XR Hardware Price Index

XR Hardware Price Index: What Every Category Actually Costs

The XR Hardware Price Index records the manufacturer's own published price for headsets, smart glasses, treadmills, trackers, haptics and accessories, with the date each figure was read. Published prices run from $130 for a single tracker to $7,299 for a pair of force feedback gloves. The most expensive item here is not a headset.

In short:

• The peripheral outruns the headset. A SenseGlove Nova 2 Set is $7,299 excluding VAT, which is more than two Apple Vision Pro headsets at $3,499 each.
• The headset price is not the system price. Four products in this index do nothing without SteamVR base stations at $229 each, sold one at a time.
• Prices moved up in 2026. Meta raised Quest 3 by $100 and Quest 3S by $50 in April 2026, citing memory costs.
• Eight products here publish no price at all. Varjo, HaptX, Teslasuit, Infinadeck and Cyberith all sell by conversation, and that absence is recorded rather than estimated.

How this index was built

Every figure is the price the manufacturer publishes on its own store or specification page, read on a stated date. Reseller prices, retailer discounts and secondhand listings are excluded, with one deliberate exception noted below because it shows what reselling does to a price. Who owns each of these brands is a separate question, answered in BestInXR's XR ownership map.

Three rules make the numbers comparable.

A price is a snapshot, not a constant. Three suppliers in this index were running promotions on the day they were checked. Rokid's own page gave three different figures for the same product on the same day, depending on whether you read the page markup or the rendered page. Virtuix had $500 off with a stated expiry. KAT VR was running a holiday sale, a weekend flash sale and a one-day deal at once. Where a list price and a sale price both exist, this index records the list price and says so.

Not published is a value. A blank cell would suggest the research was incomplete. BestInXR's XR spec gap counts every one of those cells across the corpus. Every product that publishes nothing carries the words Not published instead, which is a fact about the supplier rather than a gap in the table.

Excluding tax is stated where the supplier states it. SenseGlove publishes a figure excluding VAT and shows European pricing alongside it. Repeating that number without the qualifier would understate it.

Dates run from September 3 to September 16, 2026, and each section carries its own. BestInXR's comparison of current XR headsets holds the full specification tables that sit behind the headset prices here.

Headset prices

Checked September 3, 2026, except Steam Frame, checked September 15, 2026.

The spread inside this one table is the first useful observation. A Quest 3S at $349.99 and a Vision Pro at $3,499 are separated by a factor of ten, and both are standalone headsets a consumer can buy today. The enterprise tier does not sit at the top of that range the way it does in most hardware markets: the Pico 4 Ultra Enterprise at $850 and the Vive Focus Vision at $999 are cheaper than three consumer PC VR headsets on the same list, because what the enterprise premium buys is device management rather than pixels.

Two rows are absences rather than prices. Sony does not sell the SRH-S1 on a Sony store and routes buyers to Siemens, so the only figure available is a reported one. Varjo publishes specifications in full and no price at all.

Smart glasses and display glasses prices

Checked September 15, 2026. The lesson of this table is that the price ladder does not buy a bigger screen, it buys a different job.

Three things fall out of this table that no single product page shows.

The cheapest tier has no screen and the biggest screen has no assistant. The $379 pair Meta says outsells every other pair of AI glasses displays nothing at all, and the $599 pair with the largest display carries no camera and no voice assistant unless you buy the $99 add-on.

Inside the no-display tier, more money buys frames rather than capability. Six Meta models run $224 to $499 and differ mainly on brand, fit and lenses. The one measurable difference is generation: the $224 pair records 1080p video against up to 3K on the $379 pair.

The most expensive pair takes no prescription lenses. Oakley lists the Vanguard at $499 with prescription not available, while the $399 HSTN takes a range of -12.00 to +6.00. BestInXR's AI glasses comparison and display glasses reference carry the optics behind each figure.

Locomotion, tracking and haptics prices

Checked September 13, 2026. This is the part of the index that changes how the whole thing reads, because several of these cost more than the headset they attach to.

The force feedback line is the one that reframes the index. Vibration and resistance are different machines doing different jobs, and the gap between them is about twenty-five times: $289 for a vest that buzzes against your skin, $7,299 for gloves that physically stop your fingers closing through an object that is not there. Only the second changes what a trainee can learn.

