The new HP headset, the HP Reverb, went on sale May 6 of 2019. It wasn’t long until this headset was listed as “out of stock” on all retailing sites. Many were surprised, and honestly impressed by how fast this headset sold out. There wasn’t much buzz around the Reverb for many reasons, but one bright spot was the astounding display that this headset boasts.
It wasn’t long before the Reverb sold out. Just eight days after the debut, there was none to be found. Now, midway through the month of June, the headset is still “out of stock”. We believe HP has none to sell right now, but after this long you must be wondering why.
There were early display issues among consumers and enterprise consumers early on. Although it is hard to understand what the exact problem was, it was big enough for HP to stop selling the headset for some time now. The controllers for this headset were a sore spot in many eyes, but we don’t expect to HP to improve anything or change anything in that regard.
The clarity on the headset has suffered, but not in the way you would expect. Rather than just being a slight fuzz in the resolution like you would expect with a VR headset, it seems to be much more complicated than that. The whole display could skip, flash, dim unexpectedly, or even go out altogether for some time. This isn’t something that should be happening to a headset that was released no more than a week before you buy it, and HP knows that.
This comes as a slight disappointment, as we knew the Reverb would be a massive upgrade from the original HP virtual reality headset. We are already down on this headset as it is only as the reverb can only be as good as the controllers, and those are a bit of a letdown if we are being brutally honest about it. We knew the Reverb would be something impressive if they improved off of the original, but we are stick now with a headset that is not functioning properly.
This isn’t to say that the whole project of this new headset is now down the drain, but when people are looking to buy this headset, there is going to be a bit of a risk buying it. For common consumers, it doesn’t make too much sense to get something this expensive ($600) when there are better, cheaper versions. For business that are looking for headsets, there is not something to go with HTC. They have made plenty of great enterprise headsets that are ready to be applied tot their everyday business.
The HP Reverb is expected to be “restocked” (fixed, but no one wants to admit that) in July. This isn’t the first time we have seen a headset disappear off the shelves for sometime, but for a large company like HP, it is something we certainly didn’t see coming.
