Magic Leap One

Magic Leap One
Basic Info
VR/AR	Augmented Reality
Type	Head-mounted display
Subtype	Standalone AR
Platform	Lumin OS
Creator	Magic Leap
Developer	Magic Leap
Manufacturer	Magic Leap
Announcement Date	December 20, 2017
Release Date	August 8, 2018 (United States, Creator Edition); June 19, 2020 (Japan, NTT Docomo)
Price	US$2,295 (Creator Edition launch price, August 2018); US$2,995 (Magic Leap 1 Enterprise Suite, December 2019); 249,000 yen excluding tax (Japan set price, June 2020)
Website	https://www.magicleap.com/
Versions	Magic Leap One: Creator Edition (2018), Magic Leap 1 (2019)
Successor	Magic Leap 2
System
Operating System	Lumin OS
Chipset	NVIDIA Parker SoC (Tegra X2)
CPU	2 Denver 2.0 64-bit cores + 4 ARM Cortex A57 64-bit cores (3 cores accessible to applications)
GPU	NVIDIA Pascal, 256 CUDA cores
Storage
Storage	128 GB (95 GB available)
Memory	8 GB
Display
Display	Field-sequential color LCoS microdisplay with LED illumination
Peak Brightness	About 210 nits (Karl Guttag measurement)
Resolution	1280 x 960 per eye (Magic Leap figure)
Refresh Rate	120 Hz
Image
Field of View	50° diagonal (40° horizontal, 30° vertical)
Optics
Optics	Six-layer diffractive waveguide (red, green and blue layers for each of two focal planes)
Ocularity	Binocular
IPD Range	Two headset sizes chosen by interpupillary distance (Size 1 below 65 mm, Size 2 at 65 mm or more)
Adjustable Diopter	No (prescription inserts sold separately)
Passthrough	Optical see-through
Tracking
Tracking	Inside-out tracking, 6DoF
Eye Tracking	Yes (one infrared camera per eye)
Hand Tracking	Yes
Audio
Audio	Onboard spatial audio speakers, 3.5 mm headphone jack
Microphone	Yes (four microphones)
Camera	Sensor arrays at each temple, infrared depth sensor, eye-tracking cameras
Connectivity
Connectivity	Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac/b/g/n, USB-C
Ports	USB-C, 3.5 mm audio jack
WiFi	802.11ac/b/g/n
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2
Power	Built-in lithium-ion battery in the Lightpack; 45 W USB-C Power Delivery charger
Battery Capacity	36.77 Wh (Lightpack, iFixit); 8.4 Wh (Control, iFixit)
Battery Life	Up to 3 hours continuous use (Lightpack); up to 7.5 hours (Control)
Device
Weight	316 g (Lightwear headset), 415 g (Lightpack)
Haptics	LRA haptic actuator (Control)
Sensors	Nine sensors on the Lightwear (NTT Docomo figure)
Input	Control handheld controller (6DoF, magnetic tracking), eye tracking, head pose, hand gestures, voice

The Magic Leap One is an augmented reality head-mounted display developed by Magic Leap and released in the United States on August 8, 2018 as the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition for US$2,295. In December 2019 the company relaunched an updated version as Magic Leap 1, aimed at business customers. The system has three parts: the Lightwear headset, a round Lightpack computer worn at the waist or on an optional strap, and the Control handheld controller.

The headset projects images from a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) display through a stack of six diffractive waveguides, which place virtual content on one of two focal planes. Its field of view is 40° horizontal, 30° vertical and 50° diagonal, according to Magic Leap's developer documentation as reported before launch. The Lightpack uses an NVIDIA Parker system on a chip with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, and the headset runs Magic Leap's Lumin OS.

The Magic Leap One was the first AR product from Magic Leap, which had raised more than US$2.3 billion by March 2018. Reviewers found it comfortable and technically capable but compared it closely with Microsoft's HoloLens, and reported sales were far below the company's goals. Magic Leap ended support for the headset on December 31, 2024; its cloud services are no longer available, and the core functionality of the device and its apps has reached end of life. Its successor is the Magic Leap 2.

Reviewed 12 October 2026. Re-checked every infobox value, date, price, specification, teardown and measurement figure, quote and the 2016-2026 history in the merged article against the cited Road to VR, UploadVR, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Engadget, GamesBeat, iFixit, KGOnTech, NTT Docomo, iPhone Mania, Futura, Auganix, Next Reality, Weta Workshop and Magic Leap pages. About review dates.

