Bigscreen today announced its next-gen Beyond PC VR headset, promising a big boost in field-of-view (FOV) and clarity thanks to the inclusion of new pancake lenses. Bigscreen is also making the slim and light headset more attractive to at-home and enterprise users too thanks to its new adjustable interpupillary distance (IPD) and optional universal Lightseal facial interface.

Bigscreen is releasing two versions of its next headset—Beyond 2 and Beyond 2e. Unlike the ‘e’ naming scheme seen in Apple’s recent iPhone 16e, the ‘e’ in Beyond 2e denotes the inclusion of eye-tracking.

Beyond 2e contains everything Beyond 2 does, albeit with a very small eye-tracking suite, which is said to feature AI-powered computer vision for low-latency, privacy-focused tracking, and integrated with SteamVR, OpenXR, and platforms like VRChat, with a beta program launching in Summer 2025.

Bigscreen Beyond 2e | Image courtesy Bigscreen

The headsets are priced at $1,019 (Beyond 2) and $1,219 (Beyond 2e), although Bigscreen is discounting that for previous owners of the original Beyond, bringing them to $849 and $1049 respectively.

The company says the first batches are slated to launch in April, with an optional halo-style strap mount targeting a Q3 2025 release. Both Beyond 2 models will be available in three colorways: Carbon Black, Crystal Clear, and Nuclear Orange.

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Like Beyond 1, the slim and light PC VR headset uses the SteamVR tracking standard, which includes support for SteamVR 1.0 and 2.0 base stations, as well as the usual cadre of SteamVR accessories, such as body trackers, and controller like Valve’s Index controllers (aka ‘Knuckles’).

Of course, you’ll need a VR-ready PC to use Bigscreen Beyond 2 and the required base stations. Click here to find out if your PC is ready.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 | Image courtesy Bigscreen

While we’re not getting a resolution bump with Beyond 2, since they contain the same dual 1-inch 2,560 × 2,560 micro-OLED displays as the original Beyond (2023), Beyond 2’s biggest improvement is undoubtedly the inclusion of new pancake lenses. The new lens design is said to boost FOV to a reported 116-degree diagonal over the original’s 102-degree diagonal FOV.

It’s also lighter too, weighing 16% less than the original Beyond, now at only 107 grams—notably lighter than standalone headsets like Meta Quest 3 (515g) or Apple Vision Pro (650g), as well as other PC VR headsets in the slim and light category, such as the upcoming MaganeX superlight 8K (179g).

Unchanged displays notwithstanding, Bigscreen says Beyond 2 has improved brightness and reduced glare by a good margin; the new pancake lens design features “dramatic improvements over Beyond 1 with total edge-to-edge clarity and a very large sweet spot,” the company says.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 | Image courtesy Bigscreen

And for the first time, Beyond 2 is introducing an adjustable IPD mechanism, which can be modified with an included tool. Visible markings on the inside of the headset show the current IPD setting in millimeters for both lenses, so users can dial in each lens independently for the best viewing clarity.

The company calls the new IPD mechanism “a major improvement” over Beyond 1’s fixed IPD system, which required selecting from 18 different sizes, and required users to scan their faces with an iPhone for the required custom facial interface.

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And what about accessories? While Beyond 2 supports the same custom-fit cushions as Beyond 1, the halo mount (seen below) is shipping with a universal-fit Lightseal interface, all of which ostensibly makes Beyond 2 more attractive to at-home users looking for better shareability as well as enterprise users.

To boot, many of the original Beyond’s accessories are said to work with Beyond 2, including its five-meter fiver optic cable, link box, Audio Strap, and soft stap. Notably, prescription lens inserts manufactured before 2025 for Beyond 1 will work with Beyond 2, however they won’t fit Beyond 2e. Prescription lens inserts manufactured in 2025 and onwards are compatible with Beyond 1, 2, and 2e, Bigscreen says.

