--- title: "Introducing Mersive Polaris: One Platform, Right-Sized for Every Room | Mersive" canonical: https://www.mersive.com/resources/blog/introducing-suite description: "What the Polaris platform is, how the tiers actually differ, and how fifteen years of Mersive Solstice became the generation where the room does the work." published: 2025-06-16 language: en-US publisher: Mersive Technologies --- [Home](https://www.mersive.com/) /[Blog](https://www.mersive.com/resources/blog) /COMPANY NEWS COMPANY NEWS # Introducing Mersive Polaris: One Platform, Right-Sized for Every Room What the Polaris platform is, how the tiers actually differ, and how fifteen years of Mersive Solstice became the generation where the room does the work. June 16, 20257 min read Mersive Polaris is the platform generation that follows Mersive Solstice. One piece of software, hardware sized to the room it sits behind, one cloud above the whole fleet. It is deliberately not a ladder of feature tiers, and that is the part worth stating first, because it changes how you buy. This is the platform story: what Polaris is, what every tier gets, where the two real boundaries between the tiers fall and why, and what carries forward from the fleet you already run. THE SHORT ANSWER - Mersive Polaris is one software platform on hardware sized to the room: Launch for share-first displays (pre-launch), Polaris Essentials for standard rooms, Polaris Pro for conferencing and enterprise networks. - Essentials runs the same Polaris software as Pro. Every capability difference between them is the chassis, not the platform. - There are two such differences: memory sets the simultaneous-share ceiling at 5 on Essentials and 10 on Pro, and the smaller chassis has no USB input, so true wireless BYOM and Polaris Link are Pro capabilities. - Polaris Host, shipping Q4 2026, works on both tiers, because Host can carry the room's peripherals itself. - Polaris Pro continues the Mersive Solstice Gen 3 line: mixed fleets are supported, and rooms move one at a time. The shape of the line ## One platform. Hardware sized to the room. The Polaris family is a ladder of chassis, not a ladder of software. Every device on it runs the same platform, joins the same cloud, and renders the same workspace; what changes from rung to rung is the room the box was built for. - Launch - share-first hardware at entry price, bought once rather than subscribed. Pre-launch. - Polaris Essentials - the full multi-share workspace for standard meeting rooms, classrooms and huddle spaces. - Polaris Pro - the deep end: true wireless BYOM, HDMI input, dual 4K60 output, and the network posture an enterprise network asks for. Pro continues the Mersive Solstice Gen 3 line. - Polaris Link and Polaris Host - the hybrid additions, Link released and Host shipping Q4 2026. Link lets the pod host the call; Host runs the whole meeting with no laptop in the loop. - Route - the teaching layer for classrooms, shipping Q1 2027, packed onto Essentials or Pro - and Engage alongside it for polling. The figure above is the same ladder read as meeting models: pixels to the display, then the room's camera and microphone bridged into your call, then the room itself hosting the meeting. A room can sit anywhere on it, and moving up is a matter of which box is behind the display and which add-on is licensed. The tier story, settled ## Essentials is not a lite tier. Essentials runs the same Polaris software as Pro - the same workspace, the same cloud, the same security posture. Not a reduced build, not a feature gate, not a license you can pay to lift. A buyer of Essentials is not buying a crippled product; they are buying the same product in a smaller box. That framing matters commercially as well as editorially. It means a fleet of Essentials rooms and Pro rooms is one experience for the people walking into them and one configuration model for the team running them. It also means the differences that do exist can be stated precisely instead of being buried in a matrix of ticks and dashes, because there are only two of them. Where the tiers diverge ## Two boundaries, and the reason for each. - The share ceiling. Essentials composites up to 5 simultaneous sources in the workspace; Pro composites up to 10. It is the same compositor in both. The limit is memory on the smaller chassis, not licensing. - The peripherals question. True wireless BYOM bridges the room's own camera and microphone into your Teams, Zoom, Webex or Meet call, so those peripherals have to be attached to the pod - and the smaller chassis has no USB input to attach them to. That is why wireless BYOM is a Pro capability rather than a license away. - Polaris Link follows from the same fact, but the function is the better way to state it: Link is a software bridge between the laptop in BYOM and the pod, and the pod is what controls the room's cameras and peripherals. On this platform that pod is the Pro. - Polaris Host works on both tiers, and the reason is worth knowing before you specify a room. Host is a separate unit that can carry the peripherals itself. With Pro, they connect directly to the pod and the cables stay at the front of the room. With Essentials, they cable to the Host, which pairs with the Essentials unit - and that means a cable to the