the fun stuff: the displays. Reverb has a 2,160 × 2,160 resolution display per-eye, which is a big step up in resolution even from current class-leading headsets like the Vive Pro and Samsung Odyssey which tout 1,440 × 1,600 displays. We’re talking about twice as many pixels as those headsets.
And while twice the pixels in roughly the same field of view would typically mean about half the visible screen door effect (SDE), Reverb actually gets an extra boost in SDE reduction (compared to the aforementioned headsets) because it uses RGB-stripe sub-pixels which tend to have a much better fill factor (less space between pixels) than the OLED displays used in many other headsets. So not only are you getting a boost in fidelity and pixel density, but fill factor is also going up because of the change to RGB-stripe.
That’s a long way to say that Reverb offers class-leading visual fidelity and text legibility. The screen door effect isn’t invisible, but it’s getting surprisingly close—at this point I can’t make out individual sub-pixels at all, and even truly spotting just one whole pixel (in a sea of identically colored pixels) is a difficult task. Crucially, HP is achieving this clarity and limited SDE without using a diffuser (as Samsung has done on the Odyssey+, which attempts to hide SDE at the cost of sharpness).
Photo by Road to VR
Resolution aside, the latest Reverb prototype that I got my head into did show a few subtle artifacts, though HP claims these will be cleared up by launch.
First, compared to the prior prototype I tried back in February, the little grey dots have been significantly reduced, but still manifest in what looks (to my eyes) like mura (inconsistencies in color/brightness between pixels).
Second, the latest prototype display shows some red ghosting, which is interesting because I don’t recall seeing this in any other headset (usually it’s just white or black ghosting). HP said this is because the current display has slower red decay than it should have, meaning that red pixels can’t change as quickly as other colored pixels.
Third, at the extreme top and bottom of the field of view it’s possible to see some reflections at the edges, caused by the display reflecting off the plastic inside the headset.
As mentioned, HP says these will all be cleared up by the time the headset ships, and the progress I saw with the headset from just a few weeks ago bodes well for them being able to deliver on that claim.
