Oculus Quest Review: consumer Virtual Reality v1 is here

The time for my Oculus Quest review has come.

After having tried the headset for some days, having written what it is and what are its features, the comparison between it and the Vive Focus Plus, having taught people how to start developing with it, I think that I’m ready to let you know my impressions on the first 6 DOF standalone headset by Facebook. Will it live up to the hype?

As always, I will detail the headset in all its features, and then I will draw my conclusions and tell you if it is the right device for you to buy. If you already know the headset very well, and just want to read my considerations, go straight to the final part of this article.

Specifications

Let’s start with the specs set, so that you can keep them as a reference:

• Platform: Snapdragon 835 VR reference design;
• Display resolution: 1,600 × 1,440 per eye
• Display type: OLED
• Refresh-rate: 72 Hz
• FOV: more or less like Rift CV 1 (circa 100° diagonal)
• IPD Adjustment: hardware
• RAM: 4 FB
• Storage: 64 GB / 128 GB (depending on the version that you buy)
• Tracking: inside-out with 4 cameras
• Mixed Reality: the cameras allow for some kind of black and white passthrough
• Audio: integrated speakers and microphone. 2 x 3.5mm audio jacks
• Connectivity: USB, Wi-fi, bluetooth connection. USB should have OTG enabled.

Unboxing

The Quest has a nice packaging, as all Oculus products. You can watch me unboxing it in this Youtube video

I really love opening Oculus products, since usually they are packaged really well, and the Quest is no exception. Everything appears carefully studied to be pleasant for the user when he/she opens the box. The only little problem of the unboxing is that as soon as I opened the box, I could smell a strong smell of chemicals… but in some minutes, this bad sensation went away.

The box contains:

• The headset
• 2 Touch controllres
• 1 Spacer to give more comfort to people wearing glasses
• 1 Power adapter
• 1 USB-C charging cable
• 2 AA Batteries
• 1 Quick start guide
• 1 Safety guide

Design

The headset is very elegant and quite light. It is made by rubber and fabric, with the black color giving it a very classy touch. The fabric makes sure that the headset looks a bit like a piece of cloth that you wear in your face. This was a bit the philosophy of Google Daydream View, that was the first headset employing this kind of materials. All has been studied so that you can feel wearing it on your face more natural. Anyway, we are still at gen 1 of standalone headsets, so the classical appearance problems of VR headsets (that appear bulky on the face of the user) have not been solved yet.

The front of the device shows a plastic plate with the four tracking cameras at the four angles (actually the two lower ones are not exactly on the vertices, maybe to track better the hands when they are closer to the belly). On the top, at the center, there is a status led that becomes white when the four tracking cameras are activated. This way, you always know when Zuck is looking at you.

The left side of the Quest shows one of the straps used to tighten it on the head, and under it a 3.5mm jack to attach your favorite headphones for improved audio immersion. There is also the button to turn on the device, with over it a status led that changes color and blinking mode depending on the status of the device: for instance, solid white means that the headset is up and running, blinking white means that it is bootstrapping, orange means that the battery is in charge and red that the battery has low power. If you are curious about all possible states, check out the official documentation.

The right side is almost identical to the left side, with the only exception that there is not the turn-on button with the status led, but there is a USB-C port used to charge the device or connect it to your PC.

From above, it is possible to appreciate the headstrap of the Quest. It seems a bit the one of the Oculus Rift CV1. It is a rubber band that goes all around the head of the user and that can be fit using three straps that are on the headset (at the two sides and on the top).

Below the device are clearly visible the hardware IPD adjustment slider and the volume adjustment buttons.

Seen from behind, the Quest shows the rear part of the rubber band, that is not the Vive logo anymore (like in the Rift CV1).

Visuals

With two 1600×1440 OLED displays, the Oculus Quest is able to offer very nice visuals to the user. The colors of the OLED are crisp and the blacks are really solid blacks. The screen door effect is still present, even if it is much less than the one of the original Rift CV 1.

The display resolution is the same of other devices like the Vive Focus Plus, but the Quest really shines for what regards the lenses, that are next-gen ones and offer a good sweet spot. The god rays are much less than the ones of the Rift CV 1, but I can still see some soft circular glares in scenes with high contrast.

