There was a time not long ago when just buying the PC required to power a high-end desktop VR headset cost at least $1,000. The last eight months in VR land has seen aggressive drops in pricing, culminating in this excellent deal from Microsoft which will net you a VR Ready PC and an HP VR headset together for just $750.
PlayStation VR has long held the lead in ‘all-in’ cost for a VR headset and the system to power it, with the PSVR headset and PS4 currently priced around $730. But this excellent deal from Microsoft offers up the power of higher-end PC VR at nearly the same price.
For just $750, Microsoft is offering a $400 discount on a VR Ready HP Pavilion desktop and the HP VR headset with motion controllers included, with free shipping to boot.
The PC is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 CPU, Radeon RX 580 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and a healthy 1TB HDD. The specs make the machine ‘VR Ready’, meaning it meets the recommended specs of Oculus and HTC, and qualifies as ‘Mixed Reality Ultra’ (for those paying attention to Microsoft’s VR specs).
Buying the PC and headset from Microsoft separately would run you $1,150. This is an especially good deal at the moment given that AMD’s GPUs are commanding prices significantly exceeding their MSRP.
This deal has outlasted both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it isn’t clear how much longer it will last.