Bigscreen Beyond 2 Has Clearer, Wider, Adjustable Lenses And Optional Eye Tracking

Bigscreen Beyond 2 starts shipping next month with significantly upgraded & adjustable lenses, and Beyond 2e is coming in May with eye tracking.

Like the original Beyond, Bigscreen Beyond 2 and 2e are tethered PC VR headsets that use SteamVR Tracking, so you'll need a PC with a powerful graphics card and at least one (ideally at least two) base stations from Valve or HTC. You also need to provide your own input, such as Valve Index controllers or a steering wheel or HOTAS setup.

Also like Beyond 1, you'll also need to provide a face scan using your iPhone, for the custom-fit face pad. But when the upcoming Bigscreen Beyond 2 Halo Mount accessory launches later this year, that will no longer be required.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 fully replaces Beyond 1, and Beyond 1 was secretly withdrawn from the market a few weeks ago. People who ordered Beyond 1 in recent weeks will get a Beyond 2 instead.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 Hands-On: Refining A Vision For VR Enthusiasts

When Bigscreen’s founder told us he was bringing the sequel to the Beyond PC VR headset to GDC 2025, we booked a flight immediately to try it.

UploadVRIan Hamilton

UploadVR's Ian Hamilton went hands-on with Bigscreen Beyond 2 at GDC 2025 this week, and you can read his impressions here.

Per-Eye IPD Adjustment

The original Bigscreen Beyond from 2023 broke records as the smallest and lightest VR headset you can buy. Part of the given explanation for this was that it was made in 18 different fixed lens separation sizes, with the one sent to you matching the distance between your eyes, your interpupillary distance (IPD).

But with Beyond 2, Bigscreen has managed to deliver adjustable IPD in the same form factor, while also reducing the headset's weight to 107 grams (without straps or face pad), down from 127 grams.

For comparison, Quest 3 by the same metric (though with strap arms that include speakers) weighs 397g, and Apple Vision Pro 478g. Of course, those are standalone computing devices with tracking and mixed reality, while Beyond 2 is a VR-only PC peripheral that relies on base stations.

Beyond 2 lets you adjust the horizontal position of each lens independently, by using an insertable tool on each side. This is a more involved process than the scroll-wheel of headsets like Quest 3 and PlayStation VR2, but adds less weight and better supports people who have an asymmetric IPD.

One quirk with Beyond 2 is that you need to manually enter the IPD in the PC software tool, since the headset doesn't have a sensor to report the lens separations to SteamVR.

Wider FoV & Clearer Optics

Arguably the single biggest upgrade of Beyond 2 is the new lenses, which have "dramatic improvements" over Beyond 1. In fact, Bigscreen claims they are "the world’s best pancake optics".

Bigscreen says Beyond 2's lenses have wider field of view, "total" edge-to-edge clarity, a very large sweet spot, and "massively" reduced glare.

UploadVR's Ian Hamilton found these claims to be mostly true in his hands-on impressions, with the lenses clear to the edges, with "fewer distracting internal reflections".

Though Ian didn't have time to measure the field of view, Bigscreen says it's now 108° horizontal and 96° vertical, measured "at minimum eye relief and default access". By the same measurement, it found Meta Quest 3 to be 108°×99°, and Valve Index to be 110°×110°.

That would mean Beyond 2 has essentially the same field of view as Quest 3 despite being a fraction of the size - a remarkable achievement.

Halo Mount Accessory Coming

While an iPhone scan will be required for Beyond 2 at launch, as with Beyond 1, so that you can be sent a custom-fit face pad, Bigscreen plans to remove this requirement by launching a Beyond 2 Halo Mount accessory later this year.

The Halo Mount will support either the included soft strap or the $130 Audio Strap, and can be worn in three different ways: with the custom-fit face pad, with a new Halo Mount exclusive universal face pad, or with no face pad at all for an open view of your periphery.

Eye Tracking In Beyond 2e

Beyond 2e also adds eye tracking, via what the company says is "the world's smallest eyetracking suite" with sensors the size of a grain of sand. Further, Bigscreen says its model runs efficiently on your GPU, in contrast to other PC VR eye tracking solutions which tax your CPU.

Initially, the primary use for eye tracking will be for driving your avatar's eyes in VRChat. Eye tracked foveated rendering won't be supported at launch, but it's on Bigscreen's roadmap for "later this year with continued software development", and the company says it's working with Valve and Nvidia on this.

Bigscreen is also exploring measuring your IPD using eye tracking, which in future could make it easier to know what position to set the lenses to.

Upscaling Still Used For 90Hz

Beyond 1 faced some controversy for its use of upscaling in 90Hz mode. Unfortunately for those who were bothered by this, this hasn't changed in Beyond 2.

Like Beyond 1, Beyond 2 can run at either 75Hz or 90Hz refresh rate. At 75Hz your PC sends a full 2560×2560 image to each display in the headset. But at 90Hz, this drops to 1920×1920, and the headset upscales this image back to 2560×2560.

Bigscreen acknowledges that this results in a "slight reduction in sharpness", particularly noticeable in large text.

"75Hz mode is best for watching movies or reading text, and the 90Hz higher refresh rate is best for gaming", Bigscreen explains.

Colors & Pricing

Bigscreen Beyond 2 is priced at $1019 and starts shipping next month, while Bigscreen Beyond 2e is $1219 and ships in May.

While Beyond 1 only came in black, Beyond 2 and 2e are also available in Crystal Clear and Nuclear Orange.

Beyond 1 owners can get a $200 discount on Beyond 2 or Beyond 2e "for a limited time", and they can reuse all their existing accessories such as their face pad and the Audio Strap, which are forwards-compatible.