Presentation: The Moverio BT-200 Smart Glasses comes very nicely packaged for a headset that is supposed to be for developers only. Not only is there a branded box, but inside of that everything is held in its own protective carry case! The delivery firm could probably kick this all the way to your home and it would still be OK. It was a pleasant surprise given that it was never meant for public eyes.
Epson Moverio BT-200 Box Contents
- Moverio BT-200 Smart Glasses
- AC adapter
- USB cable
- Carrying case
- Intraoricular earphone with microphone
- Shade x2 (light and dark)
- Inner frame for optical lenses
- Ear Hook
- Quick Setup Guide
- User Manual (CD Rom)
Description: The Epson Moverio BT-200 is what Epson call “intelligent glasses”. Most of us might associate Epson with printers, but that doesn’t mean they can’t produce good tech in other departments. This is a decent set of augmented reality smart glasses (a lot like a poor man’s Google Glass) the glasses project a video image in your field of vision that appears as a stereoscopic image over both eyes, not just 1 like Google Glass. It’s all very much run of the mill tech these days.
Powered by an Android operating system it uses a sort of smartphone interface control unit. It’s comfortable to wear, easy to use and cheaper than Google Glass ever was! But this is not strictly a consumer product. Epson intends this headset primarily for enterprise and development applications as it even requires a small amount of coding work to run Android apps on it. This is a good quality AR headset for all the tech heads and coders out there. But in the future, we suspect a more consumer-friendly version to be released.
Headset: Epson Moverio BT-200
Manufacturer: Seiko Epson Corporation
Launch Price: $699 (£510)
Release Date: January 2014
Headset Type: AR Smartglasses
Display: Poly-silicon TFT active matrix
CPU: 1.2GHz Dual-Core TI OMAP 4480
Field of View(FOV): 23°
Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
Interpupillary Distance Adjustment: No
Screen Focus Adjustment: No
Weight: 88g (3.10 oz)
Tracking: 3 DoF Non-positional
Review: The headset gives you the impression that you are looking at a large screen or monitor a few meters in front of you because of this perceived distance and the quality of the Epson projectors my eyes never got tired from looking at the displays even for long periods. Running Android 4.0 4 means you can run any Android app including games, proactivity apps and multimedia apps. The trackpad on the control device is used to control the cursor much like any smartphone including tap to click and on the whole, it is fairly easy to use. But it is clear that this technology isn’t quite ready and the FOV is embarrassingly small. AR sure has come a long way, but at $699 I wouldn’t recommend this device for anyone.
