Valve; 2 · Oculus Quest 2.The index works with external headlight boxes similar to those of the HTC Vive, which means that you must first set them up in a room. It's not as self-contained as the Quest 2 or the HP Reverb G2, which can crawl the room with the cameras built into the headphones. It's definitely not wireless either, but if you already have some older HTC Vive hardware, you can add parts of the Index to mix and match. While we were a little disappointed to find that the Oculus Quest 2 looked a little cheaper than its predecessor in the hands, we found it more comfortable in our tests overall.
That's thanks to its lighter form factor (503g vs the original 571g) and the wider area of the controller's thumb rest. We were also impressed by how sharp the resolution is once we put on these headphones. You're free to roam around with no tracking area limits and with an overall super flexible setup. It's an all-in-one standalone unit with a fast processor and lots of RAM to get today's games started.
This means you won't have to invest in a high-end gaming PC to keep everything running smoothly here: you're all set to go out of the box. And it's hard to underestimate how important it is to the value of Oculus Quest 2.The main attraction here is that incredible resolution, combined with the 120° field of view and the refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. If you're going to bet on a future-proof setup and want your games to look as good as possible while doing it, this is where the piggy bank should go. We noticed that the quality of the HTC Vive Pro 2 is revealed over time.
It took us a couple of days to fully adopt the correct settings for our eyes, so it's worth noting that you'll need a little extra time to retouch for the best result. However, once you're there, the investment you've made is worth it. There are some features of the Valve Index that we need to stop getting in the way right from the start. The first thing is that finger tracking system.
Instead of relying on controller tracking, the Valve Index has advanced where no virtual reality headset has gone before, adding sensors for each individual finger through a touch-sensitive panel. The second is a 120 Hz refresh rate that will cover a slightly lower resolution by allowing games to glide across the screen without a hint of flickering. If the HTC Vive Pro 2 seemed a little pricey, the Vive Cosmos Elite system might be the best VR headset for those looking to spend a little less on some of the sleeker features and focus on room-scale tracking. HTC launched its Cosmos headphones with very little fanfare a few years ago, and on their own, the headphones sit as a fully modular system that you can upgrade with a different SteamVR faceplate and tracking bases to your liking.
However, its final form is the Vive Cosmos Elite, which makes this version the best virtual reality headset in its line. You won't need any external tracking sensors here, the HP Reverb G2 takes care of all that on its own with cameras. Plus, there's too little setup to get out of the way. This is a Windows headset from start to finish, so connecting to your PC is as simple as plugging it in and letting Windows 10 or 11 complete your software installations and settings.
While it lags slightly behind Oculus in its value offering, the HP Reverb G2 is a solid purchase for any PC enthusiast who doesn't want to have to equip their home to enter a virtual world. The average field of view among the best VR headsets is around 100 degrees, with variations of around 10 degrees in either direction. The higher the field of view, the more you can see around you and the better the headphones recreate natural human vision. If you're looking to use your VR headset for gaming, it's worth making sure you're reaching at least 100-110°.
However, if you go for something a little more luxurious, you'll likely need a PC with at least an Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card, 8GB of RAM and an Intel i5 processor; of course, better specs will produce a much better result. The Oculus Rift ships in late March and the HTC Vive ships soon after, marking the first two high-end headphone launches. If your idea of the best VR headsets is to have the best image quality in consumer VR, HP VR headsets win. Technically, it's a Microsoft Windows mixed reality headset that prefers to be released in Microsoft's native Windows 10 VR ecosystem, but it connects to Steam VR and works with those games and apps as well.
There aren't many different brands of VR headsets to choose from, at least not now, as if you needed a new smartphone or a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Multi-headset apps generally fall into several categories, including gaming, fitness, productivity, and social media. But even with the price increase, the Quest 2 remains the best and most versatile VR headset of the moment. The old world of phone-based virtual reality headsets, such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, is basically dead.
The cable is expensive, but considering that most wire-only PC headsets are still more expensive than the Quest 2 with the cable, it comes out ahead in value even after adding the accessory. You may have seen other famous visual headsets appear in recent years, including Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap One. However, since these VR experiences work with your phone, rather than a fantastic piece of high-end hardware, they can't compare to the experience you'd get with any of the best VR headsets above. In the future, mobile headsets could use a phone's internal camera to map space (something known as inside-out tracking), but nothing on the market has managed to do so yet.
The nearly six-year-old Sony PSVR headset remains the only head-mounted display for gaming consoles and continues to deliver a surprisingly immersive experience. . .