The headset ships with an included soft strap, however Bigscreen is also launching a newly announced halo-style mount, shipping in Q3 2025, which the company says was inspired by night vision goggles.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 | Image courtesy Bigscreen

The halo mount features fine-tuned controls for tilt and eye relief and supports multiple configurations, including with the halo mounts’s bundled lightseal, Beyond’s original custom facial interfaces, or none at all.

As a mount, and not a whole strap unit as such, the accessory is compatible with various strap solutions, including the included soft strap, Bigscreen’s Audio Strap, as well as third-party options. There’s no pricing yet, although we’re sure to learn more closer to its Q3 2025 launch.

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Bigscreen Beyond 2 will be taking orders over on its website, which will ship from its Los Angeles, California factory to customers in the US, Canada, Japan, UK, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. The company says it’s also planning to expand to countries such as South Korea, Mexico, Israel, and UAE sometime later this year.

Specifications

  • Field of View: 116° diagonal
  • Weight: 107 grams
  • IPD: Adjustable, 48mm to 75mm (55mm to 70mm physically)
  • Resolution: 2,560 × 2,560 per-eye
  • Refresh Rate: 90Hz, 75Hz
  • 6DOF Tracking: SteamVR tracking
  • Tracking Requirements: SteamVR 1.0 and 2.0 Base Stations (not included)
  • Eye Tracking: Yes, on Beyond 2e
  • Full-body Tracking: Compatible with SteamVR trackers such as HTC Vive Trackers, Tundra Trackers (not included)
  • Controllers: Compatible with SteamVR controllers such as Valve Index Controllers (not included)

PC Requirements

  • Audio Input: Dual microphone array
  • Audio Output: Built-in on-ear speakers with the Audio Strap (not included)
  • Accessory Ports: 1 × USB-C
  • Cable: 5-meter fiber optic cable
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 or AMD RX 5700 XT or newer (DisplayPort 1.4 and DSC required)
  • CPU: Quad-core Intel or AMD
  • Ports: 1 × DisplayPort 1.4, 2 × USB 3.0 ports
  • OS: Windows 10 or Windows 11
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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.
  • Kfir Even

    Weighs only 107 grams, impressive… this is exactly how a VR device should be designed: a complete separation between the display unit and the computing unit/battery. Anything that doesn’t absolutely need to be on the head shouldn’t be forced onto the user.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Well, if they make it wireless and selftracking I would agree, but I'll take the weight of a Pico 4 over any wired, lighthouse tracked headset. (Coming from HTC vive Pro with wireless module (which still had an slightly annoying wire to the battery on your belt))

      • VR Enjoyer

        The PC powered headsest though is hard to beat. I play on a Quest 3 and Vive Pro quite frequently. While the versatility of the quest 3 is awesome. It still doesn't hold a candle to the extra power a PC provides. I find myself more often in the wirless lighthouse vr setup.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Uh, you must have a really shitty wifi connection if you think your HTC Vive Pro wireless is better as the Quest 3. Even on my shitty old wifi 5 connection and with default settings in Pico Connect (on an old Core i7 4770, RTX2060super), the visuals of my Pico 4 are night and day better as the old HTC Vive Pro. The image of the Pico benefits clearly from the higher resolution compared to the Pro, no more wobbles around your hands in certain games. The only reason why I fire up my Pro is due to the index controllers or vive wands, but hell no for the visuals.
          and I can't think the wireless of the Quest 3 would be worse as the Pico 4(the regular one, not the ultra, which would even support wifi7).
          I'm talking about wireless PCVR, so the power of you PC is used, no matter if you use the Quest 3 or the HTC Vive Pro (1). I haven't seen any updates by HTC to improve visuals of the wireless since I got it in early 2020.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            It'll boil down to individual preference/sensitivity. While some are bothered by a low FoV, frame rate or contrast, others can't stand latency or visual artifacts. Or, like you, really hate cables.

