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MagicLeap

When the Magic Leap launched earlier this summer, the reaction from the press and public was muted to say the to the lowest degree. Now, the team at iFixit has gotten their easily on one of the devices and done what they practice best — torn information technology apart for posterity. The kit, they write, is like nothing they've reviewed before.

Magic Leap

[Image credit: Magic Bound]

The Magic Leap is made up of 2 components. There's the Lightpack, which is where all the computational processing happens, and the Lightwear goggles. There's a strobing IR projector in the centre of the Lightwear goggles (used for depth sensing), as well as four LEDs in each of the lenses that are used for eye tracking. The Lightwear goggles also contain the additional hardware used to track the totem controller (a small black box protrudes from the right side of the headband, containing a magnetic sensor coil).

Those who theorized that Magic Spring would use waveguide optics were proven right — at that place are dissever waveguides for each color channel (R,Thousand,B) and ii split up focal planes, for a full of six waveguides. Here'south iFixit'south cat-friendly demonstration of how the system works (click to enlarge).

The rest of the headset teardown is interesting, merely I'll let iFixit accept it from here. What about the Lightpack, where the magic is supposed to happen? The Lightpack, erm, packs a 36.77Wh battery, powering an Nvidia Tegra X2 (Parker) SoC with two Denver CPU cores and iv Cortex-A57 cores. Its GPU is Pascal-based and offers 256 CUDA cores backed upwards by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.

The Lightpack but offers three hours of battery life, despite its largish lithium-ion capacity. It'south as well not user-replaceable. Since the Lightwear goggles are literally fastened to the Lightpack battery, it means you'll have to supplant the entire device once the bombardment dies unless Magic Spring announcers some kind of post-in battery replacement programme and handles the bandy themselves.

MagicLeapTeardown

Image by iFixit

The device contains a fan (made by CoolerMaster) and a nifty deal of gum property it to the superlative of the heatsink. The prototype above shows the heatsink peeling away from the components underneath (the fan mounts on top).

All in all, iFixit wasn't very impressed. While at that place was some use of standard screws, the entire assembly is heavily glued and hard to admission with many delicate components. Furthermore, the lack of a user-replaceable battery is a minor concern when the hardware in question cost over $ii,000.

iFixit concludes:

The Leap One is clearly an expensive, brusk-run piece of hardware. Every bit of construction is intended to maintain the precise calibration for the life of the device. Our guess would be that this was pushed out at total speed, damn the cost, simply to get something on the marketplace. Allow'south hope for a consumer edition that maintains the thoughtful design and dedication to immovability, while also avoiding the short-sightedness of this device.

The overall score was a 3/x.