What I have really appreciated is that Oculus has made a great work to reduce the chromatic and spherical aberrations of lenses: thanks to some black magic that mixes high-quality lenses and things that are displayed on the screen, if you move your gaze away from the frontal direction, you see very little aberration. That means: you don’t see distortions, both in the color and the shape of elements on the screen. This doesn’t hold true for other headsets, so kudos to Oculus.

The visual system of the Quest is really good. There are anyway three problems that I want to highlight:

• Currently there is some kind of ghosting in the images when you rotate your head. You can see a semi-transparent trail of the elements in the position of the previous frames, especially when there are high-contrast elements one next to the other. I think this will be fixed in a future software update;
• Because of low computational power of mobile devices, the quality of the graphical elements shown in the various applications is far from realistic. Developers have to spare on lights and shaders and so in the applications, often the elements seem made of matte (more on this later on);
• To spare computational resources, the system may exploit fixed foveated rendering (as suggested by the developer of the running application). This means that the system will render at full resolution the elements only in the central part of the vision and will degrade the rendering in the peripheral. In some demanding games, this degradation is highly visible if you look with your eyes in a region that is close to the edge of the lenses. You will see everything becoming “blocky”, and that for sure breaks the magic.

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Comfort

I admit I am not a huge fan of Oculus Quest comfort, both of the headset and the controllers. I am not telling that it is bad. But for sure, it could have been much better.

The headset is completely unbalanced: all the weight is on its front part. This creates pressure against your face, and you will often notice it at the end of long sessions, that will leave red signs all over your face. This is the reason why my Chinese assistant Miss S has even defined the Quest the 太不舒服 headset, that is “the most uncomfortable one” (I don’t agree with her, though). This may seem in contrast with most people saying that the Quest is comfortable, but actually, it is not.

What saves the Quest from being perceived as uncomfortable by everyone is that it is quite light, for sure lighter than the competitor Focus+. Furthermore, the face mask that touches your skin is made with a very soft and comfortable material. This means that even if it is unbalanced, these two things make wearing the Quest quite comfortable for most people. Anyway, the issue is known, and in fact there are people actually attaching the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap to the Quest, to have a balanced and comfortable headset.

The other comfort issue is that it is hard to find a “sweet spot” on the head. Wearing it in a naive way will surely make you feel the headset as if it doesn’t fit perfectly your head. There are various videos and tutorials out there showing you how to exactly wear the Quest, because it is not easy to find the right way to wear it so that you feel perfectly ok with it. I myself, when wearing it, have often the sensation that it is going to slip away from my head. Many people told me the same… I think that fitting a CV1 is much easier.

Oculus has made a great job in finding the right materials for the headset and in making the headset the lightest possible. It also provides hardware IPD adjustment and a system to accommodate people with glasses. All of this makes the headset appear as comfortable. But because of the reasons stated above, in my opinion, it is not comfortable for all heads and for long periods of time (unlike the Valve Index). The overall comfort appears to me as “good”, but it could be better.

Controllers

The new Touch controllers are in my opinion the worst part about the whole Oculus Quest system. They feature some slight modifications with regard to the original Oculus Touch, but this is enough to make the experience noticeably worse. The original Oculus Touch are the best VR controllers ever made until now, and this still holds true now that a new version has been released.

Every controller works thanks to an AA battery and provides:

• 2 Buttons;
• 1 Thumbstick;
• 1 System Button;
• 2 Triggers (for index and middle finger);

The controllers feel unbalanced. The upwards-oriented ring part feels heavier and so the controller always tends to “fall” on that part. Furthermore, while the handle has been improved with a new rough material that gives more grip, the controllers feel as if they are too short and the pinky finger can’t hold them well. This gives a bit the sensation that the controllers may slip from your hands, especially if you’re moving them fast. Since my body reacts to this slipping sensation, on the long run my hands feel a bit tired while using them.

To add other shortcomings, there is not a suitable region to rest your thumb on as in the original controllers, so sometimes you inadvertently press the system button; the magnetic battery lid tends to go out of place when you play fast paced games (Oculus suggests using the L-R stickers to close the lid… duct tape always solves all problems!); and some people managed to break the controllers by making them fall to the floor (never happened with the ones of CV 1, that have been thrown anywhere by me and never broke).

Again, don’t misunderstand me: they are quite good controllers, and hold the same ergonomic shape of the original Touch… so they are still better than the Vive Wands. But they’re not satisfying for me, and especially feel to me a step behind from the previous model. Again, “good, but they could have been better”.

