Somnium VR1 Price Increases Bring Base Model To €3000

Somnium is a Czech startup previously solely focused on its social VR platform Somnium Space. But in late 2021 it announced the Somnium VR1 headset with a monster spec sheet for the time, in partnership with VRgineers – known for its ultra-high end XTAL headsets for enterprise. Originally Somnium VR1 was pitched as a hybrid headset with standalone capabilities via an onboard Snapdragon XR2 chipset, but that idea was ditched in 2022 to focus on making it a solely PC VR headset instead.

VR1 uses the same 2880×2880 QD-LCD w/ Mini-LED panels used in Pimax Crystal. The displays have 20000:1 contrast via local dimming, 100% NTSC color gamut, and support 72Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz refresh rate, with an “experimental” 144Hz mode available too. The output brightness to your eyes is 210 nits, around double that of Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.

Those displays are paired with large dual-element aspheric lenses Somnium claims deliver a field of view of around 130° horizontal and 105° vertical. That’s wider than any other VR headset on the market. Pimax “5K” and “8K” were even wider, but are no longer in production and had significant distortion in the periphery.

This focus on expanding field of view is why Somnium VR1 is so bulky in an era of far slimmer pancake lens headsets.