The cheapest tracker is often the most expensive system. A $130 Tundra Tracker needs SteamVR base stations that are sold separately at $229 each, need mounting at height and need mains power. A $229 VIVE Ultimate Tracker needs none of that. Putting the cheaper tracker into service in an empty room costs more than the expensive one, which is exactly the kind of arithmetic a price column alone hides. BestInXR's full body tracking guide works through the three tracking methods behind these figures, and the haptics comparison does the same for vests and gloves.

Accessory prices and the costs that are easy to miss

Checked September 15, 2026, from Meta's own accessories store.

Two patterns here are worth more than the individual figures.

Prescription is a real line item in every category. Meta charges $49.99 for Quest lens inserts and $200 extra for prescription on Meta Ray-Ban Display. If you wear glasses, the price of the version you can actually use is the only price that matters.

A reseller price is not the maker's price. The bHaptics TactSuit Pro is listed at $565 on the Meta Store and $529 on bHaptics' own store, both read on the same day. That $36 gap is the one reseller figure included in this index, because it is evidence of the rule rather than an exception to it. BestInXR's Quest 3 accessories reference organizes the same store by the problem each item solves.

The previous generation is priced like the previous generation. On Meta's own store the Quest 2 Elite Strap is $24.99 against $69.99 for the Quest 3 version and the Quest 2 Carrying Case is $19.99 against $69.99. None of that helps a Quest 3 owner, because the parts do not fit, but it does show what these objects can sell for.

What the index shows

The headset is rarely the expensive part of a complete system. A $349.99 Quest 3S with a $2,995 treadmill, a $689 tracker kit and a $529 vest is a setup in which the headset is under eight percent of the hardware cost. Any budget built from a headset price alone is wrong by an order of magnitude.

Published prices cluster, and the gaps are where the categories are. Consumer standalone headsets sit between $349.99 and $1,799.99. No-display glasses sit between $224 and $499. Display glasses sit between $279 and $799. Consumer haptics sit between $289 and $529. Force feedback sits alone at $7,299. Those gaps are not pricing strategy, they are different machines.

Eight products publish nothing. Varjo, Sony, Lenovo's current listing, HaptX, Teslasuit, Infinadeck and Cyberith all withhold a figure, and Magic Leap stopped selling Magic Leap 2 in 2026 altogether. A category where the professional tier will not print a number is a category where every professional buyer is negotiating without a reference point, and this index is an attempt to give them one for everything below it.

The direction in 2026 was up. Meta's April 2026 increase is the only manufacturer price rise in this index with a published reason, and the reason was memory costs. It moved the Quest 3 by $100 and each Quest 3S tier by $50 against the prices Meta set in October 2024.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is the cheapest XR headset in 2026?

The Meta Quest 3S at $349.99 for the 128GB model and $449.99 for 256GB, on Meta's own store. Meta raised both tiers by $50 in April 2026. The cheapest item in this whole index is not a headset: it is a $130 Tundra Tracker, which needs base stations sold separately.

2. How much does a full VR setup cost?

It depends far more on the peripherals than on the headset. A $349.99 Quest 3S with a $2,995 Virtuix Omni One treadmill, a $689 VIVE Ultimate Tracker kit and a $529 bHaptics TactSuit Pro comes to $4,562.99, in which the headset is under eight percent of the total.

3. Why do some XR products not publish a price?

Because they sell by quotation. Varjo prices the XR-4 Series on request, HaptX and Teslasuit publish nothing at all, and Infinadeck and Cyberith sell to defense and industrial buyers on the same basis. Sony does not sell the SRH-S1 on a Sony store and routes buyers to Siemens instead.

4. Are AI glasses cheaper than VR headsets?

The cheapest are. Ray-Ban Meta starts at $224 for the outgoing generation and $379 for the current one, below every headset in this index. Adding a display closes the gap: XREAL One Pro is $599 and Meta Ray-Ban Display is $799, or $999 with prescription lenses, which puts them alongside a Meta Quest 3 at $599.99.

5. How current are these prices?

Each section states the date it was checked, between September 3 and September 16, 2026. Treat every figure as a snapshot. Three suppliers were running promotions when checked, one page gave three different numbers for the same product on the same day, and manufacturer prices in this category have moved twice in the last two years.

6. What is the most expensive XR hardware with a published price?

The SenseGlove Nova 2 Set at $7,299 excluding VAT, a force feedback glove. It costs more than two Apple Vision Pro headsets. Among headsets, the highest published manufacturer price is the Apple Vision Pro at $3,499, and the highest reported figure is $4,750 for the Sony SRH-S1, which Sony does not sell directly.