table. Hardware I/O differs too, and those are ports rather than platform features: Essentials has one HDMI output and no HDMI input, so no dual display and no wired ingest; Pro carries dual HDMI output, an HDMI input, USB host ports and an analog audio out. Larger rooms will usually want a Pro for exactly those reasons, which is the constraint doing its job - routing the buyer to the right product rather than costing a sale. The common floor ## What every tier gets. These are platform capabilities, so they are not tier bargaining chips. - Web-join. Share from the browser on the device you walked in with, Chromebooks included: no client, no admin rights, no dongle drawer. The room's controls ride in the same browser tab. - The workspace. Live sources composited side by side on the display rather than one mirrored screen, rearranged from any seat, and mirrored live to every participant's own browser so remote seats see what the room sees. - Cross-network sharing. Guest Wi-Fi, another VLAN, another building: one workspace, no VPN, no inbound firewall rules, on every Polaris tier. - Polaris Cloud. Every room in one management plane - analytics, activation and licensing, templates and staged firmware, alerts and health, and idle-display signage from the same portal. - Native casting on the room network, and the Polaris app for iOS and Android. ![Polaris Cloud, concept render: one fleet view across tiers, with room, tier, firmware and status in one list. Illustrative admin console with invented data.](https://www.mersive.com/blog/poc-cloud-console.png) Polaris Cloud, concept render: one fleet view across tiers, with room, tier, firmware and status in one list. Illustrative admin console with invented data. Lineage ## Fifteen years, one line. Mersive Sol arrived in 2012, and wireless sharing arrived with it. Mersive Solstice Gen 1 followed in 2013, Gen 2 in 2015, Gen 2i in 2017 and Gen 3 in 2019. Polaris is 2026, and it continues that line rather than replacing it. The name is the promise, in writing. Mersive Solstice was named for the sky and so is its successor: Polaris is the fixed point the northern sky turns around, the star a navigator steers by. Fifteen years of Mersive Solstice taught rooms to share wirelessly. Polaris is the generation where the room itself joins, hosts and carries the meeting - the reliable point in a shifting sky of platforms, networks and devices. Three things carry forward. Your rooms: displays, mounts, cabling and room AV stay, and the swap is the pod behind the display. Your workflows: walk up, share, sources side by side, exactly as before, with web-join, the Dock and cross-network reach added around habits your users already have. Your management: Mersive Solstice Cloud keeps running your Gen 3 units exactly as it does today, linked straight from Polaris Cloud, so your team works from one starting point and none of the tooling they know goes dark. If you run Mersive Solstice Gen 3 ## Nothing here is a surprise deprecation. Gen 3 rooms are supported and documented, Mersive Solstice Cloud runs, and the release notes and deployment guides stay public. Security and maintenance updates continue through 2029, and 2029 is also the final year for support requests. Gen 3 and Polaris run side by side in the same fleet, so upgrading is a room-by-room decision that follows budgets rather than a fleet replaced at once. Rip and Replace gives you credit toward Polaris Pro or Polaris Essentials when you replace your existing collaboration system. That includes systems from other vendors and Mersive Solstice. Mersive sales determines the credit for each project. Work with your integrator to plan the replacement. - Wireless sharing and the multi-source workspace - the Gen 3 baseline - map to Pro, which continues that line. - Rooms that only ever share map to Essentials, a new lower tier with no Gen 3 equivalent. - Room camera and microphone bridged into Teams, Zoom or Webex calls maps to Pro. - Sharing across VLANs or from guest devices maps to any tier: cross-network sharing is on all of them. - Active-learning classrooms map to Essentials or Pro plus Route, which ships Q1 2027. - Room-hosted meetings, with no user device at all, map to Pro or Essentials plus Host, which ships Q4 2026. Commercially ## How Polaris is bought. Both tiers carry three purchase terms: 3-year, 5-year and perpetual. Perpetual is available today and is not a permanent part of the lineup, so it is worth asking your partner about rather than assuming either way. Launch is a one-time hardware purchase with no subscription. On subscription, the room carries warranty and updates for as long as the subscription runs: full warranty while on active subscription, and the platform is designed for 10+ years on one install, with the software evolving on hardware built to carry it. On a perpetual license the warranty is capped at seven years Which tier a room needs is a short conversation rather than a spreadsheet: what does the room have to do, does anyone need the room's camera and microphone inside their call, and how many people share at once. The answers land on a chassis. The platform underneath is the same either way. [Open the glossary *›*](https://www.mersive.com/resources/glossary) [‹ All blog posts](https://www.mersive.com/resources/blog)