Varjo Auto-Focus XR4 MR Headset to Compete with Apple Vision Pro

The newest mixed-reality (MR) headgear from Varjo, a Finnish firm manufacturing virtual and mixed-reality headsets, boasts cutting-edge capabilities including inside-out tracking and a gaze-driven focusing camera.

Varjo's new mixed reality headset features a multifocal passthrough camera that makes it difficult to discern between mixed and genuine reality, even though it has a greater resolution than the Apple Vision Pro.

What's new with the Varjo MR Headset?

Varjo's latest mixed reality headset has a 50 percent wider field of view with a 120-degree viewing angle, twice the brightness of the previous generation, and two 4K screens with a resolution of 51 pixels per degree, which the company claims offers 28 million. pixels in each eye. 

The standout feature, however, is the new dual 20-megapixel eye-tracking autofocus camera that works with LiDAR to accurately track the user's eye movements and improve video throughput. The XR-4 series headphones also feature integrated speakers with DTS 3D surround sound support and noise-canceling microphones.

According to Varjo, the new technology is intended for users who want the real world in the foreground and virtual reality in the background. The XR-4 series is powered by Nvidia GPUs and integrated with  Nvidia Omniverse. allows users to render photorealistic scenes in real-time and use ray tracing in mixed reality. 

Although the new headset does not function as a standalone product, it has built-in controls developed in collaboration with Razer. Varjo's software ecosystem already includes more than 100 third-party desktop applications and also supports popular 3D engines such as Unreal Engine 5 and Unity.

Price and Availability 

Aimed at business users, the Varjo XR4 series starts at $3,990, which is slightly more than the $3,499 price tag of Apple's Vision Pro. However, the eye-controlled version of the Secure, equipped with multi-power cameras, costs $9,990,  almost three times the price of Apple's upcoming headset. It has the same features as the cheaper model, but the company seems to have optimized the camera resolution for pilot training. 

Varjo has been producing high-quality mixed-reality headsets since 2016 and has years of experience in manufacturing such devices at the enterprise level. That could be a boon for Apple, which has reportedly cut production after struggling with design complexity.