Following several months of delays, the last we heard from Meta was that they expected the Meta 2 AR dev kit to begin “volume shipping” in August. Now as we approach the end of the month it appears that the company is confident about ramping up shipping and says the headset’s $950 pre-order price will expire on Monday, August 28th, after which it will be raised to $1,500.

Meta announced the Meta 2 dev kit back in early 2016 and expected to begin shipping the headset at the end of that year. That didn’t quite pan out, and in July 2017 the company acknowledged that they ran into manufacturing issues. At the beginning of August they said they expected to begin “volume shipping” in mid-Q3, and it seems that projection was on track.

Image courtesy Meta

The company has finally removed the “pre-order” language from their website (in favor of “order”) , and the order page now specifies that the pre-order pricing of $950 is still available until Monday, August 28th, after which it will be raised to $1,500. Given the wording (“the pre-order price is expiring on Monday”), it isn’t clear if that means that the deadline is the end of the day Sunday, or the end of the day Monday (or which timezone). We’ve reached out to the company for clarity.

Interested in the Meta 2? We gave a hands-on overview of the headset back in 2016, and more recently got an exclusive look through the lens.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."