Peek Inside the PlayStation VR With Sony's Teardown Video

Sony preempted the inevitable teardown videos that surface online soon after a hot new tech gadget is released by filming its own dismantling of the new PlayStation VR headset this week.

The $399 device, which went on sale yesterday, is the third mainstream high-end virtual reality device to hit the market, after the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Adding occasional commentary in Japanese, Sony engineer Takamasa Araki took it apart on camera.

While the 12-minute video is entertaining and well-produced, Araki doesn't offer many details about the components he's removing. Fortunately, iFixit offered some more detail in its own teardown of the PlayStation VR.

Among iFixit's findings is a key difference between the lens in Sony's headset and the Fresnel-style lenses that HTC and Oculus use. A Fresnel lens is thinner and allows for a lighter headset, but the coke-bottle-like lens in the PlayStation VR should scatter less light from the display and provide a more cohesive image, according to iFixit.

Other components are largely what you'd expect to find in many other consumer electronic gadgets: an ARM Cortex-M0 microprocessor, a power supply for the AMOLED display, and various LEDs. There's also a VR-specific version of an HDMI interface bridge, commonly found on monitors, set-top boxes, TVs, and streaming dongles like the Google Chromecast.

After finishing with the headset itself, iFixit also dismantled the VR processor box, which looks like a miniature PlayStation 4. The box doesn't actually perform the graphics processing, which takes place on the PlayStation itself, but instead handles 3D audio processing and can simultaneously direct video to your TV and headset.

Recommended by Our Editors

Peek Inside the PlayStation VR Box

In addition to the $399 headset, you can buy a $499 bundle that includes a PlayStation Camera and two optional PlayStation Move motion controllers. You can do without the Move controllers if you'd like to use a conventional PlayStation controller, but the Camera, which costs $60 on its own, is required to use the headset.

In an interview with Bloomberg last month, Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida said that "To be honest, we don't know what demand will be" for the PlayStation VR. While some stores, like Target, have the headset in stock one day after its launch, Amazon's product page currently indicates that the online retailer won't have bundles in stock until Oct. 22.