Magic Leap 2 is the best AR headset yet, but will an enterprise focus save the company?

engadget.com:

Magic Leap's glasses were supposed to lead us into the augmented reality era, a world beyond screens where we could interact with digital objects as if they were standing right next to us. Too bad they failed spectacularly. By early 2020, the company had raised nearly $2 billion. But aside from a few flashy demos and wild art projects, there wasn't much of a reason for anyone to buy a $2,295 headset (it reportedly only sold around 6,000 units). Like Google Glass before it, Magic Leap felt like a false start for AR, a solution to a problem that didn't exist.

But the company isn't dead yet. With a new CEO onboard — former Microsoft executive Peggy Johnson — it's aiming for something far more practical: AR for the enterprise. That may seem like a retread of the HoloLens playbook, which has focused on business customers for years, but Magic Leap has a shot at giving Microsoft some serious competition with its second-generation AR glasses.

The $3,299 Magic Leap 2 (ML2), which launched in September, is easier to wear, far more powerful and it offers a dramatically larger (and taller) AR field of view than any headset we've seen before. It has the unique ability to dim its display, allowing you to block out light and focus more on virtual objects. And it should be easier for developers to work with, thanks to a new Android-based OS. While it's still unclear if the company's new business plan will pay off, ML2 is still a significant achievement, especially now that Meta is also pushing into similar AR-like territory with the $1,500 Quest Pro.

"It's been a long struggle," Magic Leap SVP and head of hardware Kevin Curtis said in an interview with Engadget. "When we came out of ML1, we learned a tremendous amount... Not just