Valve Index review: a step closer to next-gen VR

Some weeks ago, thanks to the help of VR professional Guido Haag (thanks a lot, man!), I have been able to use the Valve Index for one month. In this period, I made some tests using it for gaming, work, fitness and lots of other activities, so that to be able to write a complete review about it. And after all this time, finally, this thorough review is ready and you can read it today. Inside it, you will discover if the Index leaves up to the hype, what are its pros and cons and if it is truly a headset that has been made so that professionals can use it for hours as Valve says. Go on reading and discover everything about the Valve Index!

Specifications

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

Headset:

• Display resolution: 1,440 × 1,600 per eye
• Display type: ultra-low persistence LCD
• Refresh-rate: 120 Hz (with optional 80/90/144Hz modes)
• FOV: around 130 degrees
• IPD Adjustment: hardware. There is also an eye-relief knob
• Tracking: with external emitters (Steam VR 2.0)
• Connection: 1x USB 3.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2
• Frontal Cameras: two 960 x 960 global shutter RGB cameras
• Audio: off-ear Balanced Mode Radiators speakers. Integrated Mic. 3.5mm jack for external headphones

Controllers:

• Inputs: A Button, B Button, System Button, Trigger, Thumbstick, Track Button with Force Sensor, Grip Force Sensor, Finger Tracking, IMU
• Connections: USB-C, 2.4 GHz Wireless
• Battery life: 7+ hours;
• Charging: 900mA fast charging, 1100mAh capacity Li-Ion polymer battery
• Tracking: with external emitters (Steam VR 2.0)

Required PC specs

Minimum PC specs for Valve Index

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD Radeon RX 480 or greater
CPU: Dual-core with hyperthreading or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Video Output: DisplayPort 1.2 (there is also an adapter for VirtualLink)
USB Ports: 1x USB 2.0 port if you don’t need to use passthrough cameras, otherwise 1x USB 3.0
OS: Windows 10, Linux, SteamOS

Recommended PC specs for Valve Index

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 1070 / AMD Vega 56 (?) or greater
CPU: Quad-core with hyperthreading or greater
Memory: 8GB+ RAM
Video Output: DisplayPort 1.2 (there is also an adapter for VirtualLink)
USB Ports: 1x USB 3.0 port
OS: Windows 10, Linux, SteamOS

Unboxing

I bought the set Valve Index + Knuckles Controllers, so I will talk about this kind of unboxing.

The headset arrived at my office in a quite heavy package (around 5-6 kg), containing inside two boxes, stacked one on top of the other. The internal boxes were exactly of the same width of the containing package, so removing them was not very easy.

After I have removed the boxes, I have been able to proceed to one of my typical unboxings. And guess what? I have filmed it for you!

Content of the boxes

• Headset
• Integrated Headphones
• Headset Cable
• Connection Cable with DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.0 Connections
• Headset Power Supply
• Regionalized Headset Power Adapter(s)
• Headset Cradle Adapter (for smaller heads)
• Headset Face Gasket
• 2 Controllers, Left and Right
• 2 Controller Lanyards
• 2 USB Controller Charging Cables
• Cleaning Cloth
• Instructions on how to setup headset
• Instructions on how to setup controllers

https://gfycat.com/darkrelieveddevilfish

Commentary

I think that Valve has done an amazing job in packaging the devices. The interior of the boxes appear well designed and you find the headset and the controllers in studied poses that are a delight for the eyes. I have always praised Oculus for being the company offering the best packaging, but now Oculus has a true competitor. Valve has made a great job in creating a very elegant packaging for the Index, I really loved unboxing it!

Design

The headset is very elegant and classy. Again, I can only praise Valve for the care it had in designing this device. The use of materials like fabric makes it also appear less like a tech device and more like a piece of clothing that the user can wear. The only thing that I personally don’t like is the front side, that makes the user look like Predator (as Mister President says).

Front side

On the front side, the one that I like the least, it is possible to find the two wide-baseline cameras (that are NOT used for tracking) and the name Valve Index. The front features a glossy plastic lid, that can be removed to uncover the so-called “frunk”, a hole with a USB-3 port, that can be used to attach accessories like Leap Motion to the Index.

