Wait, Apple Vision Pro doesn’t come in black, does it? Nope, but Play For Dream MR does. And with what some are calling the ‘Android Vision Pro’, owing to its Android-based OS, Play For Dream seems to have turned some heads at CES 2025 this past week.
Initially launched in Asia last year, China-based headset creator Play For Dream had its sights on bringing the heavily Vision Pro-inspired mixed reality headset to the West. Launching a Kickstarter campaign in September, Play For Dream MR went on to garner $2,271,650.00 Hong Kong dollars (~$292,000 USD).
Play For Dream MR has packed in a laundry list of modern XR features, including a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset running Android 15, dual 3,840 × 3,552 micro-OLED displays (90Hz), eye-tracking, auto IPD adjustment, wired and wireless PC streaming, and also a Quest Pro-inspired rear-mounted battery and Touch-style controllers.
In short, the headset appears to have it all—even Vision Pro’s user interface.
Design inspirations aside, former Quest engineer Amanda Watson got a chance go hands-on with Play For Dream’s MR headset, noting in an X post it was “absolutely the best all around HMD demo I saw on the floor today.”
“It is quite literally an ‘Android Apple Vision Pro’. but the execution was excellent. Great performance, optics, UI and media capture/playback features,” Watson continues, who departed Meta in 2022.
During her time at Meta/Oculus, Watson worked on a number of Quest-related projects, including both the tethered Link and the company’s Wi-Fi streaming tool, Air Link. At one time, she was the sole developer of Air Link for 13 months prior to its release. So when Watson says something is good, it probably is.
“It has USB and wireless PCVR streaming (I tried USB) — this was more [work-in-progress] quality (frame rate and latency) compared to other features, but it’s a relatively recent feature [as I understand it]. The basics like controller motion were nailed down and resolution was solid.”
Furthermore, Watson reports its Touch-style controllers were “also very good. They said hand tracking exists, but they didn’t demo it.” Notably, the headset’s pancake lenses had “excellent distortion correction,” which Watson says is “the biggest thing to me personally.”
Established in 2020 under the name YVR, Play For Dream has already launched two generations of standalone VR headsets, its YVR 1 and YVR 2, both of which were released in China in 2022.
Play For Dream MR doesn’t have a firm release date or pricing yet, however the company has said it will come in under $2,000. For more, check out Play For Dream’s website for detailed specs and ordering opportunities when they arrive.
