Oculus Quest 2 review: entering mainstream Virtual Reality

The Oculus Quest 2 is the device of the moment. Since the first leak revealed it, the community is keeping talking about it, either for the good (because it has great content) or for the bad (for its mandatory Facebook login). But does it leave up to the hype? Is it a device every VR enthusiast should buy? Read my review and discover it now!

Oculus Quest 2 Video Review

If you want to watch a video review of the Oculus Quest 2 instead of reading my post, you can do it here!

Otherwise, go on and read the full detailed review! And if you’re in a hurry, jump directly to my final impressions and my pieces of advice on if you should buy it or not at the end of the article.

Specifications

  • Resolution (per-eye): 1,832 × 1,920
  • Display Type: LCD
  • Refresh Rate: 90Hz
  • Processor: Snapdragon XR2
  • RAM: 6GB
  • Battery Life: 2–3 hours
  • Controllers’ battery life: 4x the one of the Quest
  • Field of View: Same of Quest (circa 100° diagonal)
  • IPD Adjust: 58mm, 63mm, 68mm
  • Weight: 503g
  • Storage: 64GB or 256GB
  • Connectivity: USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 6
  • Tracking: inside-out with 4 cameras
  • Mixed Reality: the cameras allow for some kind of black and white passthrough

Unboxing

You all know that I love unboxing new hardware and I especially love unboxing Oculus products because Oculus always pays great attention to its packaging and how the objects are arranged inside. Opening an Oculus’s box is always an experience before the experience for the user.

I admit I’ve not been amazed this time. The box of the Oculus Quest 2 has in my opinion a mediocre design: when the box was leaked the day before the announcement of the Quest 2, I thought it was the work of art of a Redditor, because I couldn’t believe that Facebook could have designed something with that messy mix of fonts and visual styles.

Removing this terrible white covering, you unveil a very elegant cardboard box with the Oculus logo on: the cardboard reminds me a bit of the wood and I think that this part of the unboxing, where you look and touch this inner box, is the best one of the unboxing process. When you lift the lid, you find inside the headset and the controllers, together with a little white box and the glasses spacer. The arrangement of the elements inside the box is nice, but it is too “banal” and I admit I was expecting something more from Oculus. A statement that will be the emblema of my whole review.

Here you are what you can find inside the box of the Oculus Quest 2 (Image by Facebook)

In the box you can find:

  • The headset
  • Two controllers
  • A charger
  • A charging cable (USB-C to USB-C)
  • Two AA batteries (already inserted into the controllers)
  • A glass spacer
  • An instruction manual
  • A (super useless) health and safety book

What has surprised me is that there’s no cleaning cloth for the lenses of the headset. Most probably Facebook has removed it to keep the price down (or to save the environment, as it is cool saying in these times… :D)

Design

Oculus Quest 2 and controllers

The Oculus Quest 2 looks like a smaller Oculus Quest, with the backstrap of the Go. As usual, Facebook has done a great job of creating a device that looks elegant and well crafted. The headset is nice to be seen and feels good when touched. But personally I preferred the original Quest. I’m not talking about the color (both white and black feel good IMHO), but it’s the finishes that are completely absent in the Quest 2. To keep the price low, Facebook has removed:

  • the fabric that covered the headset
  • the internal part in fabric
  • the gripping material on the controllers

The result is a headset that looks more like a hi-tech toy and less like something you want to wear. It looks more “cheap” and “plasticky”, and this feeling is confirmed by other details, like the quite bad back strap or the fact that the lower part of the facemask detaches too easily. Having felt the Quest 1, Quest 2 to me reveals how badly Facebook wanted to keep the production costs low. Don’t misunderstand me: it is not bad at all, it is nice, but it looks like a step back from a design standpoint.

Front view of the headset

Looking at the headset from the front, you can clearly spot the Oculus logo (luckily there is no “Facebook” yet) and the four tracking cameras. When the headset is on, on the top, there is also a white led that turns on when the cameras are tracking the environment.