Left Side

Looking the headset from the left, it is possible to see one of the speakers of the device (more on this later on), the Valve Index logo, and the cable that goes from the headset to the PC.

Right Side

The right side is almost identical to the left one, but it becomes interesting because it features the “Eye relief knob”, the mechanism that lets the Index have +20 degrees of field of view with respect to the other most famous VR headsets on the market.

Back Side

From the rear, it is possible to see the knob used to fit the headset to the head of the user. I will detail all the fitting mechanism in the comfort section later on, for now let me just say that the comfort of this device is very good.

Top Side

From the top, you can see the headband that is used to distribute the weight of the headset better on the head.

Bottom Side

From the bottom, it is clearly visible the fabric that gently pushes against the face of the user in the facemask and the foam that touches the nape of the user in the back. The headset also shows its mechanical IPD adjustment mechanism, a system button, and two microphones added to offer high quality audio input.

Interior

In the inside, it is possible to see the next-gen lenses, the rubber that gets close to the nose, and the facemask. Behind the facemask there is also the 3.5mm jack that lets you insert your headphones.

Visuals

The visuals are one of the features for which the Valve Index shines with regard to its competitors. It doesn’t feature impressive specs on the sheet, but a series of polished improvements, that united together give you a much-improved experience when you wear the headset. Here Valve took a diametrically opposed approach to the one of other startups like VRgineers or Pimax. Instead of offering next-gen features (like 150° FOV and 8K resolution), but a product that features various drawbacks (e.g. bugs, distortions, bad comfort), it offers just a step forward on all the specifications, but it offers all features in a very clean and polished way: this headset works like a charm.

Displays

The Index features two ultra-low persistence 1440×1600 LCD displays, one per eye. The displays are slightly canted (of 5°) to improve the general field of view of the headset.

LCD displays offer a better fill factor than OLED, and in fact the screen door effect of this device is really minimal. This is possible also thanks to the fact that each display features a diffuser, as it happens in Odyssey+ and PSVR. In the Index, you can still see “the pixels”, but you must concentrate on them to see them. Furthermore, it is not as in the Oculus Go, where you can clearly see the grid of the pixels: here the grid pattern of the subpixels doesn’t disturb the user.

LCD are also known for featuring less bright colors than OLED displays. I noticed this while using the Index. In scenes that were mostly black, I could clearly spot that they were gray-ish and that was a bit disappointing. But in colored scenes with just some black spots, I couldn’t notice this drawback. Sometimes, in some experiences, the colors also appeared a bit “washed out” to me. I’m not talking about an extreme effect, the visuals were good, but I want to say that the colors have always appeared as not completely vivid to me.

What has truly amazed me of the displays is the high-frequency mode. The Index can run at multiple framerates, including 120 Hz and 144Hz. To obtain this, Valve had to use fast-switching LCD displays to avoid smearing and other kind of blurrings.

As soon as I turned on the Index, I absolutely wanted to try this novelty and I activated this experimental mode. Being used to my Rift CV1, this new feature completely amazed me. You can really notice that the virtual world is different, you see everything more fluid. As Jeremy of Tested said in its review “it is like being under the effect of caffeine”, you see everything moving more fluidly, and the VR world is more reactive. It is impossible to describe it and you can understand it only when you try it. But trust me: it’s different. It is one of the few things that in my opinion truly set apart the Index wrt the competition, a very special sensation.

I have also tried some 5K 120 Hz videos that have been kindly provided me by SLR (yes, that kind of videos) and I have to say that even storytelling content feels incredibly real with this new high-framerate mode!

The first time that I activated this mode, I also found it being a bit unnatural and strange, as it was making me experience some kind of uncanny valley of framerate, but then, when I got used to it, I found it hard to come back. VR is more responsive, it is more real in this high-frequency mode… you would love it.

The only drawback of this mode is that since your graphics card has to render many more frames, you must render at a lower frequency to not make your VR experience to stutter.

