The practically mythic Magic Leap One augmented reality (AR) headset is now available for purchase for the incredibly steep price of $2,295 (about £1,731, AU$3,073) – and it can only be had in select US regions for the time being.
Magic Leap has officially named this version of the headset the Magic Leap One Creator Edition, and as such it’s generally aimed toward software developers. Likewise, Magic Leap is only offering purchase of the device in six US cities, where it can best provide delivery and complimentary setup.
Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco (the Bay Area specifically) and Seattle are the six cities wherein people can purchase the AR headset. Furthermore, the company is also offering a Professional Development Edition of the headset that includes an additional "hub cable" and a service known as RapidReplace, "a resource designed to provide a replacement device within 24 hours."
The headset will be sold exclusively on Magic Leap’s website, and supply will be extremely limited, if not already sold out at the time of writing. Magic Leap promises to open up access to the product to several more cities this autumn, or between September and December.
If you’re city isn’t listed, you can enter your area code on the website for alerts when the headset becomes available for order in your neighborhood.
TechRadar has now gone hands on with the device, so feel free to check out the start of our Magic Leap One review for our first impressions of using the headset in AR.
An exclusive launch for an exclusive device
Everything about the Magic Leap One Creator Edition launch, not to mention the product itself, seems awfully exclusive. You can’t even buy one of these things without a professional coming to your location to set it up for you.
That’s handled by a service called LiftOff made in conjunction with e-commerce company Enjoy. You even need specially-made, prescription pop-in lenses if you use glasses and want to try out Magic Leap. That may not even be enough, if your prescription is too strong, and at that point the only solution is contact lenses.
The Magic Leap One Creator Edition runs on an Nvidia Tegra X2 system-on-a-chip with 128GB of storage and 8GB of memory through an attached computing device the size of a hockey puck. The box includes a controller with vibrating haptics that charges over USB-C. And, finally, the whole system lasts up to three hours on a charge.
This is clearly an exclusive launch of a product that’s technically still in development ahead of a wider public release. Unless you’re an AR aficionado with cash to spare, we’d strongly suggest waiting for Magic Leap to iron out the kinks and launch a version that’s ready for mass consumption.
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Via CNET
