Oculus Quest Review â€“ A VR Headset Worth Buying

Virtual reality (VR) has come a long way from the first Oculus Rift developer kits in 2016 and even further from the primitive virtual reality of the early 90s. Despite the fact that modern virtual reality is not perfect, it solved the really serious problems that prevented virtual reality from being great.

If you own a first-generation device like the original HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift, you still have an incredible device that delivers fantastic virtual reality experiences. However, if you’re looking to buy a new headset today, you have a lot of interesting options that bring us to the Oculus Quest

Quest is a standalone VR headset. This means you don’t need to connect it to your computer or connect your smartphone to it. This makes it affordable in the premium VR world, but recently Oculus also allowed Quest devices to act like Oculus Rift devices connected to a computer via USB 3

This completely changes the appeal of the Quest, as it’s the only headset that seems to do it all, and still costs as much as the tethered Oculus Rift S. Is the Quest really a jack of all trades?

Specifications

Before we get into the hands-on experiences and insights in this Oculus Quest review, it’s worth looking at some of the key specs so you know what you’re getting.

First, the Quest has two OLED (Organic Light-emitting Diode) panels with a resolution of 1440×1600 pixels per eye. Compare that to the original Rift, which has “only” 1080×1200 pixels per eye. On top of that, the lenses in the Quest are vastly more advanced, with better focus and clarity, than we saw in their initial product release in the premium, tethered virtual reality space.

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Resolution aside, the display panels support 72Hz refresh rates, which sounds like a drop on paper compared to 90Hz and higher displays found in other high-end VR headsets. However, these are low latency and persistence panels that are subjectively superior to the faster panels found in today’s first generation VR headsets. Getting accurate FOV values ??has proven to be challenging, but third-party estimates we read suggest the Quest offers at least 90 degrees of horizontal field of view. At least as good as the Rift.

Since this is a standalone VR headset, it also has a full onboard computer. At the core of the Quest is the Snapdragon 835. It was the flagship system-on-a-chip seen in phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8, which means it lives for years. However, the Quest doesn’t have the same thermal limitations as a razor-thin phone.

It also has active cooling, which means higher clock speeds and no throttling. The 835 is paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of storage. We are looking at a 64GB model, but there is no difference between the two models other than the storage size.

What’s in the box?

If you want to know exactly what is in the box, you can watch our unboxing video here! If you’d rather just read it and use your imagination, that’s okay too.

There are not that many pieces inside the box and, as usual for Oculus, the packaging is high quality. You can easily use the molded box as a place to store your Quest when not in use. Of course, the USB-C charging port on mainstream headsets can be accessed while the Quest is in the box.

As for the contents of the box, here’s what you’ll find when you remove the lid:

Oculus Quest headset.
Two Oculus Touch controllers.
Long USB-C cable for charging and data transfer.
Glasses pad.
USB-C charger.
Two AA batteries for controllers.
Documentation.

The only pressing issue was plugging in the charger, which we couldn’t plug in. This is an American-style wall wart, despite being labeled “UK import” on Amazon. Adapters are not hard to find or expensive, but most people don’t need to worry as USB chargers are likely to be littered in every typical home. We took the 60W MacBook Pro charger, which we loved very much.

And create

Setting up the quest was pretty simple. By default, our device had about 50% charge, but it is recommended that it charge no matter what is in the tank, as your internet connection affects how long it takes to get things up and running.

Do yourself a favor and write down your WiFi password or remember it as the first thing you need to do after turning on your device and following the startup instructions is to connect to the network. Once connected, you will need to either create an Oculus account, use your FaceBook account, or sign in to your existing Oculus account if you have one of the other headsets.

Comfort

By far, an important part of any VR headset is how comfortable it is to wear. When it comes to Quest, the results in this department are mixed. The headset design is very similar to other Oculus headsets. Instead of using a halo-style headband like the PSVR and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, this is a three-strap Velcro solution.

Overall, we found the headset to be acceptable in the short to medium term, but it definitely puts pressure on the face. This is compounded by the fact that tightening or loosening the headset is the only way to adjust the focal length, as the Quest has no mechanical adjustment to change the distance from your eye to the lens.

By using the right technique, you can get perfect focus without overdoing a tense face, but that’s a bit of a problem when you want to play around. Speaking of focusing, we didn’t need to use an eyeglass spacer even with a regular pair of rimless glasses, but installing a spacer can also help increase the focal length. What can be useful for certain people.

Overall comfort was acceptable, but a third-party halo headband upgrade is worth considering.

Software library

We bought the software for no more than $ 200, and we also tried several free demos included in the Quest Store. You can see the list of apps and their prices below.

While there are many great games on offer, it seems that there is limited focus on Quest as a platform. However, new games, features, and utility applications are regularly released and highlighted. The store also regularly hosts special offers. Many of the popular Oculus Rift PC games now have Quest versions, and in many cases, you’ll get both for the same price.

Shop prices seem reasonable too. The most expensive games we’ve seen cost around $ 30. About half the price of a premium console game. Whether these games are worth the price is up to you. Games like BoxVR or Beatsaber have infinite durability. On the other hand, narratives like Vader Immortal are relatively short. However, thanks to Oculus Link, Quest now has a much larger selection of games that you can play. If you have a computer to control it.

Party Big Trick: Oculus Link

Now we come to one of the important deciding factors in this Oculus Quest review, at least for us. Oculus Link promises to turn Quest into a Rift, which means access to all Rift and SteamVR games. It’s a huge library that features some of the very best visuals that VR has to offer.

You will need a moderately powerful gaming PC and a high-quality USB 3 Type A-C cable or USB 31 Type C-C cable. Oculus recently certified USB 2.0 cables such as the cable included in the charging kit as compatible with Oculus Link.

You can read our full hands-on review of the Link beta here, but the short version is that there were no issues in the hours we spent on the feature prior to writing this review. High-quality games like Half Life Alyx worked great, switching between Oculus Link and Quest mode was as easy as pressing a button, and even the SteamVR and Epic Game Store names simply defined Quest and its Touch controllers as Rift.

As far as we can tell, it works just as well as the Rift we’ve used in the past and, in fact, has gotten better thanks to improved optics, tracking, and screens.

VR performance and judgment

Despite having a lower refresh rate than the Rift, the Quest runs fast without any issues affecting immersion. Room-scale wireless virtual reality is a discovery, and the Guardian system performed flawlessly in our tests.

Sure, a headset like Valve Index offers wireless VR with PC graphics and improved hardware in general, but the Quest is in a class of its own when it comes to versatility, performance, and price. Thanks to Link, this is now the VR headset most people should take a look at first: one headset that drives them all, and best-in-class as a stand-alone system.

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