If you think building and setting up a VR capable PC is tedious enough, the solution has finally arrived as MSI has launched its VR One Backpack Gaming PC here in Malaysia. The VR One was featured back in COMPUTEX this year, and MSI has chosen to showcase it to the media at a special movie premiere of Assassin’s Creed yesterday night. Powering the VR One is an Intel Core i7 6820HK processor and either a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 or GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 discrete GPU, it supports up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM and 1TB of NVMe PCI-E Gen 3×4 SSD, and comes with a DC12V port required to power the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
The VR One comes with two hot swappable battery packs installed that allows the gamer to play up to 1.5 hours on a full charge, it weighs merely 3.6kg and is fairly light to carry, shorter cables are also provided out of the box for the HTC Vive headset. Though the VR One is made for VR applications, it can also be treated as a powerful on-the-go PC, as it has a Thunderbolt 3 port and four USB 3.0 ports, which allows the user to easily connect multiple displays and peripherals respectively.
I have tried on the VR One previously and find it to be rather comfortable while playing with it for 10-minutes, it eliminates the worry of tripping over the long cables on VR headsets and feels like the right device for playing VR games as opposed to a desktop PC and gaming notebook, my only gripe about it would be the initial setup of the device itself, since it doesn’t come with any built-in display, you’ll most probably have to connect it to a monitor every time when you want to run any VR applications, meanwhile I shall reserve my final verdict till MSI sends the VR One over for review.
However, if you can’t wait for our final review, the VR One is currently available for purchase at all authorised MSI retailers nationwide, it retails at RM10,499 for the GTX 1060 model and RM12,499 for the GTX 1070 model. Furthermore, you would be glad to know that MSI has partnered with VR Portal, the first VR hub in Malaysia, to let users experience virtual reality for a promotional price, which you can find out more over at www.vrportal.com.my
