It looks like Magic Leap is holding a barn burner of a sale on its first AR headset, Magic Leap 1, as the one-time $2,300 device can now be had for $550.

As first reported by GMW3, Magic Leap appears to be flushing excess stock of the 2018-era AR headset via the Amazon-owned online retailer Woot. 

The listing (find it here) is for a brand new Magic Leap 1, including the headset’s hip-worn compute unit and single controller. The sale is happening from now until June 1st, and features a three-unit limit per customer. Amazon US Prime members qualify for free shipping, which ought to arrive to those of you in the lower 48 in early June.

If you’re tempted, there’s a few things you should know before hitting the ‘buy now’ button. Users should be warned that since Magic Leap pivoted to service only enterprise users, that its Magic Leap World online app store isn’t likely to see any new apps outside of the handful that were released between 2018-2020.

Image courtesy Magic Leapgic leap

Still, there are a mix of apps such as Spotify or room-scale shooter Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders which might be better suited as tech demos, giving prospective augmented reality devs a sense of what you might create for a bona fide AR headset, ostensibly in preparation for what devices may come—we’re looking at Apple, Google, and Meta in the near future for mixed reality headsets capable of both VR and passthrough AR.

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Launched in 2018, Magic Leap straddled an uneasy rift between enterprise and prosumers with ML 1 (known then as ‘ML One’). Reception by consumers for its $2,300 AR headset was lukewarm, and messaging didn’t seem focused enough to give either developers or consumers hope that a more accessible bit of ML hardware was yet to come. Then in mid 2020, company founder and CEO Rony Abovitz stepped down, giving way to former Microsoft exec Peggy Johnson to take the reigns, who has thus far positioned the company to solely target enterprise with its latest Magic Leap 2 headset.

Here’s the full spec sheet below:

CPU & GPU

NVIDIA® Parker SOC
CPU: 2 Denver 2.0 64-bit cores + 4 ARM Cortex A57 64-bit cores (2 A57’s and 1 Denver accessible to applications)
GPU: NVIDIA Pascal™, 256 CUDA cores
Graphic APIs: OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.1+AEP

RAM: 8 GB

Storage Capacity: 128 GB (actual available storage capacity 95 GB)

Power
Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Up to 3.5 hours continuous use. Battery life can vary based on use cases. Power level will be sustained when connected to an AC outlet. 45-watt USB-C Power Delivery (PD) charger

Audio Input
Voice (speech to text) + real world audio (ambient)

Audio Output
Onboard speakers and 3.5mm jack with audio spatialization processing

Connectivity
Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi 802.11ac/b/g/n, USB-C

Haptics: LRA Haptic Device

Tracking: 6DoF (position and orientation)

Touchpad: Touch sensitive

LEDs: 12-LED (RGB) ring with diffuser

Power: Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Up to 7.5 hours continuous use. 15-watt USB-C charger

Other Inputs
8-bit resolution Trigger Button
Digital Bumper Button
Digital Home Button

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Scott Hayden
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.
  • flamaest

    Similar to other toys like Google glass and the Microsoft Surface RT, this headset without an app store is worth $0.

    I might be willing to pick one up for a hundred bucks and stick it in a glass case for historical purposes, but otherwise it’s useless, unless you can sideload things onto this.

    Terrible company in the CEO should be in jail.

    • Not if you are a developer or a researcher. I find this offer very interesting, actually

    • Ookami

      what did the CEO do?

    • M

      Yes you can side load onto it pretty easily. I made ported a Unity game to it in under an hour.

  • Brian

    Agree…dead tech but nice to put on the mantle for right price:)

  • xyzs

    Something worth nothing sold $550 instead of $2300 is still overpriced.

  • $550 is a fair price for this device, I think that developers, educators and researchers should consider buying it

    • I hope people make some amazing stuff with ML2! And I hope I get to make something epic with it too.

  • Engorged

    As a developer this is actually quite interesting – would love to try some experimental development for AR.

    • Stew JW

      As long as the programming tools are maintained? Is it worth the effort for a dead product. The Lynx R1 maybe a better AR development headset.

  • ILoveQueens

    I was able to get a used one on ebay for $400 and its a very impressive piece of technology. However, the big problem I see with this headset, its still very heavy and easy to fall off your head. This headset should have never been intended to be a consumer market product. In any case, $550 is a fair price for someone that wants to get into developing for XR applications. The SDK for UNITY is solid, and deploying to the headset is super easy.

  • mappo

    You can get a killer deal on a Pentium III PC too. The real news is that they’re still selling new units of an obsolete product.

  • Now that the sale is over, it shows three weekdays with 0% sales … shows how low demand was!