Lenses

The lenses in the Valve Index are special as well and are composed by two optical elements. This form factor is also highlighted in the logo of the Index, that clearly shows one lens on the top of the other.

The lenses are truly next-gen and feature a big reduction in god-rays, that are clearly fewer than the ones of other headsets like Rift and Vive. What is still present, as journalist Ben Lang makes us notice, areglares, that are especially noticeable in black scenes with some bright elements.

The sweet spot is quite large and it is also possible to move your eyes a bit without having many distortions (aberrations) in the elements you see. I tried this with text and it is amazing: instead of having to move your head every time you want to put something in focus, you can just slightly move your eyes and see everything pretty well. Of course, if you move your eyes too much in the periphery, things will become blurred, exactly as on all other devices. But the possibility of moving your eyes a bit in the headset is something pretty new and not guaranteed at all by the other devices. This improves a lot the comfort and the sense of immersion, since moving the eyes to see is pretty natural.

Field of View

Valve actually doesn’t declare the field of view of the Valve Index, it just says that it is up to +20° more than its main competitors. Since its main competitors have a FOV around 110°, we can safely state that the FOV of the Index is around 130°.

Valve manages to obtain such a big FOV thanks to its innovative lenses, the displays that are canted of 5° and also thanks to the special fitting knob known as “Eye relief knob”. Rotating the eye relief knob, the user can move the part of the HMD that feature the lenses and the display back and forth, while keeping the main shell of the device fixed. This lets the user put the lenses very close to its eyes, so close that they may also touch his eyelashes. The more the optical system of an HMD is close to the eyes, the more the perceived field of view is, and since the Index manages to put the lenses that close, its field of view is quite big. Someone says that the field of view is so big, that you can even notice the end of the displays, but actually I haven’t managed to notice that.

https://gfycat.com/oblongdependablefieldspaniel

If you want to read more about how Valve obtained this goal, you can read its very interesting deep dive on the topic here.

130° of FOV may not seem a big deal, but trust me that I really noticed the difference. I think that I would hardly notice a difference between 180° and 200° because the most peripheral areas of our vision are the ones that we perceive the least, but going from 110° to 130° the sense of immersion if really improved, because you finally have a decent amount of peripheral vision. You notice that when you get back to another headset and you feel like watching through binoculars.

Big FOV, 120Hz and audio are the three things that I really loved the most about the Index.

Comfort

Comfort is another feature for which the Index really shines, and one of the features that Valve has stressed the most in its press events. Let’s see if it is really perfect as it has been depicted.

Fitting the headset

The process of fitting the headset is not very different from the one of most of the modern devices on the market: you put your headset on your head, you adjust the top strap until you think that it fits you and then you close the rear knob so that to fix the headset to your head.

But there are some little differences: first of all, after you have worn the headset, you have to rotate the eye-relief knob to put the lenses close to your eyes so that to increase FOV, and then you can move the IPD lever to improve the quality of the visuals.

What is fantastic is that the headband, that is made in plastic, actually features some springs in it (like the Oculus Rift). It is cool because it means that you can put your headset on and off by just pulling it on and off from your head, exploiting the springs that make the headband larger. Since to remove and put the headset on you have just to use the springs and not touching the knob, it means that putting the headset on and off is incredibly fast… and when you wear it, it already fits you perfectly, because it still features the knob position that you set the first time. So, on the contrary of many other similar headsets, you don’t have to rotate the knob every time you put it on and off and this is incredibly handy. I loved this.

Fitting with different heads

The Valve Index has also been conceived to satisfy users with different needs.

It fits well with people that wear glasses, also because the eye-relief knob can be used to distance the lenses in case your glasses are particularly big.

The IPD adjustment also helps in improving the perceived comfort for people with different eye positions. According to a recent study, women have smaller IPD than men, so the Index should suit them better.

There is a pad that you can put on the back of the headband in case you have a little head to improve comfort. This has been made in a very soft sponge material that is oddly satisfying to squeeze.

And in case you have a particular head shape, you should know that the face mask is completely detachable (it is held by magnets) and the CAD models are all public, so you can even design a facemask completely customized for you and have an Index that fits perfectly to the shape of your face! My friend Rob Cole will detail this process soon…

https://gfycat.com/impurehairyarthropods

Customized ergonomics are important for the future of VR and Valve knows it well.