            Besides the WiGig based HTC Vive Pro wireless adapter with limited resolution, but very low latency, all current wireless solutions rely on first rendering a frame, encoding it, sending it compressed over Wifi, and again decoding the image. On fast PCs/Wifi more time is now spend on image encoding/decoding than on rendering and transfer. At 90Hz/11ms this can add several frames of latency even under good conditions.

            Fine if it doesn't bother you, but others trying to lower latency may be forced to reduce bitrates down to noticeable image degradation, with the only option to fully get rid of 22+ms latency being using a tether or sticking to the Vive Pro WiGig module. Even tethers have issues like DP 1.4 limiting Beyond to 72Hz at native 2560p, dropping to upscaled 1920p at 90Hz, or PSVR2 needing (latency free) stream compression for HDR. Everything requires some compromise, and one that works for you might be unacceptable for someone else.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            In my sense he was talking about wireless Vive Pro, and as I said, even ony shitty wifi5 signal, the image/latency of the Pico 4 is better as the grainy, glared image of the wireless vive pro, and that's without having tried to improve the settings.
            wireless will only get better with dedicated Wifi7 (which at this time only the Pico 4 ultra seems to support, I only have the original 4) and of course with future improvements.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            I never used the wireless Vive Pro module, so I cannot compare it myself. You'd have to set you Pico wireless stream to the same resolution to properly compare latency, which should be the remaining WiGig benefit simply because the image doesn't have to run through the encode/decode.

            The WiGig transfer speed won't make a lot of difference with modern WiFi, but neither will faster WiFi speeds. By now the transfer of the image only takes ~5ms, roughly 1/4th of the encode/decode stage, with a WiFi 7 connection idling most of the time. The main benefit of switching to WiFi 6e was that it added a 6GHz band in addition to the often very crowded 2.4GHz/5GHz bands, leading to less collisions and consequently lower latency. If you are using it in a cabin in the woods without hundreds of wireless devices in the vicinity, a WiFi 5 router will do fine with only marginal improvements to be gained from faster ones.

            I'd agree with you general assessment for everything but latency, and as you don't seem to notice a difference where one has to exist for technical reasons, you are apparently one of the people not bothered by some minor latency. Keep that in mind before claiming that VR Enjoyer's personal experience couldn't possibly be valid, because yours is better even on slow WiFi. I of course don't know why s/he prefers the Vive Pro wireless solution over the no doubt visually better Quest 3 plus WiFi option, but there are in fact technical disadvantages, plus lots of other possible causes like abysmally crowded/bad WiFi or serious misconfigurations.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            The vive wirelessmodule is not uncompressed, so it does have to go through encode/decode.
            And Wifi7 has extra features to lower latency, so for future headsets that's certainly a big welcome.
            but you are right, maybe he/she has a bad wifi connection, I'm using my headset about 2 meters from the wifi5 router, which has the PC connected through 1Gbit cable. But with the wireless module I too get some problems, especially when it get hot, and it can get pretty hot. At least with the games I've played I noticed no latency differences between my Pro and my Pico, but the image of the Pico was much better, mainly due to the higher resolution displays I guess, the Pro always had a bit of a grainy blacks.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Okay, then I don't understand what exactly the wireless module does. I tried to look up technical details before, but only found the WiGig and low latency claims. WiGig was chosen for its vastly higher bandwidth than WiFi, so picking WiGig and still running it through h264/h265 would be pretty much pointless. Picking the faster, much more expensive technology only makes sense if it provides enough bandwidth to AVOID having to time-consumingly compress/decompress each frame.

            It might make sense if they use something similar to DSC on PSVR2, where compression doesn't operate on a full frame by shifting pixel blocks and removing details not perceivable by humans like in h264/h265, but instead by mathematically reducing the color space on a per line base. This type of compression methods doesn't add latency, as the data is compressed while being send, instead of first having to wait for the whole frame to be fully rendered and then applying rather compute intense calculations. It's also much less efficient. DSC reaches only about a 1:3 compression ratio compared to the raw data this way, while h264/h265 reach much higher of typically 1:150/1:250, making the result small enough to be send via WiFi, while DSC still requires a vastly faster DisplayPort connection. So it would be important to know what type of compression is used on the HTC Vive Pro wireless module, as they explicitly advertised it as a low latency option.

