Wireless VR adapters exist for those who want to cut the cord, but not every headset has one of those transceivers available. For those who still want to dump the fixed umbilical, Zotac has upgraded its VR Go backpack PC. Version 2.0 of the concept gets some new guts and an upgraded harness design that claims to hold the system further away from the wearer's body for better cooling performance.
The VR Go 2.0 houses Intel's six-core, 12-thread Core i7-8700T CPU. This 35-W chip has a 2.4-GHz base clock and a 4-GHz single-core boost speed. Zotac pairs the i7-8700T with 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card bearing 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. The VR Go 2.0 comes with a 240-GB M.2 SATA SSD as its primary storage option, and it has a 2.5" storage bay for further expansion.
On its top edge, the VR Go 2.0 offers three USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, and an HDMI out for VR headsets. Three more USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, another HDMI out, a DisplayPort out, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and headphone and microphone jacks nestle in the right side of the backpack. 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 connectivity let the VR Go 2.0 communicate without wires.
The full VR Go 2.0 itself weighs 10 pounds (4.5 kg), about the same as the first-gen take on the design. Zotac says battery life is about the same as the first-gen model's, as well. A pair of hot-swappable batteries each provide about an hour and a half of run time. RGB LED accents on the back panel of the VR Go 2.0 let room-scale experience operators see just who is wearing a given VR Go backpack, too. Zotac didn't provide pricing for the VR Go 2.0, but we'd expect it to come in around the same $2000 mark that the original commanded.
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