The VR Go becomes the second VR Backpack to hit the virtual shelves.
Zotac officially released its premiere VR backpack PC yesterday and in a not-so-shocking turn-of-events, they sold out almost immediately. That’s because the appropriately-titled VR Go is the only other VR backpack currently available on the market next to MSI’s VR One. It’s lean, it’s sleek and goodness it is powerful.
The VR Go contains a quad-core 2.8 GHz Intel Skylake Core i7 processor, an Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU a 240GB M.2 SSD and 16GB of RAM (both of which are easily upgradable). The backpack also features a battery supporting up to two hours of continuous gameplay with hot-swapping capabilities, which means you can easily pop in a new battery for extended play. The backpacks weight comes in at roughly 13 lbs (6 kg), just 1Ib heavier than MSI’s VR One. All this comes at a steep price of $1,200USD however. While that may be almost identical to the price of MSI’s VR One, it’s still a significant investment considering you still need to buy a VR headset separately. That means this could easily hit $2,000 by the time you finally purchase everything required.
Of course as more competition enters the market and this particular technology begins to develop, you can expect to see a decrease in price in the near-ish future. Although the VR Go and VR One are the only VR backpack PC’s currently available for consumer purchase, the market is already getting crowded as more VR backpacks begin to be announced. German high-end PC manufacturer Schenker has already been showcasing their own VR backpack that’s apart of their powerful XMG line. Thanks to the immense success of experiences such as The Void, the need for full mobility using wireless virtual reality is not only 100% possible, but incredibly popular.
What will be truly interesting is seeing how these types of devices stand up to other wireless solutions that have already begun to emerge. Technology developers TPCAST have already released a $200 add-on that allows for wireless use of the HTC Vive. In case you were wondering how the public responded, know that all of the clip-on peripherals sold out within 18 minutes of going on sale… As impressive as that is, this device is just a simple solution to a much more complex problem. While the addon does remove the need for cables, the battery life is noticeably short and players are still confined to ‘room-scale’ movement. The backpack PC’s however allow for the VR headsets to remain connected to a PC directly which means much higher performance. They are also being heavily adopted by custom, full-movement virtual reality experiences such as the previously mentioned Void because of their capabilities with extended distances. So with all the different benefits displayed by each respective technology, there seems to be enough room for both to coexist. For now.
As I said earlier the VR Go is currently out of stock on Amazon, but you can reserve one to ship as soon as they’re back in stock.
