Lenovo Mirage Solo

Google's first self-contained VR headset is one step toward making mobile VR better, but it's not the complete package.

So with the Mirage Solo, Google and Lenovo really seem to be playing the long game. They’ve put Google’s Daydream platform, which was designed to get everybody into VR, into a device that mostly makes sense for early adopters and industrial users. They’re releasing one of the first self-contained headsets with potentially groundbreaking motion-tracking technology, but severely hobbling its capabilities. This is an experiment that might pay off in the years to come, if developers build more ambitious WorldSense apps and Google comes up with a better controller. But as far as buying the headset goes, most people should probably just wait for the payoff.

While our experts didn’t found any primary and disturbing reasons to dislike Mirage Solo in terms of its performance, only one thing did cause us to pause and which is its price. It costs two times the Oculus value. Also, it doesn’t produce a better experience than that, putting it in the same amount of price range as the high-tier tethered virtual-reality headsets, which our experts mostly prefer. However, these tethered headsets only require a decent amount of additional hardware to operate, which can make them much expensive if you don’t already own the necessary devices like high quality and powerful gaming PC, etc. Furthermore, if you already owned the additional hardware for the tethered models, our experts would recommend HTC Vive.