Perceived comfort

The comfort offered by Index is incredible. Not only there are all the customization options that I described you above, but the materials are incredibly comfy. It is a pleasure to have the fabric of the facemask on the face, it is completely in another league from the sponge of my Rift 1. Even better than the one of the Quest.

The detachable facemask can be a nuisance sometimes because the magnets are not that strong, so sometimes it detaches even when it should not.

But the truly annoying thing is the cable. The cable of the Valve Index is really big and heavy and it is quite impossible to forget about it, it is a constant presence on the rear of the head. It breaks the magic created by all the rest of the comfort system.

Another problem that I encountered has been the fact that I could see a bit of the real world next to my nose.

Testing it in different situations

I loved the Index and how it fit my head, but my thorough tests revealed that it is not ready yet to be used in every situation.

First of all, as a developer, I wanted to see if it is really possible to work from inside the Valve Index for me. So, I put my Valve Index, opened BigScreen and developed in Unity in VR for 4 hours. I then wrote the results of this experiment in this long Tweet (open it in Twitter to read it all).

Today I wanted to verify if Valve's claim is true and the #ValveIndex can really be used to work for hours.

So I spent the last 4 hours developing in @unity3D from @BigscreenVR with my Index on.

Here you are my results.#VirtualReality #VR #future #gamedev pic.twitter.com/2qaaZCfQfz

— TonyVT SkarredGhost (@SkarredGhost) August 10, 2019

The surprising thing is that I actually managed to develop in Unity for 4 hours, doing everything I needed, from using Visual Studio to cutting-and-pasting code from Stack Overflow. I could read the texts, I could stay with the headset on my head without feeling a high discomfort and so on. It is incredible and I think it would have been hardly doable with another device. The Index shows us that is actually already possible to work in VR.

But I would never use it every day to work. After 4 hours I had eye strain; I could feel warmth on my head (the Index gets warm while you use it) and it was not pleasant at all; the text was readable, but not perfectly defined; my neck was not happy by having it on for hours, and the weight of the big cable was not helping. So, the claims of Valve of this headset being able to be used for hours are true, but only in part. There are still various problems preventing professionals from using comfortably this for hours every day.

I also tried to use it to test our upcoming mixed reality fitness game HitMotion: Reloaded (soon on Viveport!). Here you are me boxing in VR while I test our game:

https://gfycat.com/considerateshimmeringafricanjacana-virtual-reality-valve-index-hitmotion-gamedev

The sponge of the facemask completely filled with sweat after the developing session (bleah). Since the headset also gets warm with usage, it is easy that the facemask becomes wet while using the Index in every way.

I have made a female friend of mine try the device and the facemask became completely dirty of her makeup and there was no way to remove it. In the end, I had to remove the facemask and wash it with water and soap. This device is not much female-friendly on this side.

Fabric is nice, but not very hygienic if you have to share the headset with other people.

Controllers

The Valve Index Controllers, better known as “The Knuckles” by us of the VR communities are what Valve conceived as the next-gen controllers. I waited to try them for so long, and in the end, I have to say that I have not remained completely satisfied by them. I expected much more from them.

Controllers description

The Valve Index Controllers feature:

• 1 Status led;
• 2 buttons;
• 1 system button;
• 1 little touchpad;
• 1 main trigger;
• 1 sensitive region on the handle.

The rationale is that wearing them you put the thumb on the top, and operate the buttons, touchpad and two buttons with it; the index finger goes on the main trigger. The remaining three fingers stay on the handle, that can sense their position through capacitive sensors. The handle also features force sensors and so can detect how much the hand is actually squeezing the controller.

https://gfycat.com/infantileenergeticbrant

Each controller is worn by putting your hand around its handle and then pulling a string that tightens it around your palm. There’s a strap made in fabric that presses your palm against the handle of the controller, making your hand stay attached to the controller itself.