Left view of the headset

On the left side, there is the USB-C port and the 3.5mm jack. I’m glad Oculus removed one of the jacks, because it was completely useless.

Right view of the headset

On the right, you can spot the button to turn the device on, plus a status LED that tells you the status of the device (orange if it is charging, green if it is charged, white if the headset is on).

Bottom view

On the bottom, you can see the buttons to adjust the volume, plus the two microphones that give you a clear voice when you talk in VR.

Top view

On the top, you can see better the fitting mechanism, that looks like an improvement of the one of the Oculus Go.

Giving a lock at the inside…

Inside the headset, there are the two integrated speakers that go next to your ears. Then you can clearly spot the lenses (that are the same as in the Oculus Quest 1), the light sensor (that detects when you’re wearing the headset), and the IPD fitting mechanism number (more on this later on in the comfort section).

Visuals

Oculus Quest 2 outperforms the visuals of the Quest 1 by far, but it doesn’t come without its issues. The biggest advantage is the impressive resolution: its 4K LCD display features not only a big bump in resolution (1832 x 1920 vs 1600×1440 pixels per eye), but also an improvement in pixels density because LCD displays feature much more subpixels than its corresponding OLED ones. The result is the same that I experienced when I tried the Pico Neo Eye 2: the screen door effect is almost gone away. In some scenes, you can still spot the pixels grid if you concentrate on it, but otherwise, the screen doesn’t look like a screen anymore. This is an amazing result and finally people I’ll give demos to will never tell me “I can see the pixels, it looks fake” anymore.

Through the lenses of the Oculus Quest 2 (Image by Tyriel Wood)

The colors of the display looks also quite bright and I find the overall visuals better than the ones of the Pico Neo 2. In “all black” scenes, the blacks seem a bit washed out, but this is a common problem that all LCD displays share.

The other advantage of this headset is the 90 Hz frequency. Even if the 90 Hz mode is still experimental (you have to activate it manually) and the runtime still doesn’t exploit it if not in some scenes like the Main Menu (there is a hack to make it work everywhere, though), when it works, it makes the experience more fluid. United to the fact the Snapdragon XR2 can provide you more horsepower than the Snapdragon 835 and so can offer you a better framerate in every game, the result is that whatever you do in the Oculus Quest 2 feels much smoother than it was in the Quest 1. It is a subtle sensation, but it is there, and it makes you feel more immersed in your reality. The improved resolution and smoothness are what I loved the most about this new headset.

The FOV is instead similar to the one of the Quest (around 100°), but it’s weird that it feels like I can see the edge of the lenses. All in all, it appears as it is a bit smaller for me.

Oculus Quest 2 Lenses

Anyway, visuals have their shortcomings as well. For instance, the lenses are the same as the Quest 1, so they still feature circular glares. I also noticed many more god rays when looking at the menu and also other scenes featuring white elements on top of a black background. Since I had not this sensation on the Quest 1 (that features the same lenses), my impression is that must be something related to the display, and that maybe can be fixed by software. It is pretty noticeable and annoying to me. Also, the chromatic aberrations of the pixels when you look through the periphery of the lenses is more noticeable too: you clearly start seeing the pixels becoming little rainbows if you don’t look forward, but on the edge of the lenses. This second problem can be fixed by software in future updates for sure. Maybe Facebook has left the aberration correction parameters of the Quest 1, who knows.

The spherical aberration is acceptable, instead, and thanks to the horsepower of the XR2, the foveated rendering can be less aggressive, and usually, the periphery of your vision doesn’t look blocky anymore. This is another very welcome update.

Comfort

The Oculus Quest 1 had a pretty bad comfort, and Oculus had absolutely to fix it in this version. But it did not good in this sense and the Quest 2 still feels lacking a proper fit. You had one job, Oculus.

