Sony’s new headset, officially dubbed the SRH-S1 “content creation system,” combines a compact form factor with novel drivers. I was able to try out the headset firsthand at AWE 2024 and was impressed with it, though input and tracking still need some work.
The Sony SRH-S1, which hasn’t been priced yet, is designed as an enterprise headset. It’s built with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor for standalone use. Sony also tells us it can work with a PC via a compressed video stream (like Quest Link).
Sony confirmed that On the road to virtual reality The actual resolution of the headset is 13.6MP (3552 × 3840) per eye, using Sony’s ECX344A OLED microdisplay. The display is capable of 90 FPS and 1000 nits (at a 20% duty cycle), with 96% DCI-P3 color coverage. That means the Sony SRH-S1 has a higher resolution and better color accuracy than the Vision Pro:
- Sony SRH-S1:
- 13.6 MP per eye
- 96% DCI-P3
- Apple Vision Pro
- 11.7 MP per eye
- 92% DCI-P3
The Sony MR headphones also have compact lenses with a flip-up visor and two absolutely unique controllers: one is a star-shaped pointer and the other is a ring that sits on your finger.
The SRH-S1’s ergonomic design ticks all the boxes. The headset has a hardware-adjustable IPD, flip-up visor, rear-mounted battery for balance, and eye relief adjustment. Eye relief adjustment allows you to bring the lenses as close to your eyes as possible for maximum field of view.
And while everything is plastic, the headset and controllers feel well-made, including the flip-up visor mechanism. Sony introduces the flip-up visor primarily so that a user sitting in front of a connected computer can see the full resolution of their display and then lower the visor when they’re ready to watch virtual content.
It’s true that even with the eye relief set to maximum, the field of view wasn’t very wide. It felt smaller than a device like the Quest 3, but that’s not too small A smaller field of view also means the headset’s pixels are packed even more tightly together, which, if the optics are up to the task, would mean noticeably sharper images than those on the Quest 3 or Vision Pro.
During my brief time using the headset, the display looked impressively sharp, with no individual pixels visible. However, the content I watched wasn’t great enough to clearly compare sharpness to current headsets. I can say, however, that the optics seemed to have great edge-to-edge clarity, rivaling what I’m used to seeing with the Quest 3’s excellent lenses.
I did notice some reflections on the lenses, though I’m pretty sure most of this was due to external light hitting the lenses from the headset’s open periphery. I wasn’t able to test it, but Sony has shown the headset with an additional soft peripheral blocker for when you’d prefer less reflections and more immersion.
The demo I saw was a virtual filming setup where I could move and adjust a virtual camera that was filming a virtual scene. I could also control the lighting by moving lights and loading their colors.
While everything looked very sharp, the content being displayed didn’t seem well-optimized to run on a standalone headset. That made for a pretty choppy experience (it probably didn’t run at a consistent 90 FPS like it should), which made head tracking look poor.
This likely affected the tracking feel of the controller as well, though I think the controllers had their own issues with latency and accuracy. The Ring Controller in particular had a lot of judder, making it pretty bad for any kind of precision input, even for grabbing and moving things. The Star Controller felt much more accurate, not only because the tracking was more consistent, but also because you naturally hold it with your index finger extended, making it a natural “pointing device.” Still, it didn’t feel as precise as you’d expect from a Quest 2 or Quest 3 controller.
I really like the concept of the SRH-S1 controllers, but they still need some work in more aspects than just tracking. Both controllers have physical buttons that are neatly hidden under the cover… which also makes it very unintuitive to even know they exist.
The rep who showed me the headphones was trying to describe the location of one of the buttons I had to press by saying something like “it’s on your index finger,” but… They were not Speaking of the button under the tip of my finger, there is another hidden button that is pressed with the inside of the first segment of the index finger (before reaching the first knuckle).
I literally don’t know if I’ve done it. ever I pressed a button with that part of my finger. So, in addition to being invisible, the fact that it’s in a strange place made it an even stranger choice. It’s not necessarily a bad selection; This could be a great way to get two distinct inputs from one finger, given the unique design of the controller, but it needs to be much more intuitive.
And indeed, the details of the user experience are likely to be what decides whether Sony’s SRH-S1 MR headset will be a viable competitor to other headsets on the market. I’m fairly confident that the company can improve the device’s head and controller tracking without any major advancements or redesigns. But does Sony expect the SRH-S1 MR headset to be a viable competitor? business developers Discover all the little details about how to teach users how to use these unique drivers and how to best utilize them in your applications?
Sony says the SRH-S1 is specifically designed to work with Siemens NX, a comprehensive suite of CAD tools that Sony itself uses. Presumably it will work with a wider range of software, too, but it’s not clear at the moment what software platform or software standard the headset will support. Presumably support for OpenXR would be a nice fit as an open standard, but even beyond that it’s not clear whether Sony plans to maintain a software distribution platform for the headset or let companies figure out how to deploy and manage the software.
Despite being an MR headset, Sony was unfortunately not ready to show the pass-through view, saying they were still working on it.
Sony plans to launch the SRH-S1 headphones later this year, but pricing, regional availability and software compatibility have yet to be announced.