The Index controllers, exactly as the headset, feature very high-quality comfortable materials and also various fitting options. There is an “adjustment arm” that changes how the fabric strap wraps around your hand, so that to fit hands of different dimensions.

The Valve Index Controllers are innovative because:

• They sense all five fingers. This is the first time it happens in VR. They can see how much everyone of your fingers is bent;
• They feature force sensors that can so be used by a game to distinguish when the player is just holding something in the hand from when he is squeezing that thing;
• Since they are gripped to your hand, you can actually open completely your hand without the controller detaching from it. Finally you can throw objects in VR by opening completely your hands!

All these new input modes open lots of new possibilities for future VR games!

https://gfycat.com/somberwarlikeduckbillcat

One last advantage of the Index controllers design is that since they are attached to your hand, you can still use your hand to do lots of things while wearing them, like drinking from a bottle or writing on the keyboard!

Battery

The estimated battery time for the Knuckles is 7 hours of continued usage. When the battery drains out, you can attach them to a power adapter via USB-C.

Why they haven’t amazed me

From the previous section, it seems that the Index Controllers are amazing. And I thought that as well. Then trying it, I noticed their drawbacks.

First of all, in my opinion, they are a bit big. I know that this shouldn’t matter while I am in VR, but actually, I don’t like having big things messing my desk.

Then the biggest drawback to me is the comfort. Finding a perfect fit for the Knuckles is very hard, and I have to say that I have personally never found it. Either they felt too loose or too tight, ot not fitting perfectly the shape of my hand. If they were too tight, when I removed them, I could find red signs of their use on my hands. If they were too loose, the fingers tracking couldn’t perform well.

I should also mention that the hand pose required to use the Knuckles is not natural: the thumb and index must always be risen, and this is not comfortable in the long run. I personally find the Oculus Touch of the Rift CV1 far more comfortable and ergonomic than the Knuckles. My friend Rob says that using rubber boosters, the Knuckles become more comfortable, but personally I have not verified it.

Because of this, I always clearly felt their presence while I was playing in VR, and this broke a bit the magic.

Regarding the five-fingers tracking, it is mediocre, as I show in this video:

The thumb and the index fingers get tracked only if they touch the controller. The other three fingers have a pose detection that sometimes work and sometimes not. Usually, to make them work, you have to calibrate the controller by opening and closing the fingers various times.

I have to say that when full fingers tracking works perfectly, it is amazing, it feels like magic… but from my experience it doesn’t happen often. The good news is that this can be fixed via software in the future.

One truly disappointing feature has been the squeezing sensor: I thought that when I squeezed an object in VR, I could really feel the controller squeezing, while this doesn’t happen. The “squeezable” part just moves slightly (maybe a millimeter, or even less) and sometimes rumbles a bit. I expected much better haptics feedback.

Then there is the “clickgate” (as Sebastian Ang calls this): the controller thumbsticks don’t click in all directions: in the set that I got, one thumbstick clicked only on up and down directions and the other one just on left and right. When Valve has been asked about this topic, they just gave weird answers like that this is by design.

There is also the fact that very few games actually exploit the new interactions offered by the Index controllers. And while the situation remains this one, the Knuckles will just be “nice to have” and not “must have” that define a new UX for VR. Without dedicated content, the Knuckles won’t become the new standard, and personally, I have not been even able to understand their true potential. Yes, there is a demo called “Aperture Hand Lab” that makes you do some hand gestures, but honestly, I found it pretty boring (apart from the possibility of raising the middle fingers to the robots). Paradoxically, the best game that I’ve played with the Knuckles has been Robo Recall, that is actually an exclusive game for Oculus!

Hopefully, games like Boneworks and the upcoming “flagship VR” game should fix this.

From a pair of controllers that cost $250 (more than one Oculus Go), I expected much more.

Tracking

I think that there is not much to say about the tracking of the Index. It uses SteamVR 2.0 tracking technology, the best in class in virtual reality. Yes, it requires the setup of external stations, but then the tracking is fast, super-precise and super-reliable. And you can set up a tracking area up to 10m x 10m using 4 lighthouse stations!

Audio

God bless the audio engineers working at Valve. This is the reaction that I had while trying the integrated audio of the Index.

