Sony's PlayStation VR 2 will be like strapping a 4K OLED TV to your face (but a lot lighter)

(Image credit: VR4Player.fr)

published 12 December 2021

As an existing PlayStation VR user and someone who gets awfully excited about new VR technology, I've been following the PlayStation VR 2 – aka PSVR 2 – rumours for a while now. One of the most interesting ones is that it's going to deliver unparalleled picture quality with so many pixels it'll feel like you've glued one of the best OLED TVs to your face.

So I'm trying not to get too excited about this report in The Verge, which describes a new headset that Sony has been showing off: it boasts two OLED displays with a resolution not of 4K, but of 4K per inch. When you consider that my current PSVR has a resolution of about eight pixels per eye, the prospect of an 8K OLED PSVR 2 is almost too exciting to think about.

PlayStation VR could go to 8K, but probably won't for a while

So let's curb my enthusiasm, because while I really want an 8K OLED PSVR 2, Sony isn't going to make that just yet: the panels will cost too much. The Verge did ask about the OLEDs and PSVR 2; Sony wouldn't comment on specific products beyond saying that "various divisions" were looking into ways of using the 8K OLEDs in actual products, which sounds very much like a "not yet" to me.

So where does that leave the PSVR 2? Multiple sources say that the PSVR 2 will be 4K, not 8K, with 2,000 x 2,040 pixels over each eye. That's slightly higher resolution than the Oculus Quest 2, which offers 1,832 x 1,920, so it's still a big improvement over the 2016 PlayStation VR that I have.

Still, I hope 8K is coming: the higher the resolution, the more immersive the virtual reality. It's taken Sony six years to move from 1080p to 4K with the PSVR 2. It'd be nice to see an 8K VR headset sooner than 2028.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).