Vision Pro Imitation Receives High Acclaim from Former Quest Engineer

Is Apple’s Vision Pro available in black? Not quite, but you might find what you’re looking for in Play For Dream MR. Dubbed by some as the “Android Vision Pro” because of its Android-based system, it certainly made waves at CES 2025 last week.

The Play For Dream headset made its debut in Asia last year, with the Chinese innovators behind it eyeing the Western market next. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign that kicked off in September, they raised an impressive HK$2,271,650, which is around $292,000 USD.

This headset is no slouch when it comes to features. It boasts a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset running on Android 15, dual 3,840 × 3,552 micro-OLED displays at 90Hz, eye-tracking, automatic IPD adjustment, options for both wired and wireless PC streaming, and a Quest Pro-inspired rear-mounted battery and Touch-style controllers. It seems to offer everything, including a user interface reminiscent of Apple’s Vision Pro.

Aside from its design influences, Amanda Watson—a former Quest engineer—had the opportunity to try out Play For Dream’s mixed reality headset. In one of her social media posts, she raved about it being, “absolutely the best all-around HMD demo I saw on the floor today.”

Watson, who left Meta in 2022, praised the headset as “quite literally an ‘Android Apple Vision Pro,’” noting its stellar performance, optics, user interface, and media capture and playback features. Given Watson’s extensive work on Quest projects, including development of Oculus’s Air Link, her endorsement carries weight.

She further elaborated, saying, “It offers USB and wireless PCVR streaming (I tested the USB version)—though it’s a newer feature and performance wasn’t quite as polished in terms of frame rate and latency. Yet, the essentials were solid: controller motion was spot on and resolution impressive.”

Watson also complimented their Touch-style controllers, though she mentioned that hand tracking, while available, wasn’t showcased. She especially appreciated the excellent distortion correction provided by the headset’s pancake lenses, highlighting its importance to her.

Play For Dream, initially launched as YVR in 2020, has already rolled out two generations of standalone VR headsets—the YVR 1 and YVR 2—in China back in 2022.

As of now, there’s no set release date or pricing for Play For Dream MR in the West, but the company suggests it will be priced under $2,000. For more information on specifications and purchase options as they become available, you can visit Play For Dream’s website.