If you wanted to make sure that you could get your hands on the $200 Oculus Go portable VR headset at some point this year, then you had to act fast and pre-order one straight from Amazon. Alas, the headsets had already been sold out, but are currently back in stock on Amazon. Not only are they available for pre-order, they’re actually shipping today as well.
Just a few hours after the posting first appeared online around midnight PT on Tuesday, May 1, they were labeled as out of stock on Amazon. The product page now says that the Oculus Go is “currently unavailable,” and that Amazon does not “know when or if this item will be back in stock.” But no longer!
Folks who were lucky enough to place a pre-order were shown a December 31 release date, but don’t take that as gospel — it’s just a placeholder date for now. Seemingly as soon as Facebook made the official announcement that the Oculus Go, they went back in stock.
Read our Oculus Go hands-on review
Over the more than two years now passed since the release of the original Oculus Rift consumer headset much has been questioned about what Oculus would do next. While HTC has been developing the Vive Pro and the Vive Focus, Oculus has been more interested in the midrange space. Although there are still rumors of a wireless, high-end headset known as Santa Cruz in the works at the VR company, the next big release from Oculus VR is the Oculus Go, a midrange headset that will look to bridge the gap between the purely mobile Samsung Gear VR and the Oculus Rift.
Oculus Go will not have positional tracking, only allowing for turns and tilts, and is designed as a stationary headset. However, it will be entirely wireless and untethered from any additional devices, and will contain all of the required processing power, battery, and display technology needed to deliver virtual reality for wearers.
The Oculus Go’s “fast-switch” LCD screen will deliver a QHD 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 mobile processor. Although it will have access to a wide range of applications that have already been released for the Gear VR, Oculus has made sure that it won’t stutter when pressed to render something complicated. Alongside a new 72Hz rendering mode, it will also employ dynamic throttling and fixed foveated rendering.
The whole package looks very much like the Oculus Rift, though with a lighter-grey aesthetic. The wireless remote will offer basic in-app controls. Audio will be handled by built-in speakers, rather than headphones, which should deliver spatial audio while still making it easy to hear what’s going on around you.
Updated on May 1: Just hours after going on sale, the Oculus Go sold out on Amazon. Facebook announced at its F8 keynote that the headset would be shipping today.
