Bigscreen Beyond Review Summary
From a visual standpoint, Beyond is really impressive, but for me it’s really pushing the boundary of ‘minimum acceptable field-of-view’. As I mentioned previously, had I not gotten a second facepad with less eye-relief, I think it would have been just over that line where the sweet spot made the effective FoV just a bit too limiting even for the headset’s other benefits.
It’s unclear at this time what percentage of customers will get an optimal facepad right out of the box vs. how many might need adjustments to get the most from the headset. For what it’s worth, Bigscreen says it will work with customers to get it right.
“Each person is a unique scenario with the custom fit approach, we place a lot of emphasis on ensuring each person has a great experience and will do whatever it takes. We think of it as working with a bespoke tailor to get you an awesome experience,” the company told me.
Whether Beyond feels worth the tradeoffs of a smaller FoV in favor of an extremely compact and high resolution headset will probably depend upon your specific usage. Movie viewing in the Bigscreen application is sure to be a fitting use-case because the virtual movie won’t fill the whole field-of-view anyway, and head movements will be minimal compared to other VR content (which means you’ll be able to keep the display brighter without suffering too much from persistence blur).
As it stands, the headset is so small that it’s truly in a different class than its contemporaries. It isn’t perfect, but it’s an impressive and in many ways unique offering among PC VR headsets.
