Lenovo

Lenovo
Information
Type	Public
Industry	Computer hardware, consumer electronics
Founded	1984 (as Legend); renamed Lenovo in 2003
Headquarters	Beijing, China (operational HQ in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong)
Products	Lenovo Explorer, Lenovo Mirage Solo, Lenovo Mirage AR, ThinkReality A3, ThinkReality A6, ThinkReality VRX
Website	lenovo.com

Lenovo is a Chinese multinational technology company best known for its ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops. This article covers Lenovo's work in virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality specifically. Over roughly six years Lenovo shipped hardware across nearly every category of the field: a tethered PC headset for Windows Mixed Reality, the first standalone Google Daydream headset, a phone-powered augmented reality toy built around a Star Wars license, and an enterprise XR line under the ThinkReality brand. The company also built the Oculus Rift S for Facebook, which makes it one of the few firms to have manufactured a major consumer VR headset for a competitor.

Lenovo never settled on a single XR strategy. Its consumer hardware appeared in waves between 2017 and 2018, mostly through partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and Disney, and most of it was discontinued within a couple of years. The enterprise effort under ThinkReality has lasted longer, and as of 2024 the Lenovo ThinkReality VRX and the smart glasses line were still Lenovo's active XR products.

Consumer VR and AR (2017 to 2018)

Lenovo Explorer

The Lenovo Explorer was Lenovo's Windows Mixed Reality headset, announced at IFA 2017 on August 31 and shipped that October. Like the other launch headsets in Microsoft's program, it was a tethered device that plugged into a Windows 10 PC and used inside-out tracking, so it needed no external base stations or sensors. Each eye got an LCD panel running at 1440x1440, and the headset shipped at $349 on its own or $449 bundled with the Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers. Lenovo pitched it as a low-cost entry point into PC VR rather than a high-end competitor to the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.

Lenovo Mirage AR (Star Wars: Jedi Challenges)

A few months before the Explorer, Lenovo released the Mirage AR headset, sold as part of the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges bundle. It went up for pre-order around September 2017 and reached stores that November at roughly $199.99. The headset itself had no display or processor of its own. A compatible smartphone slotted into it and the image was reflected off the visor to create the AR effect, a phone-powered approach in the same family as the cheaper mobile VR viewers of the era. The kit bundled a plastic Lightsaber controller and a "tracking beacon" base station that the headset used to stabilize its tracking.

The product was really a vehicle for one piece of software. Star Wars: Jedi Challenges let players fight lightsaber duels against villains like Darth Vader and Kylo Ren, play the holographic chess game from the original film, and command troops in a tabletop strategy mode. Reviews were mixed: the lightsaber duels drew praise, but the narrow field of view of a phone-based AR rig limited how immersive the whole thing could feel.

Lenovo Mirage Solo

The Lenovo Mirage Solo is the product most likely to come up in a VR history conversation. Lenovo built it with Google and announced it at CES on January 9, 2018, as the first standalone headset running Google's Daydream platform, meaning no PC and no phone required. It went on sale on May 11, 2018 at $399.99.

What set it apart was Google's WorldSense positional tracking, which gave the headset six degrees of freedom from inside-out cameras, so a wearer could duck, lean, and step around without external sensors. That was unusual for a mobile-class headset in 2018. Inside was a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage expandable by microSD, a 5.5-inch 2560x1440 LCD panel, a 110-degree field of view, and a battery rated around seven hours. The catch was the bundled controller, a standard Daydream pointer limited to three degrees of freedom, so the headset tracked your body but the controller only tracked rotation. The Mirage Solo ended up being more or less the only standalone Daydream device ever sold, since Google wound the platform down not long after.

ThinkReality enterprise platform

Lenovo's second act in XR was aimed at businesses rather than consumers. In May 2019, at its Accelerate partner event, the company launched ThinkReality, a sub-brand combining hardware with a management platform. The software side was pitched as hardware agnostic, cloud agnostic, and environment agnostic: a way for enterprises to build, deploy, and manage AR and VR applications across different devices and cloud services rather than locking into one vendor. The headsets below are the hardware that filled out the platform.