Tracking

If comfort presents some drawbacks, the tracking of the headset is damn amazing. If you use it in the right conditions (so indoor), it tracks incredibly well and incredibly fast. It almost never loses tracking, and when it happens, it is just for one instant. I’ve also verified the drift by going back and forth in an alley and verified that there is almost no tracking drift. This means that you can potentially also use it in big environments.

For what concerns the controllers tracking, instead, we have not the same perfection. The tracking of the controllers is very good and very stable, and controllers tend to not lose tracking in many conditions. But:

• Sometimes, in very fast paced games, the tracking gets lost for some instants;
• There are some dead zones: if you put your hands very close to the headset, the tracking gets lost. This is a problem in games like Creed, where you have to defend your face with your boxing gloves;
• They don’t track well while you have your hands behind your head. While playing The Wizards, I had some problems launching fireballs and using the bow and arrow when my hands were really behind my head.

Just to be clear: 90% of the time, you have no tracking issues. So, most of the time, inside-out tracking of controllers is perfect. But that 10% of the time may be frustrating in some games. You must learn how to play games without falling in the dead zones.

Audio

The Oculus Quest features two speakers embedded into the headstrap, in a position close to your ears. It also features an embedded microphone.

Using the integrated speakers is very comfortable, because no one wants to mess with headphone cables. The quality of the spakers is good in my opinion and I had no problems with the audio of any game. According to some people more expert than me, they are not perfect with some bass tones, but unless you’re an audiophile, you will get away with it easily. The only problem that I get sometimes is some crackling on the right speaker: Oculus is investigating it.

If you love having amazing audio into your ears, and not make people hear what you are doing (if you know what I mean….) you can buy the official earphones offered by Oculus. There has also been a problem with some of them, but Oculus is fixing it.

Battery

Officially, the headset lasts for 3 hours of playing. Actually, it depends on the content that you are enjoying. With some very demanding titles (e.g. Robo Recall), it lasts only 2 hours or even less. The battery time is nice for casual gamers, but disappointing for people wanting continuous hours of fun.

Computational Power

This has been what we in the communities have debated the most: is a Snapdragon 835 enough? And the answer is: it depends.

For simple games, it is enough: the developers just need to simplify some shaders and some lights and the game is ready for the Quest. For more complex games (e.g. Robo Recall), you need to aggressively optimize the game and this is really noticeable. Objects appear dull, as if everything were made of matte. It seems that graphics have returned to PC games of the late nineties 😀

So, games can be fun anyway, and with some tricks you may also obtain some graphically nice environments. But forgot all the best graphics that we obtained on PC VR. Here, less is more. And either you reduce the number of polygons in the scene, or you reduce the quality of the shading (or both).

Initial Setup

Oculus has done a great job in helping the user in setting up his/her headset. From the first moment you turn the headset on and open the companion app on your phone, to the moment you see your Home Menu, you feel guided in every step. Oculus provides the user photos, videos, tutorials, and all that is needed to teach the user how the headset works and let him/her configure it.

Configuring the Wi-fi is really easy using your smartphone and you don’t have to type the password with an annoying virtual keyboard. Once the configuration is done, you learn how to use the controllers with little games that let you throw paper planes, shoot at things or dance with a robot (that personally, I hate, but I see that many people consider him cute. Maybe I’m just an evil person). This lets the user learn while having fun.

The configuration of the play area is majestic, thanks to the use of the passthrough functionality: you configure your play space by just drawing your area on the floor.

The initial setup of the Quest is fantastic and I think that whatever person that has even just a minimum of technical knowledge can do that. And when you have finished it, you have immediately 5 demos of games that are waiting for you.

User Experience

The Quest is a device for consumers and offers an overall experience that is very good for everyone, that starts from the first steps seen above. Everything is neat, polished and easy to be used.

The interface of the main menu is not mindblowing, nor is the best on the market (the one of the Mirage Solo was better, in my opinion), but it is very polished and easy to be used. Furthermore, since it is similar to the one of the Go, if you own a Go, you already know how to use it from day one.

The companion app makes setting some features of the device a very short process: activating developer mode just requires few taps on it, and connecting to the Wi-Fi can be made easily with you typing the password on your smartphone and not on some cumbersome virtual keyboard.

