Bigscreen Beyond 2 orders flooded in last Thursday at a surprising pace. Now, the PC VR headset maker notes that its next slim and light headset outsold the original in 24 hours by an impressive margin, making its first day or sales equivalent to six months of what it did with Beyond 1.

We’ve already heard some impressive stats following Bigscreen’s launch for Beyond 2 orders. In 25 minutes, Beyond 2 outsold the first day of Beyond 1 sales. In the first hour, they doubled Beyond 1 launch day sales. Within 10 hours of launching orders, Beyond 2 sold more than the first four months of Beyond 1 sales.

In an X post on Friday, Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar revealed the most impressive sales stat yet:

“In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold 10 TIMES as many Beyond 1s sold on its launch day 2 years ago. In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold as much as Beyond 1 did in its first 6 months of sales. That’s exceptional.”

Shankar says the company did this with zero ad spend, noting “[w]e didn’t pay influencers to pump our product. We didn’t pay an agency for an expensive video. No advertising.”

The company did however send a few early Beyond 2 units to reviewers, which Shankar says was “[l]ike 10 units,” which, among others, included Tested, Thrillseeker, MRTV and VR Flight Sim Guy.

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In case you missed the news—you check out the specs, price and launch schedule here—Beyond 2 comes in two flavors, one with eye-tracking (Beyond 2e) and one without (Beyond 2), priced at $1,019 and $1,219 respectively.

While it’s packing in the same dual 1-inch 2,560 × 2,560 micro-OLED displays as the original Beyond, the biggest improvement overall is the headset’s larger field-of-view (FOV) and better clarity thanks to the inclusion of a new pancake lens design. This bumps Beyond 2 to a 116-degree diagonal FOV over the original’s 102-degree diagonal FOV, and also includes an adjustable IPD mechanism in a lighter 107g design.

Although the first batches were quoted to ship in April (Beyond 2) and May (Beyond 2e), at the time of this writing new orders of Beyond 2 and Beyond 2e are quoted to ship in June.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Bobobj

    Amazing what happens when you don't ship a device with a fixed IPD and add a generic gasket…

    • Jistuce

      Pretty much, yeah.
      For a lot of people, the fact that a face scan from a recent iPhone was a requirement for purchase was a hard block.

    • polysix

      It was a stupid idea from day one, the scanning was bad enough but the lack of resale/multi use was a GLARING FLAW I continually pointed out from day one on all their socials, and they changed it before long with BSB2… good (not saying just me moaning about it is what caused it but I wasn't alone). There was no way I was buying that with what is now (confirmed) on ebay a 75% value loss on resale (they go for around 300-400 used due to no gasket and fixed IPD).

  • Andrew Jakobs

    [w]e didn’t pay influencers to pump our product. We didn’t pay an agency for an expensive video. No advertising

    Ah, so all those sites like MRTV bought their versions which they showed, before the device was on sale…….
    I guess if they sold do many in 24 hours, they probably didn't sell many BS1 in the first six months…

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      There is a big difference between providing free review devices that may not have to be returned, and paying someone to artificially hype a product. As long as reviewers are free to say what they want and not sanctioned for negative reviews, this is completely fine, as VR as a niche isn't making journalists or YouTuber's enough money to be able to afford buying tons of devices themselves. And it has worked that way for most tech reviews for a long time, with companies providing the tech for free, hoping for more sales, and reviewers providing their time for free, hoping for more ad views or affiliate commissions.

      Of course this depends on the integrity of the person doing the review, and negative reviews could lead to them being excluded from future support by a bad player. These stories occasionally pop up, for example Bambu Lab kicked critical reviewers of their 3D printers out of their affiliate program, cutting off an important source of income. But usually someone else talks about either threats by the company, attempts to influence the review process or trying to buy coverage, and so far Bigscreen seems to have played very fair.

    • Octogod

      Exactly.

      If anyone believes that a company with eight figures of venture capital funding, the same ones who funded Facebook, just didn't do PR, I have a bridge to sell them.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold 10 TIMES as many Beyond 1s sold on its launch day 2 years ago. In the first 24 hours, Beyond 2 has sold as much as Beyond 1 did in its first 6 months of sales.

    So 10 * Beyond1 launch day = 1 * Beyond2 launch day = Beyond1 six months.

    Which implies that 10% of all Beyond 1 sales from the first six months happened on launch day, with the remaining 90% spread over the following 181 days, or 0.5% per day on average.

    In reality the first few days/days should also have seen above average sales. But just going with these simplified numbers, launch day sales were 20 times higher than average day sales, and the launch month generated 25% of all sales from the first half year. Which is an interesting number for evaluating how good a headset will do based on first sales month.

    The simplified Beyond 1 numbers aren't all that bad, meaning the remaining five month would still each have contributed 15% (25% + 5 * 15% = 100%). With sales in reality still being higher during the first days/weeks, it's more likely though that average monthly sales fell on average by 2/3rd or more after the first month (35% + 5 * 13% = 100%).

    The likely pattern is that many enthusiasts buy their headset either as soon as possible or after the first round of reviews was out, concentrating sales at the start. The numbers will be different for a more consumer oriented HMD like the Quest 3S that is still driven by holiday sales. They could have been somewhat similar with the USD 499 Quest 3 targeting more of an enthusiast crowd while the USD 249 Quest 2 was still sold in parallel, vastly outselling Quest 3 during the 2023 holiday season following its launch in October.

    Or even more focused on the launch for Quest 3, as Bigscreen had to first build a reputation that they would a) deliver what they promised and b) deliver at all, which could have made some postpone their purchase. In contrast there was little doubt what Quest 3 would deliver, as Meta had already unveiled it in June 2023, four months before it actually shipped, and talked extensively about it at Meta Connect '23.

  • ZarathustraDK

    So close, and yet so far. The 75Hz + wired kills it for me.

    If Hz is the limitation of mOLED, then I can excuse Valve's rumored QLED-decision for Deckard, considering they want people to play their high-hz pancake games on it.

    • Jistuce

      The frame rate seems to be a limitation of the connection.
      It can do 90Hz, but only at a reduced resolution. And the headset has to upscale that back to the native resolution of the OLED panels to display.

      • polysix

        No the framerate is a panel issue. Meganex8k has an even higher res uOLED panel and does 90hz native.

        They'd have to swap panels in BSB2 to get 90hz native and they cost more.

        • Jistuce

          I stand corrected, then.

    • polysix

      It's nothing to do with it. uOled can do whatever it wants, meganeX8k are even looking at adding 120hz. It's simple the panels BSB/2 uses have that limitation.