The Best VR Headset For Most People, Oculus Quest 2 First Impressions

 My First contact with VR was when I was with my best friend at a comic convention in my local city all the way back in 2016 I was like 12 or 13 back then and i'm fairly sure the "VR" I experienced was just simple phone VR. But nevertheless it was enough to get me hooked, 2016, and 2017 was spent binging Jacksepticeye and various other early VR adopters, I wanted VR however it was always just out of reach, you see at an MSRP of $600USD for the Oculus Rift CV 1 (and an eye watering $800 for the HTC Vive, the headset i wanted at-the-time) it was out of reach for some kid in rural Australia, even if i got my hands on the adequate funds, you would have needed close to $1500 to build a competent VR ready (and recording ready cos i was a dumb kid with ambitions) bringing the minimum total to over $2000, and for what? Job Simulator? however that didn't stop me fantasizing over owning one of these amazing contraptions and just wishing that they came down in price or became stand-alone, and what we have today is the embodiment of everything 13 year old me wanted, the price was cut down, it became standalone, the resolution is higher than that of most competitors and any flaw this headset does have can be easily modded for free or very cheap, thats why this is going in the "First Impressions" section of my tech blog, because i'm very much still in the "honeymoon phase" with this headset.

The Unboxing Experience

The retail copy of the Quest 2 ships with a information sleeve protecting the box, the box itself being a cardboard box with a white oculus logo stamped ontop, i for one love this almost "organic" look over other designs, ghastly GPU box designs come to mind, it also cuts down on harmful materials and makes the box more recyclable, always a plus, even the moulds that hold the controller and headset are a papery-cardboard blend rather than the typical plastic rubbish, i'm not sure whether this was done to cut down on costs or with a genuine attempt at keeping material out of landfills, whatever the case i'm glad its this way.

The Controllers

The Controllers that shipped with the Quest 2 are really comfortable and do a great job at well, being controllers, the wrist straps are alright and are reminiscent of the Wiimote wrist strap, not that comfortable if worn tight, but will get the job done, others have figured out how to turn the included straps into makeshift knuckle straps, however you do need quite small hands for this to work comfortably as my average sized 18yo hands barely fit, the battery life of the controllers are amazing, all they take is standard AA sized batteries and even after a week i'm still on 100% charge on the batteries that come with the Quest. The Quest 2 controllers are also very durable which is good, because they cost about $80 new per controller from the painful-to-watch stress tests i've seen it does look like these boys (along with everything else) can take a beating! The controllers also feature capacitive sensors all over the place as in Half Life alyx its able to sense whether my fingers are so much as resting on the controller, kinda like if i had valve knuckles but only for my thumb and forefinger, however this isn't the only set of controllers included, the quest 2 also has built in hand tracking which uses the cameras mounted on the headset hand tracking seems accurate enough for navigating menus and having fun in hand physics lab, apparently if you use virtual desktop you can get hand tracking in PCVR games like Half Life Alyx! I havn't been able to try as my router is 6/7 years old and costs $17 new, it boots my family offline whenever I use the headset to browse the internet, so I doubt it could handle virtual desktop but if it does work this is amazing! though unless you have very good lighting hand tracking can sometimes just break

The Headset Itself

The headset itself is a standalone device featuring the Snapdragon XR2 and a Per-eye resolution of 1832x1920 compared to the original Quest's 1440x1600 and the Rift S and its measly 1080x1200 the Quest 2 also has a faster refresh rate though varies depending on the game from 72hz to 90hz, Oculus are also working on 120hz which would put it on par with the Valve Index's base refresh rate (and better in terms of resolution as the Index features a 1440x1660 display) however the Quest 2's field of view is where its lacking, if you haven't previously owned a higher-end VR headset you won't notice this as much, the Quest 2 has a 90 degree field of view, which while on par with the Rift S is considerably smaller than the 130 degrees on the Valve Index, however one of the biggest let-downs has to be the included strap, its uncomfortable, hard to adjust and never sits right, i found myself wondering if the headset's screen was faulty but found out it was the headset when i manually held the headset infront of my face, Oculus sell a $50 elite strap that has previously been known for having Quality Control issues but it seems this issue has been fixed. The strap causes allot of strain on the

cheeks and nose of the wearer however this can be somewhat fixed (apart from the image clarity issue) by simply getting the bulkiest headphones you can find, putting them on and putting the strap over the headphones, another cardinal sin, is that the part where you put on and take off the headset is (like the rest of the strap) a felt type material and gets really really dirty after no time at all, I've had my headset for a week and it is already really gross looking, there's no easy fix for this apart from washing it, but if you have to do this weekly you'd spend more on your water bill than an elite strap would cost you

In Conclusion

My first impressions of the Oculus Quest 2 is that its a well rounded VR headset that puts the essentials first and has the budget conscious consumer in mind, considering this headset is already dominating even the PCVR market, and at a much more digestible price of $299 (though basically $350 if you want the elite strap) I struggle to see how anyone can compete with this offering from Oculus, if you wish to see my unboxing video and initial reaction to this headset you can see it on my youtube channel or the video attached below