Late last year, Microsoft announced that it would be launching mixed reality headsets built for Windows 10 at some point in 2017. We have already seen a few third-party companies show off their own Windows 10 mixed reality headsets and today, two of them are hitting retail, one from Acer and another from HP, hitting the $299 and $329 price points.

Both Acer and HP’s headsets feature similar specifications, with a 2.89-inch display running at a resolution of 1440×1440 for each eye. You get six degrees of freedom tracking, a 95 degree horizontal field of view, a 90Hz refresh rate and finally, a front facing camera to act as a window back into the real world.

In terms of looks, I happen to think HP’s design is nicer overall. In fact, the front almost looks as if it was inspired by the Hololens. Both headsets are wired though, so you won’t be walking around cable-free.

With Microsoft’s recent Creators Update already installed on millions of Windows 10 machines, this headset should be a simple plug and play affair. Unfortunately content-wise, we don’t know how much there is to do with this headset just yet. For developers though, it could be a very useful and fairly cheap way to get into AR and VR development.

KitGuru Says: Microsoft’s Windows VR/AR ambitions are starting to come to light this year. We should see more of these headsets as time goes on but for now, this seems like a fairly good starting point.

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