We all understood that things were not going to go well when we saw in the leaked photos that Facebook had decided to get back from the trash the fitting mechanism of the Oculus Go. Actually, it is not exactly the same as the one of the Go, but it is an improvement version of its. It works thanks to two elastic headbands: one horizontal and one vertical. The vertical one is the first that you should adjust so that the headset rests comfortably on your head and then you have to move two plastic sliders on the horizontal one and tighten the headset to your face. After this operation, you have to adjust the headset on your face, usually by leaning a bit downwards (otherwise it becomes too heavy on the forehead).

Oculus Quest 2 fitting mechanism

After I have put the headset on, I can tell you that this fitting mechanism is much better than the one of the Go and for sure better than I expected. Thanks to the fact that the headset is smaller and lighter, that the foam of the facemask has a very comfortable material (I like it a lot), and that the elastic headbands exert much more pulling strength than the previous fitting mechanism, the headset doesn’t feel bad on my head when I wear it. And I agree with someone that says that it feels less front-heavy when you put it on, and it feels quite good. So all in all, it is an improvement over the Quest 1. I also made my Chinese assistant try the device: she defined the Quest 1 as 最不舒服 (the worst comfortable one), while she found the Quest 2 不错 (not bat at all), even if she complained that the feeling on the nose is not right for them.

But all of this has a sad end: whatever configuration I tried, the headset never felt comfortable after 30-60 minutes in it. Either it hurt my forehead, or my nape, or my ears, or my face in general. No configuration was comfortable in the long run: it’s more bearable than the Quest 1, but it still doesn’t have a good fit.

My VR Face after having worn the Quest 2 for more than one hour. Look at the clear marks on my forehead an my cheeks

The comfort can be improved using the Elite Straps that Oculus is selling as separate accessories and in fact, all reviewers highlight how the Elite Strap is a must buy if you use VR a lot. But I’m a cheap ass, so I’ll keep my Quest as it is now 😀

The other big debate in the VR communities is on the new IPD fitting mechanism of the Quest 2, which requires you to move physically the lenses closer and further to switch between 3 IPD configurations: 58mm, 63mm, 68mm. Since the eye box of the device should accommodate up to 2.5mm of tolerance from your IPD, if you are in the range 56-70mm, you should be fine.

Personally, I find the mechanism of moving the headset lenses with the hands pretty intuitive and simple to be done. It also doesn’t feel like you can break the headset, as someone has said. And if you are in VR, you can slide your fingers between the headset and the face and change the IPD on the fly as well.

https://gfycat.com/snarlingsadjaguar

Ars Technica has reported that if you have an IPD that is exactly in the middle between two of the predefined values, the comfort may not be good. I don’t know it is true, but for sure I have noticed that choosing the wrong IPD setting on Quest 2 can cause serious eye strain. I admit I never set my IPD perfectly on my headsets and sometimes I just keep the settings left by someone else without big problems. But when I tried the Quest 2 with an IPD setting of 2 during my first tests, after one hour in the headset I felt serious eye strain, and then my eyes had to re-adjust when I returned to reality. Setting the position n.3 fixed this for me. So be careful with the IPD configuration that you choose.

I have also some complaints about the feeling of the controllers, but let me keep them for the next section.

Controllers

The controllers of the Quest 2 are a mix of the controllers of the Quest 1 and the controllers of the Rift CV 1. They have the same design as the controllers of the Quest 1, but with a rounder shape.

The controllers have the usual controls that we all already know: two buttons and a thumbstick on the top, together with a system button; and two triggers on the handle, one for the index and the other one for the middle finger.

Oculus Quest 2 controller: the input buttons have remained the same of the previous versions

The circular ring with the sensors is now tilted towards the user and it makes the controllers feel more balanced, and this is a very welcome improvement. Also, since the controllers have a rounder and bigger circle, finally there is again the place to let your thumb rest when it doesn’t need to be over the buttons. These are two small but important improvements, that make the controllers better to be used.