History

Background

Magic Leap, based in Plantation, Florida, and led by its founder and chief executive Rony Abovitz, raised large sums from investors before it showed a product. In February 2016 it raised a US$793.5 million Series C round led by Alibaba, with existing investors Google and Qualcomm Ventures taking part alongside new investors such as Warner Bros, Fidelity and J.P. Morgan; the round valued the company at US$4.5 billion post-money. A Series D round led by Temasek (US$502 million, October 2017) was extended in March 2018 with US$461 million, US$400 million of it from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, bringing the company's total past US$2.3 billion.

In December 2016 a report by The Information said Magic Leap executives had overstated the quality of the unreleased device. According to coverage of that report, demonstrations had used a helmet-sized prototype called "WD3" tethered to a desktop computer, a later prototype called "PEQ" used technology similar to HoloLens, and a March 2015 promotional video had been made with film special effects. Abovitz disputed the HoloLens comparison and said that skeptics and friends alike would be able to try Magic Leap for themselves at launch.

Announcement

Magic Leap unveiled the Magic Leap One on December 20, 2017, saying it would first ship as a "Creator Edition" in 2018. The company showed the final design but withheld most specifications and gave no price. The announcement named the three components: the Lightwear headset, the Lightpack computer clipped to the waist by a single cable, and a 6DoF controller with a touchpad and haptic feedback. The headset was described with four built-in microphones, outward-facing cameras, a real-time computer vision processor, temple speakers for spatial audio, eye tracking and gesture input, and it came in two sizes with adjustable forehead, nose and temple pads.

Developer tools and distribution deal

On March 19, 2018, timed to the Game Developers Conference, Magic Leap opened its Creator Portal with the Lumin SDK, tutorials, design guidelines and forums. Developers working in Unity and Unreal Engine could build applications for Lumin OS, and TechCrunch reported that the app store appeared to be called Magic Leap World.

On July 11, 2018, Magic Leap named AT&T the exclusive wireless distributor of its products to consumers in the United States. AT&T also made an undisclosed investment, and its chief executive John Donovan received observer rights on Magic Leap's board. At the end of that month, a developer found field-of-view figures (40° by 30°, 50° diagonal, a 4:3 aspect ratio) hidden in the source of a Magic Leap documentation page.

Release

Magic Leap began selling the Creator Edition on August 8, 2018 for US$2,295. Stock was limited, and buyers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle received free delivery, fitting and setup; buyers elsewhere in the contiguous United States could only reserve a unit. An optional US$495 professional development package promised replacement of a broken unit within 24 hours. The box held the Lightwear, Lightpack and Control, a Fit Kit, chargers and a quick start guide, and Magic Leap said the device was for indoor use only. Deliveries began the same day the price was announced, with an expert bringing the unit and explaining its operation.

At its first developer conference, L.E.A.P., held in Los Angeles on October 9 and 10, 2018, Magic Leap announced that the headset was available across the United States from that month. In December 2018, Frames Direct began selling prescription inserts for US$250. They were single-vision only, covering sphere powers from -7.5 to 0 and cylinder from -4 to 0, and required a valid prescription.

AT&T retail sales started in 2019: the Creator Edition went on sale at AT&T's Boston store on April 1, Chicago on April 3 and San Francisco on April 6, with online orders from April 5, still at US$2,295. AT&T also planned a Game of Thrones experience, "Dead Must Die," in which visitors wearing the headset fight a White Walker.

Magic Leap 1 and the enterprise shift

On December 10, 2019, Magic Leap launched Magic Leap 1, described as an updated version of the Creator Edition, in a US$2,995 Enterprise Suite. The bundle included the headset, two years of dedicated support, two years of access to the Device Manager tool for configuring devices, distributing apps and remotely locking or wiping units, two years of a "RapidReplace" device replacement program, and a two-year extended warranty. The company named 14 enterprise software partners at the same time, including Eon Reality, PTC, Spatial and Taqtile.

In Japan, NTT Docomo announced on March 18, 2020 that it would release Magic Leap 1, the device's first launch in the country, and began showing it in 102 Docomo shops from late March. Sales started on June 19, 2020 through the docomo Online Shop and Docomo's corporate sales divisions, at a set price of 249,000 yen excluding tax; the set contained the Lightwear, Lightpack, Control, two chargers, a shoulder strap and a Fit Kit.

