5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding budget headset - With a catch
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 4, 2022
The Oculus/Meta quest 2 - Facebook/Meta’s current leading headset being sold to the masses.
An amazing VR headset capable of running VR games standalone using it’s modded Snapdragon 865/Qualcomm XR2 chip or playing them linked to a computer, wirelessly and with a wire.
Using its inside out tracking with a 6DOF, it can track on all axis: Roll, yaw, pitch, X, Y and Z meaning you can move and look around realistically and almost entirely life like.
In future there may even be full body tracking support, using mirrors and the cameras which sounds promising as right now, the quest 2 already features very functional hand tracking.
The Quest 2 on it’s own is capable of running games like VRChat and beat sabre consistently at 72fps, if you choose to increase the refresh rate it can potentially hit 80fps and 90fps on moderate worlds in VRChat and less demanding games like beat sabre.
A sleek design and surprisingly light weight, the headset itself has no issues aesthetically, it looks and feels pleasing.
With a 1832x1920 per eye resolution the image is crisp and clear, standalone and linked to a computer; though, with a computer you can bring out the full potential of the headset, using its 120hz feature and fully utilising the maximum resolution of the headset you can’t get a better experience for the price.
However;
There are caveats to this.
As an amazing headset as it is, it is still cheap in comparison to the rest, and this should be noted.
The saying goes “You get what you pay for.” and this is true even here.
The quest 2 has a very very short charging cable which cannot be used for linking to a computer outside of sitting down, it works at around 300-400mbps so it is completely capable of being used as a link cable but it does not do it flawlessly all the time, with this bit rate you are limited in visual fidelity.
As you can adjust the bit rate to be higher in the Oculus debug tool, this cable won’t allow you to go much higher than 250 which provides very little impact in image quality compared to the default 150; I find myself scaling it up to 500 to see a noticeable change, as below this the compression is very real.
Any cable that is USBC 3.1 or 3.2 will work just fine for link but the faster and more well built ones will work far better, the one I use is capable of 2.9GBPS (2900mbps) and works quite well, but even then there are still some compression artifacts.
On the note of linking, some computers (desktops specially as any laptop I have tried which supports USBC charges the headset fine) do not charge the headset when linked, this is a motherboard power distribution issue as some do not distribute enough power to the ports to charge the headset, most are 5-10watts which will not charge the headset and instead let it slowly drain.
In my case mine did not charge at all, it is not an issue of motherboard quality, some just do not give enough power.
I use a 850w gold Corsair PSU on a ASUS B550F and found this to be an issue however, with my laptops I did not.
On top of this, most laptops will not run the games you wish to play at higher than 45FPS.
There are exceptions like beat sabre and other east to run games but at that point you’d be using the headset standalone rather than linked, using the link you’d be wanting to play boneworks, blade and sorcery or VRChat.
The minimum spec I found to run these games smoothly at 72/80fps was a 1660 and 12GB of DDR4 2400/2666 ram on a recent 4 core cpu (I5 8th/9th Gen or a Ryzen 5)
You can alternatively up the refresh rate to 120hz and make use of the 60fps space warp but in my experience it does not warp correctly, as 60fps is perceived as relatively smooth by the eye anyway the space warp creates issues.
You can turn it off in settings but it does not help much either way on or off.
If you cannot meet the 72fps target your best bet is 90hz and running 45FPS with space warp enabled.
There have been rumours of a new space warp being released that works far better which would help many users but how true it is I’m unsure.
Now for 90fps and 120fps, my 1080ti and Ryzen 7 3700X can barely keep up.
For boneworks and such there is no issue, adaptive resolution can help there but, for games like vrchat it struggles heavily on maximum resolution.
I find myself tuning it down to about 1700 per eye to hit 90fps and 1400 per eye for 120fps.
This is just for link, with air link you may have a better experience using a RTX card as they have better encoders than my 1080ti however, I’ve found I can hardly run 72fps on virtual desktop half the time, I use a 5ghz 1gbps router that is almost always unclogged, granted I’m over wifi and not using ethernet, your experience may be better than mine.
I don’t have complaints for air link other than how poor it runs sometimes; it will occasionally stutter heavily because of frame rate fluctuations, not because of my router.
Air link runs better than virtual desktop but still has its issues along with far more noticeable compression.
The head strap is quite comfortable contrary to popular belief, it’s just a bit hard to fit right and get comfortable in, people recommend you use the top strap to adjust it and not the back strap unless you want it tight but in my experience the headset ends up slipping off my head if I do not use the back strap tight to my skull, the top strap pushes it up my head and will cause it to fall off slowly.
I recommend using a combination of both, but keeping the strap at the back somewhat loose but tight enough it won’t let your headset shake around.
Alongside this, the headsets facial interface creaks very quickly, within a week of light usage mine began to sort of rub against the plastic and make a creaking sound.
This seems like it’s inevitable but it should not happen so soon, by product of a cheap headset.
But as for complaints that is all.
Thrill seeker throughly stress tested his quest 2 and even dropped it from 10ft and it lived, it’s durability is not a concern, but the interface is a very big weak point, even in his video it was the first thing to break.
If you’re curious of the video I’m talking about, you can find it on YouTube: “Thrillseeker quest 2 extreme torture test”
I think this concludes my review.
TLDR;
Amazing headset, cheap price, works good alone, works good on link and air link but needs good specs minimum i5 8th gen/Ryzen 5 and GTX 1660 for a smooth experience, facial interface gives in after a while, headset is light and comfy, appearance is nice.
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