Sony's standalone XR headset for enterprise CAD now has a price and release month.
The Sony SRH-S1, as it's now being called, will be available for businesses to purchase from January 23 for $4750, and will start shipping some time in February.
The headset was first announced at last year's CES. It's powered by Qualcomm's XR2+ Gen 2 chipset (also being used in Samsung's headset), features 3552×3840 micro-OLED displays, has color passthrough, and uses a halo strap with a flip-up design.
Unlike Apple Vision Pro, Sony SRH-S1 includes controllers – one held for pointing and drawing, and another worn as a ring – which enable "intuitive interaction with 3D objects and precise pointing."
The flagship use case for SRH-S1, in its current iteration at least, is Siemens' NX Immersive Engineering industrial CAD software suite. This includes NX Immersive Explorer, NX Immersive Designer, NX Immersive Collaborator:
- NX Immersive Explorer is a "headset-agnostic solution that designers and engineers use to conduct informal design reviews and collaborate using 3D CAD data derived from Siemens’ NX software for product engineering".
- NX Immersive Designer "enables designers and engineers to interact, manipulate and collaborate around graphically rich 3D product models natively in NX", exclusively supporting the Sony headset's pointer and ring controllers.
- NX Immersive Collaborator "builds on the capabilities of NX Immersive Explorer and Designer to allow organizations of all sizes to take advantage of both co-located and remote design review with multiple participants", letting participants join "using local VR or desktop view".
Ian Hamilton
I say this is the current focus "in its current iteration" because at CES 2025 this week, Sony also showcased what appears to be the same headset hardware under a new brand, "XYN" (pronounced zin). Under the XYN brand, Sony's headset appears to be targeting a wider range of 3D creation than just industrial CAD, including movie studio productions. However, Sony's website lists the SRH-S1 under the Siemens partnership as "powered by XYN", so it's unclear exactly what the branding situation is here, and whether the headset might launch to prosumers under the XYN brand at a more accessible price point.
We've reached out to Sony directly for clarity on the SRH-S1 and XYN branding situation, and will update this article if we get a response.
UPDATE January 12: Sony responded to UploadVR. The company explained that the XYN headset is based on SRH-S1, but differs in that it is not integrated with Siemens' NX Immersive Engineering software suite. More details about XYN will be revealed later this year.