            The low latency mode of WiFi 7 isn't particularly relevant for VR streaming. As mentioned the whole WiFi transfer takes only 25% of the encode/decode time, with the connection idling most of the time. The decoder inside the XR2 is now the main breaking block, as it capabilites limits the max bandwidth of the video signal being send, which is much lower that what a WiFi router could transfer.

            The WiFi 7 low latency mode will be mostly helpful for things like sending controller input back in small data packages, not for sending still rather large video frames. WiFi 7 tries to provide deterministic latency, so that each frame will come with comparable latency instead of some being late because some other data transfer delayed it, but this is more for consistency in crowded networks. If your WiFi 5 router already works fine, you are probably lucky if switching to Wifi 6 reduces latency by 2ms.

            And noticing latency is very individual. I don't play any competitive shooters, use Geforce Now streaming a lot that adds 15-20ms latency, have played in 4K@30Hz instead of reducing resolution for higher frame rates, and run a lot of things at 40Hz on my Steam Deck. None of my displays show more than 60Hz, and I see no reason to ever buy a 120Hz monitor. But I'm aware that physically people can notice brightness changes at more than 100Hz, so for others investing into a 240Hz display for a 4ms frame duration/minimal latency may be worth it, and my setup would probably be deemed unplayable by some.

            As any WiFi transfer with encode/decode will add at least 20ms total, you not noticing any latency hints that you aren't particularly sensitive to it. During the early VR days Oculus aimed for sub-20ms total latency, incl. rendering, as some people proved rather sensitive, in the end settling at 90Hz/11ms total frame time on CV1, and invested a lot into technology like ASW to keep it this low. Which was sort of wasted on anyone that didn't throw up on the 60Hz DK1 still lacking low persistence, or the people now playing MSFS on Quest 3 via WiFi at 50+ms.

            As mentioned before, I do not doubt at all that the Pico 4 plus WiFi image will look way better than the by now ancient and already limited at launch HTC Vive Pro wireless option. And I don't know if the problem VR Explorer mentioned is even related to latency. I just doubt that your assessment that latency is the same for both is correct, both for technical reasons and you apparently not being sensitive to it.

          • VR Enjoyer

            In summary:

            Yes the Quest 3 has a higher visual fidelity. And you're right, when connected to a PC you still have that PC power. I suppose I should clarify.

            The prominence of the Quest 3 pushes the VR industry as a whole to imo less impressive titles than a PC focused headset would (Example: Onward). The Q3 is used by most people as it's own device, not tethered. Thus, most games will be made with those specification in mind. Which is fine if that's what the market decides it wants, but it's not what I'm interested in.

            That's not to say the Quest 3 doesn't have merits. But one of the biggest reasons I prefer my Vive Pro over my Quest 3 is tracking. The Q3 has way better tracking than the Q2, I was impressed. But when compared to Lighthouse tracking, I still don't think it's anywhere close. The Q2 and Q3 when paired wirelessly seemed to also effect the efficacy of the tracking. Whether that be bad wifi or not idk. I will take a cut in pixels to have high fidelity tracking in all range of motion every time. When I play Contractors Showdown, I jump into the Vive Pro every time for this reason. I'm an active VR uses, I am constantly, kneeling and going prone, and the lighthouse tracks all of these movements better. Not to mention, the Index controllers are also the best on the market.

            TLDR;
            My biggest gripe is tracking. Q3 doesn't keep pace like lighthouse does for me.

  • xyzs

    Looks so neat.

    And with eye tracking now, finally!
    For Flight Sim, that's the way to unlock crazy good controls with eye selection.

    I wish it didn't rely on relic Valve Base Station + controllers anymore, but maybe that will be for the beyond 3e?

  • Stephen Bard

    MRTV measured the horizontal FOV at 104º, still well below the Quest 3 at 110º.