The controllers are automatically detected by the device (there’s no need for pairing or such), and so is your play area. Once you enter in a room for which you already have configured the play area, Oculus remembers your settings and you can start playing immediately in full safety (even if, like 30% of the time, it doesn’t recognize the room to me… but this can be solved with a software update). When you go out the play area, your visuals slowly fade to passthrough vision, so you get if you are stumbling against a real object. I have to say that the grid on the Quest may be a bit annoying if your play area is not big enough, but this is part of the game. All the management of the play area is wonderful, from the beginning to the end.

Also recording videos of you playing is very easy and just requires you to select a button in your “Dash”. In the same easy way, you can activate streaming, or you can shoot a photo.

Oculus Quest really shines in removing friction: you can remove the headset and leave it on a desk in standby mode; then when you want to play, you just put it on your head and it turns on immediately, and you can play instantly. You don’t have to turn it on again and wait for boot time. Even the closing mechanism of the headstrap has not a knob like the Focus+, but just the rubber and some springs where it is connected to the headset. This means that it can be worn really in instants: you just put it on your head and it’s ready without having to adjust anything. Immediately. That is, in my opinion, one of the most mindblowing features of Quest.

Content

Talking about things for which the Oculus Quest shines, I must absolutely talk about content. Oculus is curating its store allowing only very high-quality games and this means that the content catalog is full of awesome titles like Beat Saber, Creed, Robo Recall, The Wizards, Vader Immortal, etc… And new games are coming: did you know that Echo Arena is coming to the Quest, for intance?

And when you turn it on the first time, you have immediately five free demos that you can play from the first instants, that show you how gaming in VR can be great.

When I demo the Quest to people, everyone loves it. And the reason is mostly one: the content. Everyone loves following the rhythm in Beat Saber and shooting robots in Robo Recall. No one actually cares about Snapdragons, FOV, resolution… only we nerds really care about these features :D . People just want to have fun.

Even Miss S, even if she founds that the headset is uncomfortable on her cheekbones, loves playing with Quest games in the office. Hands down to Oculus for the great content that has been able to take to the Quest. It’s the best among the one of all the standalone headsets that I have ever tried.

Currently, there are 50+ compatible games and these are expected to become 100+ by the end of the year. A lot of great content to be played everywhere you want, since you can take the device with you wherever you want.

SDK

We all know Oculus SDK since a lot of years. The same Unity plugin is able to serve all Oculus devices and this helps a lot in developing cross-platform titles. It is full of features (interactions, cross-platform avatars, etc…) and it is easy to be used. It is very well structured and it provides the developer a very good set of optimizations (like the fixed foveated rendering) that can help really a lot in porting a title to this mobile device.

The SDK is also very well documented and it is easy to find the solution to your problems also in Oculus and Unity forums since the Oculus dev community is far from being little.

There are many online resources if you want to learn how to develop for the Oculus Quest. If you want to get started in developing for Quest on Unity, you can for instance follow this tutorial of mine:

Developer opportunities

One of the first things that I noticed when I unboxed the Oculus Quest, is that Oculus provides us with a USB cable, but it is only a USB C to USB C one. There is no cable to connect it to a PC in the box and this is a little sign that shows you how Facebook is mainly interested in consumers and not in developers for the Quest. This is not a device that techie must attach to the PC to experiment, it is just a headset to put on your head and play games from the Oculus Store.

Another little sign is the fact that when the device is in developer mode, you can’t download the videos that you shot in the device. You have to disable developer mode, connect the device to the PC, download the movies and the re-enable developer mode.

Then the cool passthrough feature can’t be accessed via the SDK and even pairing devices via bluetooth is a bit hard.

Oculus is not interested in guys making experiments on the device. Facebook’s executives are clearly interested only in big studios and AA games. They are following the console model and are only interested in titles that are of very high quality and that can prove that they will be profitable. All the other games are being rejected, often without specifying a reason. Some other features are being prohibited and it is a news of today that Oculus has prohibited the streaming feature of SteamVR games to the Quest inside Virtual Desktop. What Oculus is making is a walled garden of top-notch games.

While I think that content curation is important, at the moment they are exaggerating and the risk is that this device will become completely useless to most of developers… in the sense that every little team will already know that it won’t be able to publish an app for it, and so it will turn its attention to other devices, that are much more open. For instance, talking about me, I found a lot of support by HTC when developing for the Vive Focus+ (where streaming from Steam is more than welcome). And then a new headset by Samsung is rumored… and people say it will be really great…

Of course, because of the console model, if you are a team that is able to create such a high-quality highly-profitable content, the Quest is the ideal platform for you. You have less competition, a big market (the Quest is selling really well and will be the most sold headset this year almost for sure), and can sell your game at a high price.