But the overall sensation on them may vary depending on the shape of your hands. As ergonomics expert Rob Cole points out, every person is different, and hardly one size may fit all. My friend and game designer Max Ariani finds them comfortable, while I feel them being not right for my hands. It is as if my hands were always in slight tension when I wear them. And if my thumb is on the thumbstick, the feeling is not good, not to mention the fact that if I have to press the system key, my thumb has to bend in a very uncomfortable position. Also, the fact that they’re a bit heavier together with the fact that the grip material has been removed from the handle, makes me feel like the controllers may slip from my hands when I have my arms resting parallel to my body, and so it is like my fingers have always to hold them to prevent them from falling. The overall sensation is that my hands always feel in tension with them and they are not very comfortable for me. Not that they are bad… they’re good, but they could be much better.

Look at the pose of my thumb when pressing the system button… it is very weird and uncomfortable

Design-wise, the black and white colors make a bad mix, and the circular big shape makes them less elegant than previous models. Personally, I still think that design-wise and comfort-wise, the best controllers ever still remain the Touch of the Rift CV1. Please get back onboard their engineer!

There are some relevant improvements on this version of the controllers: first of all, the battery has infinite life! Various youtubers have reported that after many videos, many games, and many tests, they have still not changed the battery. I’m still above 99% of battery after my tests with the device… it’s incredible. Much kudos to Facebook for this, also because the tracking quality has remained the same: the new Touch controllers track exactly well as the previous ones. Maybe they are only worse when you put the controllers on a table and then try to look at them again: in these strange conditions, I have found the device detecting the controllers in a wrong position… but it is a useless case, to be honest. To prevent the battery lid from sliding, Facebook now has made it quite hard to remove: you have to exert a big force to make it slide. This is another non-issue, giving the fact that you have to change your batteries very rarely.

The haptic feedback has been improved, and the controllers feel more real. This is very important in games where you need strong hand feedback.

The new Oculus Touch controllers have an almost infinite battery life

Tracking

We all know that the tracking of the Oculus Quest is great, and the Quest 2 keeps having its amazing quality. The positional tracking is smooth and reactive and can track inside a big Guardian of around 8m x 8m, or you can even disable the Guardian and move in an enormous space.

The tracking of the controllers is smooth and precise and only fails when you go out from the tracking FOV of the cameras, that is when the controllers are too close to the headset, or when they are behind it. In most cases, this is not a big deal. When you play a bow-and-arrow game like In Death, well, you may have some issues.

Remember that to have the tracking working, you have to have a bit of light in the room, otherwise the tracking fails.

Audio

The Oculus Quest features two integrated speakers in the plastic bars that go along your ears. As usual, I’m not an audio expert, so I can’t tell you a reliable opinion on them. What I feel is that they get the job done very well and the audio is crisp, but of course they can’t compete with the audio quality of a SENNHEISER headset or a Valve Index BMR speaker. Especially the bass frequencies are not great on this kind of little cheap speakers.

In case you want some privacy (for porn, of course), you can use the 3.5mm jack.

Battery

While the battery of the controllers has an infinite duration, the battery of the headset drains pretty fast and has an average duration of 2-2.5 hours. Having to power a big display and an XR2 chipset, the battery has a complicated job to perform.

Computational power

Performances of the Qualcomm XR2 vs the previous 835 chipset. Notice how much AI operations are allowed by this device (Image by Qualcomm)

The performances of the Snapdragon 835 and the Snapdragon XR2 are like night and day. The new Quest has a chipset that is 3 generations ahead of the one of the Quest 1, so it has much more horsepower. As I told you before, every Quest 1 game that you try on the Quest 2 looks better because it appears more fluid and less blocky because the foveated rendering is less aggressive. We are still not at the graphical level of PC VR, of course, but with this new bump in resolution and computational power, standalone VR doesn’t look anymore like coming from Tomb Raider 1’s times. It is a big step forward.

And what is interesting is what we can expect from it in the coming times: since the XR2 offers hardware acceleration for AI, video encoding/decoding, etc… it has the power to bring better hands tracking, voice detection, and environment understanding to the Quest 2. I’m sure that Oculus will exploit this power in the upcoming months.