A Lumin OS 0.98.10 update in March 2020 added enterprise features such as offline sideloading through Device Manager, a Desktop Companion App for Windows and Mac, a beta Meetings app for sharing 2D and 3D content, a web version of Magic Leap World, Twitch streaming by voice command and experimental hand interaction with the system interface. In April 2020, Abovitz announced major job cuts, reported by Bloomberg as about 1,000 employees or roughly half the company, and said near-term revenue opportunities lay with enterprise customers; Road to VR noted that the high price and limited out-of-the-box value of the Creator Edition had kept consumers away.

Hardware

The Magic Leap One mixed reality system consists of three primary hardware components: the Lightwear headset, the Lightpack computer, and the Control handheld controller.

Lightwear headset

The Lightwear weighs 316 g, compared with 248 g for the Magic Leap 2 headset. Some launch coverage gave 325 g instead. It came in two sizes; NTT Docomo's sizing guidance put wearers with an interpupillary distance below 65 mm in Size 1 and those at 65 mm or more in Size 2. Magic Leap 2 later dropped the separate sizes because its eye box is twice as large. Vision correction is provided by prescription lens inserts.

According to iFixit's teardown, the optics and sensors sit on a cast magnesium block. A sensor array sits at each temple with an infrared depth sensor between them; the nose-bridge unit holds an infrared camera and an infrared dot projector. Each lens has four infrared LEDs to illuminate the eye, and one OmniVision CameraCubeChip camera below each eye handles eye tracking. The headset board carries a Movidius Myriad 2 (MA2450) vision processing unit, an Intel (Altera) MAX 10 FPGA and a SlimPort ANX7530 4K DisplayPort receiver. NTT Docomo lists nine sensors on the Lightwear for spatial recognition. The headset takes voice and ambient audio input, and its onboard speakers and 3.5 mm jack both use spatialization processing.

Display and optics

Magic Leap marketed its display with terms such as "dynamic digital light field." iFixit found a conventional image chain behind the waveguides: a ring of six LEDs (red, green and blue for each of two focus planes) lights a field-sequential color LCoS panel, identified as an OmniVision OP02222. A collimating lens and a polarizing beam splitter in the injection optics send the image into the waveguides. The waveguide stack has six laminated layers with small air gaps, one for each color on each of the two focal planes. UploadVR classed the headset as a fixed multifocal display and contrasted it with fixed-focus headsets, which it said struggle with the vergence-accommodation conflict.

Karl Guttag, author of the display technology blog KGOnTech, measured the headset after launch. He found that the waveguides block about 85 percent of real-world light (83 percent at the top and 86 percent at the bottom), against about 60 percent for HoloLens, and that the display emits about 210 nits, against about 320 nits for HoloLens. In his assessment the effective resolution was about half the 1280 x 960 pixels Magic Leap claimed. He also found that only one of the two focal planes is shown at a time: the near plane, focused at about 20 inches (50.8 cm), is used for content between about 14.5 and 30 inches, and the far plane appears to focus at about 60 inches (1.54 m), so the user can see the image jump when it switches.

The field of view of 40° horizontal, 30° vertical and 50° diagonal was first reported from hidden text in Magic Leap's documentation. When Magic Leap's later chief executive Peggy Johnson gave a figure of about 70° diagonal for Magic Leap 2, UploadVR compared it with 50° for Magic Leap 1.

Lightpack

The Lightpack is a round computing unit that clips to the waist and connects to the headset with a single cable. It handles processing and power and sends image and sound data to the headset. It contains an NVIDIA Parker system on a chip (Tegra X2) with two Denver 2.0 and four ARM Cortex A57 64-bit CPU cores, three of which are available to applications, and a Pascal GPU with 256 CUDA cores that supports OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.3+. It has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, of which about 95 GB is usable, plus Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac/b/g/n and USB-C. The built-in lithium-ion battery lasts up to three hours of continuous use and charges from a 45 W USB-C Power Delivery charger. The Lightpack weighs 415 g.

iFixit found two Samsung 32 Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, Toshiba 128 GB UFS storage, a Murata module that iFixit identified as likely handling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a twin-cell 36.77 Wh battery. A Cooler Master fan cools the unit, and the teardown noted that the battery can only be replaced by removing the motherboard. iFixit gave the system a repairability score of 3 out of 10. An optional fabric strap let wearers carry the Lightpack on the shoulder; Road to VR's developer reviewer preferred it after the pack fell from a pocket and pulled on the cable.