The integrated headphones are amazing: they provide great bass, great audio quality, great… everything. As I always tell you, I am not a big expert in audio, but when something works well, I can recognize it. While I was doing the experiment of working in VR, for instance, I put some music and I could clearly hear every detail, every sound, every frequency of the songs. So f***ing awesome. Valve chose a type of speakers (BMR: Balanced Mode Radiators) that is able to play perfectly all kind of frequencies, basses included.

And not only the audio quality is great, but also the design is very smart. Valve doesn’t offer standard headphones, but off-ear speakers. This means that you have speakers that are close to your ears, but don’t touch them, but stay distant from them some centimeters. This is so good because this means first of all that they don’t mess with your hair while you put your headset on, so they are compatible with the instant-on design of the headset. Then, while you wear them, since they are not attached to your ears, they don’t give you that typical sensation of warmth that make earphones uncomfortable.

The drawback of this design is that people around you may hear what you are listening to: the speakers don’t enclose your ears, and so some of the sound leaks outside. As Valve explains, actually most of the sound goes to your ears and the rest gets destroyed (destructive interference), so actually the sound that it is possible to hear outside of the headset is much less than what you would expect from this design, but anyway I would never watch porn with this kind of speakers.

If you want to put your headphones on to watch some porn with the Index, you can exploit the 3.5mm jack and attach your headphones. Shame on Valve that put the jack behind the facemask, so if you have some headphones with big plugs, you can’t insert them there. For instance, my Sennheiser headset can’t be attached there.

Regarding the audio input, the Index features two high quality microphones that work very well.

You can read a deep dive on audio and how Valve got to the design of its headphones here.

Initial Setup

This was another disappointing moment of the Index, that felt so 2016, or even before. With all the headsets moving to easy inside-out tracking setups, having again to mess around with Lighthouse stations was a bit annoying. To use the Valve Index, you have to install two Lighthouse stations in your room and connect them to the power outlet. Then you have to attach your headset to your PC (USB and Displayport) and to the power outlet as well (really??).

After that, you have to wear the Knuckles, not before having found how to make them fit your hands. Then you wear the headset, moving all the various knobs and levers necessary to make it fit you.

As you can see, too many things to do. With the Rift S, that takes exactly the opposite approach, you attach the headset to your PC, put it on your head, you close the knob and you are ready to go.

Yes, the Index gives you a premium experience, but it comes with a price in terms of initial setup. If you are a tech-savvy person and you are the only one that has to use the headset and you will have to use it only in one room, then this is not a big price to pay. But if you have to move it often in different rooms or make it fit every time to different people, it may be a nuisance.

Regarding the software setup, the first time that I used it, I had to update the firmware on the controllers, connecting them via USB to the PC. This is another step that is quite hard to do for a non-techie.

Anyway, I am nerd enough, and I found the software setup quite easy, also because SteamVR guided me all the time. And it also set automatically the ideal rendering resolution for my PC to keep the 120 Hz. And with my GTX1080 I had zero problems with it.

Development

Developing for the Valve Index is the same as developing with whatever SteamVR-compatible headset. Our game, that is being developed on PC using SteamVR, worked immediately with it. And considering that Valve has already created various plugins and utilities to let you create easily content that works well with all the different types of controllers, the job for us developers to implement stuff for the Index is easy.

The problem may be for the game designers: this headset introduces new possible interactions and also a bigger field of view. People using it may have a competitive advantage over people that have other headsets in multiplayer games and this is something that game designers will have to consider…

Moddability

The Vive Index has been conceived with moddability in mind. Valve has made a great job in this sense.

All the cad files of the headset and controllers have been released opensource, so that everyone can create accessories for it. This can create a full set of aftermarket accessories, even if I don’t know how many companies have interest in creating accessories for a headset that will be sold only to a small niche of people.