Initial Setup

The initial setup procedure is the same as in Quest 1, so I won’t go into many details here. Let me just say that you have to install the companion app, then turn on the headset, and follow the instructions. The setup is super easy and straightforward, and the Quest 2 will follow you in every single step, explaining everything with simple animations and clear texts. Everyone can set up this device, it is the best setup procedure I have ever find on a standalone: it even explains to you how to grab the controllers!

If you are eager to try your new headset, remember that at startup, it will perform an update of the firmware, so it will take some time before you can actually use it.

And remember: the setup requires a mandatory Facebook login.

The Facebook login

You already know that I hate this decision of forcing every user of an Oculus device to have a Facebook login because a gaming/hardware company shouldn’t force me to have a login to a social network that is absolutely not related to the product I’m using. Also, Facebook has had in the past very shady practices regarding privacy, and I personally don’t trust them in this sense. The new policy that you must accept as an Oculus user clearly says that it will use your data to propose ads to you, so you pay your headset very little money because your data will be harvested.

A solution may be having a second Facebook account, that you use just for VR. This is against Facebook’s TOS, so don’t do it, absolutely. To don’t do it, be sure that:

  • You create your new Fb account some days before receiving your Quest;
  • You set some believable data on your profile (and please, use a believable name!), and also a picture;
  • You post something once in a while (once a day?), ask the friendship to some of your friends, ask some of your real friends to ask the friendship of your new account, chat with your friends from your new account. That is, make your account appear as genuine and live.

If in two days your account doesn’t get banned by the AI, you should be safe and merge it with your Oculus account. But remember, don’t do it, I wrote these accurate instructions so you know what to don’t do 😉

User Experience

The UX of the Quest 2 is identical to the one of the Quest 1. It’s elegant and functional and in my humble opinion, it is quite good. As a techie, I don’t like that is locked to what Facebook wants you to see (so for instance the UI of the installed game is super cool, but the one of the sideloaded apps is terrible), but we know that the Quest is a walled garden.

The use of the companion app makes some operations, like connecting to the Wi-fi, or logging in with your Facebook account, very easy.

But the best feature is that Facebook wants every operation to be the smoothest possible: for instance, the headset remembers the rooms you’ve been in and you don’t have to configure the Guardian bounds every time. The headset goes on standby and turns it on whenever you wear it. You can have a shortcut to activate the passthrough so that if you want to have a sip of water, you can see your surroundings easily. There are many little things that make the UX great.

Content

Red Matter is one of the best game that I’ve ever played on the Oculus Quest. Now it features special improvements for the Quest 2 (Image by Vertical Robot)

If “Content is the king”, then the Quest 2 is the king of standalone devices. No one else has a library of content as rich as the one of Oculus. Zuck invests something like $250M every year to have great content for its devices and the results are clearly noticeable. The Oculus Store is full of amazing titles like Vader Immortal, Beat Saber, Phantom: Covert Ops, Red Matter, Onward, etc... and in addition to them there are all the experiments from the community that you can find on SideQuest. And if this is not enough, you can use the Oculus Link and also play all the games on the Oculus Store on PC and on Steam (and so Half-Life: Alyx). There is so much content that you can play, that you can never get bored.

The Quest 1 launched with very limited content, while the Quest 2 is launching with a full line-up of amazing games. And new ones are coming, like Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell from Ubisoft!

Yes, they are both coming to VR!!! (Image by Facebook)

What in my opinion truly lacks from the Quest 2 is a launch title that showcases its possibilities. The headset features a great screen resolution and a powerful chipset, but there is not even a technical demo that shows you what is possible with the new headset. When the Oculus Touch were launched, Oculus paid Epic many millions of dollars to make a great game that made people understand the true potential of its new controllers. Now it should have paid someone to make the same job to put the spotlight on the XR2 chipset. Without this application, it is not clear what is the advantage of owning a Quest 2 over a Quest 1, because at the moment you basically play on the Quest 2 the same games that you played with the Quest 1. Of course, this situation is going to change over time, because developers are already making exclusive games or game updates for Quest 2, but in my opinion, there should have been a launch title.