    • Sofian

      "Quest 3 at 110º"
      As measured by MRTV?

    • Sofian

      Just watched his comparison between psvr2 and Q3:
      Q3 forizontal FOV: 104°…

  • TheAK

    Wish there was a wireless option. Even at the cost of weight. Would surely be more of a change than a variant with eye tracking.

  • Sofian

    The curved lens to increase FOV is something Pimax has announced too.

  • Jeff

    There's a lot to love about this, but unfortunately it leaves one big glaring downside depending on your viewpoint: required basestation(s) for tracking and no included controllers. Even though I'm on wireless setup these days, I could almost imagine going back to tethered if it meant a dramatic improvement in display quality, FOV, and weight… but I am not buying and dealing with base stations in my apartment.

  • STL

    Not my cup of tea, the diving goggles approach. I see no win compared to a quest 3 with a halo headstrap. Neither in resolution, nor in usability, nor in FOV – and certainly not in the price!

  • Ryan McClelland

    I bought the Beyond 1 and returned it due to the issues they are solving. Not sure I can go back from the wireless Quest 3 tho. Wires suck. At that weight, most of the force on the headset is from the wire. I look forward to the reviews!

  • VR Enjoyer

    Even if wireless tracking is the future, I've enjoyed my lighthouse setup more every time. Selftracking has improved a lot from where it started. But I still can feel the difference.

  • It seems an amazing piece of hardware for who is already in the SteamVR ecosystem

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Absolutely – but that is also its biggest weakness. by the time you add the audio strap and face cover your closer to 300 g. Likewise, adding lighthouses, controllers etc. adds considerably to the price and complexity of the setup. Altogether, although impressive from a technology points of view , Bigscreen Beyond gets much heavier and more expensive for a playable system. I feel their dependence on the Valve hardware makes it a wonderful replacement of the Index, and will start to hinder their market once competitors show up with better build in sound, and inside out tracking.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        I'm sure they'll address most of that in future versions. Bigscreen said that the eye tracking in the Beyond 2e only adds 1.05g for very tiny cameras and LEDs, and for example Quest Pro used similar lores b/w IR cameras for both eye and inside out tracking. So dropping the lighthouse requirement won't break the whole concept, even if it also requires adding a tiny onboard SoC to help with controller/room/eye tracking.

        That they haven't already done this with the Beyond 2 is most likely due to Bigscreen being a tiny company of only 40 people. The Beyond 2 uses the same basic hardware as the Beyond 1, but fixes issues that have been major complaints like the subpar pancakes and the custom face shield and fixed IPD making it a single user HMD. They kind of listened to their users, making only moderate (meaning easier/cheaper to implement) changes first based on user priorities, and Beyond 2 selling more during the first day than Beyond 1 during the first six months proves them right. More fundamental changes like changing the tracking will just take a little longer due to resource constraints.

  • XRC

    Fantastic to see the adjustable ipd (per eye, very cool) and other quality of life improvements including the halo strap

  • Jose Ferrer

    For people who play sims (flight, race, space, etc) in a seat it is fine to use a cable (better a thin cable) and just one basestation was enough while you are seated (in my experience with Index, VivePro&2 and Pimax 5K+ and CrystalLight). Also, in sims there is no need for controllers.
    I like the VR manufacturers who don´t compromise the device for the MR thing, and just do pure VR, which is what I want for my sim.
    All the improvements they have done go in the right direction, especially FOV and edge-to-edge clarity.
    I am currently with Q3, which is fine but far from perfect for my use case. I don´t need a battery in my face, neither controllers, neither the XR2 chip bottleneck of 200Mbps (HVEC) for the streaming.

  • Ad

    Shame the halo strap doesn’t have an audio solution. Does it flip up at least? If valve wasn’t likely to release something this year I’d want to pick one up (although I’ve said that for several years in a row).

    • Reavo End

      The halo mount is both compatible with the official audio strap, and can be flipped up. :)