The company announces today that users can grab the Cardboard VR for free, as long as they are willing to take care of the shipping expense, which is $5 in the US, £5 in the UK, and €7 in rest of Europe. The OnePlus Cardboard is based on Google’s Cardboard, which the Mountain View-based company had given away to attendees at its I/O developer conference last year. Since then, we have seen plenty of Cardboard VR sets crop up on the market. In India, a company named Boxight makes a similar VR cardboard and sells it for less than Rs 300. Having used that particular one, I can vouch for the quality of the product, though the shipping experience left a lot to be desired. But the OnePlus Cardboard is apparently better than those knock-offs and even original Google’s Cardboard, as the Chinese company notes. OnePlus says that it has made the headset in a way that it supports most of the 6-inch devices while also making it more durable and resistant to stains and wear.
In a tweet, OnePlus CEO Carl Pei notes that bringing improvements to the Cardboard increased the cost by 2.2 times, and that they are losing money. But it’s all done to make VR become more popular.
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) July 3, 2015