Control

The Control is a 6DoF handheld controller with an LRA haptic actuator, a touch-sensitive trackpad ringed by 12 RGB LEDs under a diffuser, an 8-bit trigger, a digital bumper and a digital home button. Its lithium-ion battery lasts up to 7.5 hours and charges from a 15 W USB-C charger. It uses electromagnetic tracking: the controller holds the transmitting coil and an 8.4 Wh battery, and a receiving coil in the headband measures the strength of three perpendicular magnetic fields to calculate the controller's position and orientation relative to the head. Road to VR's developer review found the controller comfortable and intuitive but noted "considerable delay" in its tracking.

Software

Lumin OS and development tools

The headset runs Lumin OS, which TechCrunch described in 2018 as built from "open source and Linux-based components." Next Reality reported that apps written for the Lumin Runtime can run side by side, while Unity and Unreal applications run on their own and take exclusive control of the device. Users can interact through the Control, voice, hand gestures, head pose and eye tracking.

Hand tracking improved through later system updates. Next Reality reported that Lumin OS 0.95 (with SDK 0.21) recognized eight key poses from varying positions as well as gestures without key poses, and that Lumin OS 0.96 added a 15-keypoint model that tracks a full hand with five fingers. At launch, Road to VR's developer reviewer found hand tracking better at following whole hands than individual fingers, and found the eye tracking promising in small tests. The same review praised real-time meshing of the room as solid and responsive.

Applications

The Creator Edition shipped with Lumin OS, the Helio web browser, the Screens video player, a Social communication app and the Magic Kit developer toolkit. Sample apps included Tónandi, an audiovisual experience from Sigur Rós, and Create, an object-creation app; Dr. Grordbort's Invaders, made with Weta Workshop, was listed as coming soon. Weta Workshop describes Dr. Grordbort's Invaders as a mixed reality game in which life-sized robots invade the player's home through openings in the walls, floor and ceiling, available only on the Magic Leap 1 headset.

Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot, developed by Resolution Games with Rovio, was released as a free Magic Leap One exclusive on October 9, 2018 with 28 levels that players could place on a real table. At L.E.A.P. the company also showed Avatar Chat, a multi-user chat room with cartoon-like avatars; Mica, a computer-generated character built as a proof of concept for AR assistants; a Star Wars porgs demo; and drawing with a real Wacom pen. ILMxLAB unveiled Star Wars: Project Porg for the Magic Leap One at the conference.

Reception

Early reviews were mixed. Summarizing The Verge's hands-on review, Road to VR reported that Adi Robertson found the headset comfortable and called it "one of the best (if not the best) pieces of mixed reality hardware I've seen", but saw no meaningful difference between Magic Leap's light field marketing and the end experience, and did not find it "categorically different" from HoloLens, which had launched two years earlier. Ben Lang of Road to VR added that the larger field of view still let the headset augment only a small part of the user's view at any one time.

In a guest developer review for Road to VR, Lucas Rizzotto wrote that the headset was "lightweight, easy to put on and comfortable", though it could shift during fast movement and grew warm on the forehead after a few hours. He found that the wider field of view than Microsoft HoloLens came at the cost of sharpness: the image was "a bit less crisp and legible than 2016's HoloLens", the darker lenses separated the user from the real room, and he doubted that most users would notice its multifocal display. He concluded that the headset "doesn't quite live up to the hype, but is still the most complete and affordable mixed-reality (MR) computer out there." UploadVR's Ian Hamilton, in a hands-on with a delivered unit, compared the darkening of the real world to sunglasses, wanted a larger field of view and noted a lack of content.

Karl Guttag's measurements, described above, were sharply critical of the view through the waveguides, the brightness and the effective resolution. Engadget's report from L.E.A.P. in October 2018 was titled "Magic Leap's inaugural conference shows it has a long way to go".