SDK and development opportunities

Oculus SDK is a well-known complete SDK with many features that you can implement in your game. Leveraging the Oculus platform, it lets you add features like avateering and multiplayer out of the box. Anyway if you want to develop cross-platform titles, you can’t exploit its features completely.

If you want to develop for Quest, remember that Oculus has a very strict “content curation policy” (a cute way of saying “walled garden”) for the Oculus Store, so it is very difficult to be published there. You can still revert to using SideQuest or the new official parallel content distribution platform, but the monetization possibilities are unclear there.

If you want to use the Quest for B2B, you must know that the Quest is not the best enterprise product out there (see next paragraph), so unless you have a big customer, it could be not interesting developing for it.

Keep this in mind if you want to develop for the Quest.

Enterprise features

Using the Quest in a warehouse full of boxes. I wonder why the stock images about VR all look so wrong (Image by Oculus)

The Oculus Quest 2 has also an available business licensing, that lets you buy the Quest 2 at the double of its consumer price to let you use it in enterprise settings. I have dedicated a complete article to the Oculus For Business program, but if you want a TL;DR I can tell you that while the device is better than all the other devices out there in the market, I would prefer a headset from Pico or HTC for B2B. Facebook is a company focused on consumers, and enterprise is not their main business, so their services are still not perfect. Furthermore, they have a very close platform, where they force you to use their enterprise tools (Workplace, that is the B2B version of Facebook) and they still keep control of your headset (you can’t sideload apps on it) and your data (really).

Previously companies used consumer Quest headsets to pay less and circumvent all the problems, but now with the mandatory Facebook login, it is not as easy as before (even if you could theoretically use test accounts and sideloading to use consumer Quest 2 in small enterprise settings).

Special features

The Quest 2 also has some special features like:

  • The possibility of connecting it to the PC to play PCVR games. This may happen through the Oculus Link, that is the official solution that makes you connect the Quest to a PC via a USB cable, or through unofficial wireless solutions like Virtual Desktop, ALVR, Riftcat (or even NVIDIA CloudXR) that lets you connect the Quest via Wi-fi to a PC. It is awesome that the Quest can work both as a standalone and a PC VR headset, but remember that it is not without drawbacks: visuals are compressed and there is a little lag. The Oculus Link will be upgraded for the Quest 2 in some weeks, and for now, it has the same algorithm as the Quest 1, but it already offers better visuals thanks to its bigger resolution. The Link has some compatibility issues with some PCs, but it is the solution offering better latency for now. Virtual Desktop and similar solutions have performances that depend a lot on your network and your mileage may vary… but when they work well, they are amazing because you can enjoy PC VR games while being completely wire-free!
  • Hands tracking: with the Quest 2, exactly like with the Quest 1, you have the possibility of interacting with the headset by just using your hands. It is a feature that must be activated in the menu, but it works very well. Tracking is still not perfect, but it is good enough to let you interact with the menu and to play little experiences without using the controllers. Also it has been used for many interesting experiments by Daniel Beauchamp;
  • Mixed reality: Facebook has announced that in some months it will enable passthrough AR access to developers, meaning that studios will be able to create AR/MR content for the Oculus Quest! As a member of the team that has created the first mixed reality fitness game (HitMotion: Reloaded), I approve!
  • High portability: thanks to the soft back strap, the device can really be fit in every backpack and it is very easy to be carried everywhere! It is great for me since I need always to take a VR headset with me to work.

China

People in China wanting to use the Quest can buy it from Amazon US or from various resellers on Taobao. Apart from the price resulting higher than in the West, the real problem is configuring it. Since in China Facebook is blocked, and so is Google Play, it is hard to connect the headset to its required services and it is even harder to download and use its companion app. It is usable, but it requires a very good technical knowledge to configure it.

Price

The price is the best part of this headset

The Quest 2 is a steal: it costs $299 for the 64GB version and $399 for the 256GB one. The enterprise 256GB version costs $799. It is already available on Oculus website and other online (e.g. Amazon) and offline (e.g. Best Buy) stores.

