HTC has announced a price and release date for its upcoming HTC Vive Pro headset which offers a true, second-generation experience to VR users, with a higher-resolution display, wireless functionality (with an adaptor coming later this year) and support for a second-generation of Valve Lighthouse tracker, which will also debut in the coming months.
The Vive Pro will start at $800 -- and that's for the headset alone, no additional accessories included -- which isn't exactly cheap. It matches the launch price of the original Vive, but that came with two tracking stations, two motion controllers and a number of cables and accessories. That makes the Vive Pro a truly premium device, even if users do say that it makes the VR experience markedly improved with big boosts to visual clarity.
"The Vive Pro comes with dual-OLED displays," HTC announced in its statement (via ), "making for a crisper image resolution of 2880 x 1600 combined, a 78% increase in resolution over the current Vive HMD. In addition to visuals, Vive Pro also features integrated, high-performance headphones with a built-in amplifier that creates a heightened sense of presence and sound through noise cancellation capabilities."
The Vive Pro will go on sale in April this year, with new motion controllers, tracking sensors and the attachable wireless module set to debut a little later this year -- sometime in Q3.
Alongside the launch of the Vive Pro, HTC will also be lowering the price tag of its current Vive headset kit to just $500. That makes it a full $300 less than its original launch price and although still $100 more than the Oculus Rift, it closes the gap dramatically.