ThinkReality A6

The ThinkReality A6, announced alongside the platform in May 2019, was the first device in the line and an enterprise AR headset in the broad shape of Microsoft's HoloLens. Lenovo split the electronics across two parts: a 380-gram headset and a separate compute box, worn on a belt or armband, that held a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 running Android. The optics used waveguides from Lumus paired with an Intel Movidius vision processing unit, with a 40-degree diagonal field of view and 1080p per eye. The headset carried a 13-megapixel camera plus two fisheye cameras for tracking. It had only a limited release in the third quarter of 2019 and was always positioned as an enterprise tool, not a consumer product.

ThinkReality A3 smart glasses

The Lenovo ThinkReality A3 arrived at CES in January 2021 as a much lighter pair of smart glasses than the A6. Rather than carrying its own processor, the A3 tethered over a single USB-C cable to a host: either a PC, in the PC Edition, or a select Motorola smartphone, in the Industrial Edition meant for factory and field work. It ran a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1, put a stereoscopic 1080p display in front of each eye, and could float up to five virtual monitors in the wearer's view, which made the PC version a portable multi-screen workspace. An 8-megapixel camera handled photo and video, and dual fisheye cameras did the spatial tracking. Lenovo introduced it at CES and brought it to market later in 2021.

ThinkReality VRX

The Lenovo ThinkReality VRX was Lenovo's return to a fully standalone VR headset, this time for what it called the enterprise metaverse. The company announced it on September 28, 2022, with early access for partners by the end of that year and general availability in select markets in 2023. The final hardware ran a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 with 12GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Android 12. It used pancake lenses to keep the profile slim, with a resolution of 2280x2280 per eye, a 95-degree field of view, and a 72/90 Hz refresh rate. Four cameras provided 6DoF tracking and two full-color passthrough cameras enabled mixed-reality apps, all powered by a 6900mAh battery. Lenovo aimed it at training, virtual collaboration, and 3D design and engineering work.

Manufacturing for partners: Oculus Rift S

Beyond its own brands, Lenovo built the Oculus Rift S for Facebook's Oculus division. The headset was announced in March 2019, shipped that May at $399, and replaced the original Oculus Rift as the tethered PC headset in Oculus's lineup. Oculus described the arrangement as real co-design rather than contract manufacturing alone. Jason Rubin of Facebook said it was "a device that Lenovo really helped us design and did work on," and the most visible Lenovo contribution was the "halo" head strap that replaced the elastic three-point strap of the first Rift. Oculus kept control of the core optics and inside-out tracking system, while Lenovo's input went mostly into comfort, weight distribution, and the physical build.

Product timeline

Product	Year	Type	Notable
Lenovo Mirage AR (Star Wars: Jedi Challenges)	2017	Smartphone-powered AR headset	Built around the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges game with a Lightsaber controller and tracking beacon, about $199.99
Lenovo Explorer	2017	Tethered PC VR (Windows Mixed Reality)	1440x1440 per eye, inside-out tracking, $349
Lenovo Mirage Solo	2018	Standalone VR (Google Daydream)	First standalone Daydream headset; Snapdragon 835, WorldSense 6DoF, $399.99
Oculus Rift S (manufactured for Facebook)	2019	Tethered PC VR	Co-designed and built by Lenovo; contributed the "halo" head strap
ThinkReality A6	2019	Enterprise AR headset	Snapdragon 845 compute box, Lumus waveguide optics, 40-degree diagonal FOV
Lenovo ThinkReality A3	2021	Enterprise AR smart glasses	Snapdragon XR1, dual 1080p, up to five virtual displays, USB-C tethered
Lenovo ThinkReality VRX	2022 (available 2023)	Standalone enterprise VR	Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1, pancake lenses, 2280x2280 per eye, color passthrough