So, it can be the best or worst platform for you, depending on your team.

Enterprise features

Oculus has just launched a new Oculus For Business program that offers various interesting enterprise offerings: dedicated support, 2 years warranty, kiosk-mode, and some tools to configure and control multiple headsets at once from a simple web panel.

VR is disruptive for many enterprise sectors and the Quest, with its full portability and high quality can help a lot in sectors like training. Due to the limited computational power, it can’t be useful for those sectors requiring a very high graphical fidelity, like prototyping and architecture, for instance.

I think the Quest can be a good enterprise product, even if its being uncomfortable in the long run is maybe not ideal in these scenarios.

Keep in mind that the Oculus Quest is sold for enterprise at a higher price than for consumers (more on this in the Price section).

China

The Quest can be acquired in China from Amazon US, or from various resellers on Taobao. Apart from the price being higher than in the West, the real problem is configuring it. Since in China Facebook is blocked, and so is Google, it is hard to connect the headset to its required services and it is even harder to download and use its companion app.

Some people claimed that they needed lots of hours to get the job done. So, it is usable, but it requires a very good technical knowledge to configure it.

Price

The Oculus Quest is very affordable: it costs $399 (€449) for the 64 GB version and $499 (€549) for the 128 GB one. It can be bought on Oculus website, on partner e-commerce sites like Amazon or even in offline shops like Best Buys. It is selling very well, and it is out of stock in many stores.

Price is another of the best feature of the headset: $399 is really a ridiculous price for such a high-quality device featuring so great games. It is finally a price that is affordable for everyone, and while some experts say that the magic number for mainstream adoption is $299, even at $399 there will be many people buying it.

Take anyway in mind the operational cost of owning a Quest: since it is a console, the hardware is cheap, but the content is quite expensive. The top games cost around $30, and many of the good ones are at least worth $20. Free content is not that much. As in all consoles, the software subsidizes the cost of the hardware. If you like to play a lot of games, the Quest can suck a lot of money from you. It’s better that you wait for some discounts…

The enterprise version costs $999. Strangely, it is even more expensive than HTC’s standalone.

Final considerations

Some people praise the Oculus Quest as the best headset ever. Other say that it sucks. The reality is: both are right.

The Quest is for sure an amazing product and it is for sure the first headset really targeted at consumers. Finally, there is not a headset only for techies. The headset is easy to be used, it is light, it has great content and is affordable. This is what VR needs to enter the mainstream.

It can give you lots of fun: you can take it wherever you want, and demo VR to your friends and have fun seeing them jumping and shooting while playing Robo Recall. I have even made my mother play Beat Saber! This was impossible one year ago. It is a fun machine, and you can enjoy playing its content very much.

BUT, it is still the first version of consumer VR and so it still features lots of issues and compromises: the headset is unbalanced, the games are expensive, the controllers could be better and the games feature unsatisfying graphics. It is normal and is part of the process of improvement of this technology.

Whoever was expecting a perfect device was just dreaming. Whoever says that it is flawless, is biased. The reality is that the Quest is the best compromise of technical features and consumer features that we have until now. The first headset that has the potential of appealing the mainstream. But the road in front of it is still very long.

Should you buy it?

As always, I try giving you some suggestions on wether you should buy it or not:

• If you want a headset to play VR games, absolutely yes;
• If you want to develop a VR game and earn money by selling it to a huge market, and with your team you can make an AA game, absolutely yes;
• If you love technology and you want to own the first consumer headset, then yes;
• If you want a headset with the top-notch features, no, go for the Valve Index;
• If you want an open system, go for Valve or HTC headsets (Index, or Vive Focus Plus);
• If you want a headset to experiment with VR developing, maybe it is better a tethered headset like the Rift S or WMR headsets, since the deploy times on mobile are very long. This way you can also sell on Steam, that is a less closed market;
• If you want something for enterprise, maybe no. I still advise HTC/Pico products at the moment, since these Asian companies have a longer experience with enterprise customers.

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And that’s it for this long review. Thanks for having arrived to the end! I hope you have enjoyed it.

If you liked this post and has been useful for you to decide if buying the Quest or not, please like it, share it, subscribe to my newsletter, donate me money on Patreon, hug a kitten and do other cool stuff 🙂