A while back I wrote up a summary of the hardware specifications for the first generation HoloLens. Here’s a short write up of the hardware specifications for the HoloLens 2 (the second generation HoloLens hardware). The biggest difference in the new device is a switch away from Intel to ARM CPU using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 platform, in addition to more RAM.

HoloLens 2 Compute Specs vs HoloLens 1

While the first generation HoloLens device was built on an Intel Atom platform, the HoloLens 2 is built using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 compute platform. This means a shift from x86 in the first generation HoloLens, to using ARM architecture in the second generation HoloLens.

Here’s a few details about the HoloLens 2 compute specifications compared to the first generation HoloLens:

While researching, I found that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 platform includes LTE Wireless connectivity. However, the HoloLens 2 does not currently come with any cellular connectivity. Since the compute platform and CPU used by the HoloLens 2, I would assume it wouldn’t be too difficult to add LTE wireless capabilities to future devices. Wifi for Internet connectivity should be enough for the device, but we’ll see as companies are adopting this technology if the lack of Cellular capabilities is a limiting feature. If it is limiting, then Microsoft will most certainly add Cellular connectivity to future editions or versions of the HoloLens.

HoloLens 2 Holographic Processing Unit (HPU)

The HoloLens 2 is built with the second generation of Microsofts custom-built Holographic Processing Unit (HPU). This is a custom processing CPU built for spatial / location processing for the device. This allows for the spatial processing to be offloaded to the tailor built HPU, thus taking the load of spatial processing off the main CPU of the device.

Here’s a few details about the HoloLens 2 HPU specifications compared to the first generation HoloLens:

HoloLens 2 Wireless Connectivity

The HoloLens 2, similarly to the first generation HoloLens, has both Bluetooth and Wifi wireless connectivity built-in. The HoloLens 2 is updated a bit with Bluetooth 5.0 and Wifi 5.

Wrap Up

If you’re interested in purchasing a HoloLens 2, then you can do that directly from Microsoft here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/

I have a few more details about the specifications of the first edition HoloLens hardware in my previous article. If you’re interested in learning more about the hardware of the HoloLens 1, then please go read that article here: https://build5nines.com/detailed-hololens-hardware-specs/

About the Author