Some people like to just use technology and couldn’t care less about what’s inside. Others, though, are fascinated by every aspect of what makes a product tick, and it’s for those people that product teardowns exist. Today, Sony catered to the most detail-oriented among us by posting a new PlayStation VR headset teardown video on YouTube.
The PlayStation VR represents Sony’s contribution to the ever-expanding world of virtual reality gaming systems. Competing primarily with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, PlayStation VR leverages the PlayStation 4 customer base and gaming ecosystem to offer up a powerful and competitive VR gaming solution. It’s also set to pierce the $1,000 barrier for a complete VR system when it’s released on October 13.
Sony’s teardown video provides a fairly comprehensive overview of the various components that make up the PlayStation VR headset. First off is the face-hugging light shield that’s user-removable, and from there on out everything is definitely not intended for self-servicing. The decorative components that are removed next look decidedly fragile, and so we recommend that you rely on the video if you’re determined to see what’s inside the unit.
Once the top cover is removed, things start to get more interesting. The motherboard is the typical slice of integrated components, and takes up a relatively small portion of the PlayStation VR’s overall mass. As expected, the unit’s optical unit makes up the single largest element, housing the lenses and various elements meant to keep debris out of the user’s field of view. The remainder of the video shows the design of the headset’s band, which contains a number of mostly mechanical parts and relatively few electronics.
Ultimately, the PlayStation VR headset contains the expected components for a system of its kind, and the video demonstrates the relative simplicity of the device — although, of course, Sony will want you to turn the headset over to them for warranty work. Clearly, the capabilities of the system come from the sum total of its components, including the PlayStation Camera that’s required along with the PlayStation VR processor box. Whether or not the headset’s components warrant the base price of $400 is up to each buyer to decide, but at least now we have the teardown to decide for ourselves.
