Hands-on review: Microsoft HoloLens 2
Microsoft's HoloLens 2 shows that augmented reality headsets could be a valuable collaboration and work tool - but at a price
When Microsoft released its first HoloLens, it was very clear that it was a high-end, enterprise piece of kit: it wouldn't be competing against the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift for keen PC gamers. Rather, the £2,719 product was intended for use in industry - and had a price tag to match.
As a result, it didn't exactly fly off shelves. In January 2017, the company admitted to Computing that it had only sold "thousands" of the headsets, despite being on sale in the US since mid-2016.
Nevertheless, because Microsoft wasn't attempting to produce the headset at the lowest possible price, it proved to be an interesting device. The head-mounted display packed all the processing power needed in the headset, together with a rechargable battery, so users weren't lashed with thick cables to a powerful PC to provide the graphics crunching capabilities.
And while not a big seller, the HoloLens has been used in various medical, industrial, academic and design situations, aiding surgeons and giving architects something a bit better than SketchUp or 3ds Max to help them visualise their creations for clients.
And the HoloLens 2, revealed at MWC 2019, is also very much targeted at developers and ‘proper' industrial use, such as helping inexperienced engineers conduct field repairs with the help of a more experienced colleague.
Computing's sister site The Inquirer was able to give the HoloLens 2 a work-out at MWC 2019 to see what the future of ‘serious' augmented reality might hold.
Design and construction
The first HoloLens was certainly more advanced than some of the clunky, built-down to a price virtual reality headsets rushed out in 2016 and 2017, yet it still felt heavy.
The Inquirer's Roland Moore-Colyer models the new Microsoft HoloLens 2
Using carbon fibre in its construction, the HoloLens 2 is lighter than its predecessor and immediately felt more comfortable to wear. It's not like popping on a pair of glasses, but it's certainly more comfortable than some VR headsets and the lack of a thick snake of wires connecting the headset to a PC is also welcome.
The headband is well padded, too, to make it reasonably comfortable to wear, though we still reckon you could get a bit warm if you had to wear it for several hours. A wheel at the back allows you to loosen or tighten the headband, helping to align the headset to your eyes.
Build quality is uniformly excellent as well, but we'd expect that given the four-figure price.
Once you've got the headset positioned, the HoloLens 2 calibrates itself to suit you by tracking your eyes and hand movements. The eye tracking also works with Windows Hello for faster logging in.
The display has been improved so that there's now a 2K resolution for each eye, which is a significant improvement from the original's 720p resolution. It now offers more than double its predecessor's field of view.
In use, this means you can see more stuff and the holograms are much clearer; it's really quite impressive.
Then there's what Microsoft describes as the HoloLens 2's artificial intelligence co-processor, which is dedicated to applying machine learning to better identify, predict and track gestures.
In combination with a new time-of-flight depth sensor, the HoloLens 2 now enables a wearer to interact more intuitively with holograms, such as grabbing and rotating them, rather than relying on a suite of gestures like pinching two fingers together to 'click'. Again, it's all very cool and more immersive than the previous HoloLens.
When we turned our head, rapidly, the headset took a split second to catch up, but it never felt sluggish. Running a Snapdragon 850 SoC, the Qualcomm chip calibrated for Windows use, means it has enough grunt to power the headset, but the HoloLens isn't quite a head-mounted PC just yet.
Testing, testing...
The demo we were taken into was one that involved using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite to guide the wearer through repairing part of a plane's landing gear.
Using the HoloLens 2 we called up our new friend from Microsoft, Alex, via Skype. By flipping Skype's settings around he was able to use the headset's cameras to see what we were seeing, while had a virtual window of him at the corner of our field of view.
How Microsoft visualises HoloLens being used to help engineers
Through the use of some surprisingly clear audio instructions and by painting and serving up holographic annotations and instructions, as well as some patient guiding, Alex was able to talk us through safely replacing the worn belt of a mock landing gear part.
This was a fairly straightforward example of what the HoloLens 2 could potentially help do, but we suspect that in more complicated situations the headset could be a slicker and more powerful tool for remote collaboration and other enterprise applications than the previous HoloLens could deliver.
The verdict
The HoloLens 2 is squarely aimed at developers and enterprise users, rather than consumers, with its hefty $3,500 price tag. Nevertheless, it's probably a better indication of the future of virtual and augmented reality technology.
If Microsoft gets other hardware makers on board, such as Samsung, Acer, Asus, HTC and Lenovo to create mixed reality headsets that are more AR than VR, drawing inspiration from the HoloLens 2, then we could see the price come down and the technology become more widespread.
The improved tracking technology and smart features of the HoloLens 2 are impressive, and we can expect future headsets to bear 5G modems to enable rapid connectivity with other headsets and streaming of AR content - perhaps bypassing PCs entirely.
This is all a few years into the future, but try the HoloLens 2 and you'll likely start pondering the same things: the HoloLens 2 is certainly the most slick and usable augmented reality headset there is out there right now.