13 inch ultrabooks and unity for VR development

Hi all, I am looking to get into virtual reality development with unity. But I just realized I need to get a new laptop for that. I need advice on the right choice since I have a tight budget.

I have the macbook pro 2017, Dell XPS or Razer Blade in mind as they are all 13 inch laptops and as a student I am very mobile. I intend to purchase one with 16gb ram and i5/i7 processor. I currently own the Samsung VR gear and that would be my test VR equipment for now. So I would only build on the laptop but most testing would be done on my mobile, I imagine this will be painful but this is what I have for now.

Anyway, my question is which laptop would you advice me to get based on experience with VR development so far?
Also, since I am inexperienced is this even possible or should I just forget VR development for now.

The Gears is already end-of-life and in a few months time you won’t be able to sell apps for it: https://support.oculus.com/198231711449088/

I recommend the Quest for all new VR developers ($400, but might get cheaper with the upcoming announcement of new hardware - no-one knows), in which case you want a laptop with GPU + CPU that meets Oculus’s official recommended specs for VR (on their website, or easy to find on Google - lots of articles and resources on which hardwre combinations and which laptops are known good enough).

Don’t get the Mac. VR manufacturers for some reason don’t generally support Mac (see Apple as competition?) so you’ll be limiting your dev options. Might change this year/next year, but for now, to be safe, go windows-only (I mostly use Macs + linux … but I have a Windows 10 desktop specifically for VR development)

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Thank you.

Hi,
Think you should be able to build for Cardboard, to run on Samsung VR. At least to begin with.

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