Sales

In December 2019, The Information reported, citing a single source, that Magic Leap had sold about 6,000 units of the US$2,300 Magic Leap One in its first six months. The report said Abovitz had told investors he hoped to sell "at least" one million units in the first year before being persuaded to project 100,000. A Magic Leap spokesperson said the report was "littered with inaccuracies and misleading statements." Magic Leap never announced official sales figures. Days later, the company relaunched the device for enterprise customers as Magic Leap 1.

End of life

In August 2023, Magic Leap told customers that the Magic Leap 1 end-of-life date would be December 31, 2024. Its email said that on that date cloud services would end, core functionality would reach end of life and "the Magic Leap 1 device and apps will cease to function"; until then, OS updates would address only outages affecting core functionality, while Customer Care troubleshooting and valid warranty claims continued. The excerpt UploadVR published gave no reason. UploadVR reported that Steve Lukas, a former Magic Leap senior manager, said he understood the device would stop working because of a hard-coded cloud security check that runs every six months.

Magic Leap's support page states that authorized purchases of Magic Leap 1 ended on December 31, 2022. As of December 31, 2024, according to the same page, Magic Leap 1 is no longer supported: it receives no OS updates or Care support, its cloud services are no longer available, and the core functionality of the device and its apps has reached end of life.

Successor and later history

The Magic Leap One was succeeded by the Magic Leap 2. UploadVR reported its specifications in January 2022: a field of view of about 70° diagonal, a 248 g headset, a compute pack that Magic Leap's Kevin Curtis called "more than twice as powerful" as the original's (Magic Leap had announced a partnership with AMD), two eye-tracking cameras per eye and a "Dynamic Dimming" feature that varies lens transmission from 22 percent to 0.3 percent of real-world light. Magic Leap 2 was released on September 30, 2022 from US$3,299 and, unlike its predecessor, was aimed entirely at professional users.

As of October 2026, Magic Leap 2 is no longer sold directly by Magic Leap. Its terms of sale (last revised February 19, 2026) state that direct sales of Magic Leap 2 ended on March 31, 2026, that authorized resellers may deliver units to end customers through December 31, 2026, and that units sold or delivered after that date are not eligible for Magic Leap Customer Care support. In October 2025, Magic Leap and Google showed an AI glasses prototype intended as a reference design for the Android XR ecosystem, with Magic Leap supplying the waveguides and optics, and extended their partnership through a three-year agreement. On July 9, 2026, Magic Leap announced that it was shifting from building first-party devices to becoming "the essential AR ecosystems partner, waveguide supplier, and device integration expert for the technology industry." A WARN Act notice filed that month showed that the company planned to lay off 193 employees at its Plantation, Florida headquarters, effective October 1, 2026.

Specifications

Magic Leap One (Creator Edition) specifications

Component	Feature	Specification
Lightpack	System on a chip	NVIDIA Parker (Tegra X2)
	CPU	2 Denver 2.0 + 4 ARM Cortex A57 64-bit cores (3 accessible to applications)
	GPU	NVIDIA Pascal, 256 CUDA cores; OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.3+
	RAM	8 GB
	Storage	128 GB (about 95 GB available)
	Connectivity	Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac/b/g/n, USB-C
	Battery	Up to 3 hours continuous use; 36.77 Wh twin-cell pack
	Charging	45 W USB-C Power Delivery charger
	Weight	415 g
Lightwear	Display	Field-sequential color LCoS (OmniVision OP02222) with six-LED illumination
	Optics	Six-layer waveguide stack, two focal planes
	Resolution	1280 x 960 per eye (Magic Leap figure)
	Refresh rate	120 Hz
	Field of view	40° horizontal, 30° vertical, 50° diagonal
	Tracking	Inside-out head tracking, infrared depth sensor, eye tracking (one camera per eye)
	Audio	Onboard spatial speakers, 3.5 mm jack, four microphones
	Sizes	Size 1 (IPD below 65 mm), Size 2 (65 mm or more)
	Weight	316 g
Control	Tracking	6DoF, electromagnetic
	Inputs	Touch trackpad with 12-LED RGB ring, 8-bit trigger, bumper, home button
	Haptics	LRA haptic device
	Battery	Up to 7.5 hours; 15 W USB-C charger

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See also

• Magic Leap
• Magic Leap 2
• Microsoft HoloLens
• Lumin OS
• Augmented Reality
• Mixed Reality
• Spatial computing
• Waveguide Display