This is a competition-killer price. Facebook is selling undercost, trying to conquer completely the market and cut out the competition. Thanks to the cash cow of the ads business, it can afford to lose a lot of money now to own the market later. It is the console business model: selling the hardware undercost to subsidize it with the money from exclusive content and the ads business (thanks to your data that they get through it). That’s why there is the mandatory Facebook login policy: Facebook needs your data and needs to merge it with all the other data it has about you on Facebook. If something is very cheap, you’re part of the product being sold.

Final considerations

The Oculus Quest 2 is a good gadget

All in all, this is a great headset. The Quest 1 was already cool, and this is better in almost all aspects and also cheaper. The new computational power together with the new display finally allow for content that is visually beautiful. The great library of content makes sure that everyone has something to play for many days when it buys a headset. And the price is ridiculously low. All of this keeping the same portability and ease of use of the original Quest. This is the perfect mix for making sure that this is a great gift for the Holiday season: Facebook has designed a great strategy to start entering the mainstream with this device, which now has all the possibilities of starting competing with other gaming hardware like the Nintendo Switch. Personally I think that in its first year of life, Quest 2 will sell something around 2-4 million headsets (the double of the Quest 1): it all will depend on how Facebook will be able to market it during the Holidays and on how the pandemic will hurt the supply chain.

I think that the Quest 2 will start entering the mainstream, but it won’t be a mainstream device yet, at least not in its first year of life. It still has some defects like the mediocre comfort, the shoebox design, the controllers that could be improved, the distorted passthrough, and other things that should be better. Also, people must still discover VR and understand that is much more than a 360 video on a Cardboard, and this will require time and a lot of money spent on marketing.

Me playing with the Quest 2

If someone doesn’t have a standalone headset or doesn’t have VR in general, this is the headset to buy, provided that the mandatory Facebook login is not an issue for the purchaser (he/she should be well informed of the risks).

If someone already has a Quest 1, as Ben Lang said in its review of the Quest 2, the problem of this device is that when you use it, you still feel too much as playing with the Quest 1. My review time has been pretty short because after I have tried the new things, what I started doing is using the device, but everything, from the UI to the available content is the same as on the Quest 1. Yes, there is a resolution bump, but nothing more. To really understand the potential of this headset, we have to wait for Oculus to really exploit the XR2 chipset features: it has to enable 90hz everywhere; it has to enable mixed reality; it has to offer a smart guardian; it has to add additional mindblowing content; and so on. Now it is like when you change PC and after you have bought one with a RTX3080, you play Windows Solitaire Collection: you can’t understand the real potential of the machine you have.

Should you buy it?

  • If you don’t have a VR headset, and you want to buy one to start entering VR, absolutely yes;
  • If you are a VR professional, absolutely yes, because this is the headset of the moment and you must own it;
  • If you need a standalone VR headset to play, absolutely yes;
  • If you like casual gaming in VR, yes;
  • If you need a cheap headset, yes;
  • If you need a VR device you can take with you everywhere, yes;
  • If you have a Quest 1, yes, but take your time. At the current moment, the experience is pretty similar, so there’s no need to rush to change;
  • If you don’t want to have a Facebook account, no, because it is mandatory for using this device;
  • If you like very high-end VR experiences, no, buy a tethered headset like the Valve Index or the HP Reverb G2;
  • If you need to offer B2B experiences, no, go to a better enterprise brand like Pico or HTC.

That’s it! My long review has finished! I hope you have liked to read my thoughts on the Quest 2, and if it is the case please subscribe to my newsletter and donate to my Patreon!

Skarredghost: AR/VR developer, startupper, zombie killer. Sometimes I pretend I can blog, but actually I've no idea what I'm doing. I tried to change the world with my startup Immotionar, offering super-awesome full body virtual reality, but now the dream is over. But I'm not giving up: I've started an AR/VR agency called New Technology Walkers with which help you in realizing your XR dreams with our consultancies (Contact us if you need a project done!)
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