On the front, the headset features the “frunk”, the hole with a USB-C port that can be used to attach external peripherals like Leap Motion. It will be incredible to see what the community will be able to create with it… even if honestly I have not seen any real interesting use yet.

https://gfycat.com/hopefulcomplexgecko-virtual-reality-valve-index-technology

What intrigues me are the front cameras. They are not used for tracking and Valve says that it will release soon an SDK to let people use them. For now, they can be already exploited to see the passthrough of the world around you (something I have already dedicated a full article about), and that is cool, since the passthrough is an RGB one (even if it is a bit distorted). I can envision future mixed reality experiences for the Index to be released.

https://gfycat.com/appropriategracefulcorydorascatfish-virtual-reality

In my opinion, the front cameras will be used in the future to provide hands tracking and maybe also some kind of objects tracking / detection. We’ll see… for sure they open the door for lots of experimentations.

And then let’s not forget that this device is compatible with the Vive Trackers, with all the possibilities that they add to VR (props tracking, full body tracking, etc…)

I love the open-ness of this device!

Enterprise usage

Given its high comfort, high quality, and high moddability, the Valve Index is for sure a device that can appeal to lots of enterprise customers.

There are anyway some problems that may prevent it from being used by companies. First of all, the business licensing of the Index is not clear. Then it is also not clear if Valve can provide dedicated assistance to companies, if it can sell the headsets in big batches and so on. Then I know that lots of companies hate having to install Steam to be able to use VR.

I tried querying Valve with all these questions, but the company didn’t answer. In the absence of an answer, personally I wouldn’t advise big companies to use the Index for big and important projects, but only for experiments.

Price and availability

The Valve Index is already shipping in many countries in US and Europe. It is available from Valve’s website.

Regarding buying the headset, there are different options. I love that Valve lets people choose exactly what to buy, according to their needs. So, you can buy:

• Headset only: 499$ / 539€
• Headset + controllers: 750$ / 799€
• Headset + controllers + 2 Base Stations: 999$ / 1079€
• Controllers only: 279$ / 299€
• One base station: 149$ / 159€

Final Considerations

The Valve Index looks like a very solid product, for sure the best PC VR headset that I tried until now. It features lots of improvements in all aspects of a VR headset, and I especially loved the high framerate, the high–quality audio, and the enabled peripheral vision. I’m also a big fan of its openness: this looks like a device that will let us developers create a lot of new things. even ones that Valve didn’t even think about.

Anyway, this is not the perfect headset that the hype has depicted in the previous months: it still has drawbacks (like for instance the headset becoming warm during the use), its controllers could have been better and the price is very high (especially the one of the controllers). It is not VR 2.0 because it doesn’t feature a fundamental technology like eye tracking, that may enable foveated rendering and innovative interactions.

The very high price ($1000 for the full set, $750 for the headset+controllers), make it a device dedicated just to techies, hard gamers, professionals and prosumers. And this belief is reinforced by the fact that it is not easy to be set up. Most people that don’t belong to the aforementioned categories will go for cheaper and more user-friendly alternatives like the Rift S.

Furthermore, it seems to me a device that is optimal for the use of one single person. First of all, these fitting customizations are a nuisance to be changed for each user. Then the various sponge and fabric materials fill so much in sweat that is better that only one person uses it.

It is also a device that is optimal to be used in only one room, because moving a full Lighthouse setup is a bit annoying.

So, for the gamer that always plays in VR in his room, this is the ideal headset, and returning back to other devices would be hard for him. For other people, other headsets could be valid alternatives.

Should you buy it?

The question is always the same: so, should you buy it?

• If you have plenty of money and you use a lot VR in your room, to play or to experiment, yes, of course;
• If you always want the best from your VR headset, yes, of course;
• If you want a completely hackable and open system, yes, of course;
• If you want a cheap device, no, go for the Rift S;
• If you want the best resolution available, no, go for the HP Reverb;
• If you are a professional and need a versatile system that can be used in your room, but also be ported easily in other environments, no go for the Vive Cosmos;
• If you want to use VR in enterprise settings, no, go for the Vive Pro or the Vive Cosmos, unless Valve clarifies its position on enterprise services.

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I hope you loved this journey in the Valve Index with me, because I loved telling you everything about this headset. And as always, if you have questions, feel free to ask them here below or on my social media channels!