Good day, my fellow adventurers!
We have been using the Valve Index for about a month now so, almost naturally, it is time…
for another headset review!
In this video, I’ll let you know our final thoughts on the Index and answer the question
of whether we think this headset is worth its price.
If you already own the Valve Index, let us know if you agree or don’t agree with us
by leaving a comment down below.
Your thoughts might be able to help others too, so let’s help each other out.
In case you are looking for a specific subject, make sure to check out the timestamps I put
in the description.
And now, let’s talk Virtual Reality.
For those that are new to the Valve Index, let’s start with a quick introduction.
In 2016, Valve, the company behind Steam and game classics like Half-Life, Portal & Dota
2, have dipped their toes in VR by co-developing and launching the HTC VIVE.
Now, using that experience, Valve has launched its own VR headset named the Valve Index.
It’s a high-fidelity headset with significant upgrades over the first VR headsets.
The most intriguing upgrades are the display’s high refresh rate and its low persistence.
It also has increased field of view and speakers never seen before in other VR headsets.
The Valve Index released on June 28th, 2019.
A full kit, which includes the VR headset, two Valve Base Stations, and the Valve Index
Controllers, costs 999 US dollars or 1079 euros.
If you already own an HTC VIVE, you can decide to upgrade in parts since the headset will
work on the HTC VIVE Base Stations v1.0.
You can order everything in the kit separately.
As of now, you can only get the Valve Index in certain countries.
I’ll link the countries and the order page in our description.
We’ll dive into the technical specs later on.
But let’s talk about its look and feel first.
They say appearance doesn’t matter.
But with VR headsets, the exterior is as important as its interior for the best experience.
So, this is the Valve Index.
It has a glossy transparent front panel which you can remove.
Once taken out, it shows the air vents for the cooling system and a front expansion slot
with a USB-A connector.
Valve’s goal with this is to allow smart creators to mod the headset more easily.
These four little holes are magnetic and allow for easy reattachment of the plastic front
panel.
There are also two cameras on the front that allows for passthrough and hopefully more
in the future.
Right now, I don’t find this very useful as the passthrough software is slow.
At the bottom, there is a button that opens SteamVR.
And at the left, there’s an interpupillary distance slider allowing you to move the lenses
closer to each other to match your eyes.
Then there’s the strap which is just like the Deluxe Audio Strap.
There’s a dialer at the back that you can turn to make the strap tighter.
The sides are spring-loaded to give you room for putting on the headset without having
to loosen it again, which is a welcome little detail.
The cushions have a denim look, but they feel softer.
There is a removable faceplate which uses magnets to make it easily re-attachable.
There’s also a dialer at the right of the headset that you can turn to move the lenses
closer to your eyes, giving you extra field of view.
More about this later.
The headset comes with a Displayport and USB 3.0 cable and a power adapter attached.
So no more extra link box to power the device.
The cable length is 5 meter or 16 feet.
And of course, the audio solution by Valve.
If you look closely, you’ll see that these are speakers and not on-ear headphones, which
is what you usually see in other VR headsets.
But more about the audio quality later.
Let’s talk about comfort now.
For me, I do think the Valve Index is one of the most comfortable headsets that we own.
It has great weight distribution and combined with the faceplate and the cushions.
I think it will suit most heads.
The Halo design strap of the Rift S and the PSVR are still the most comfortable to me
since it takes away slightly more front heaviness.
But the Valve Index comes very, very close.
The Valve Index speakers do not touch the ears, which help more with comfort.
Headsets like the Rift S and PSVR both need an external sound solution like headphones
for good sound, and because of this, I think the Index wins on comfort overall.
Now let’s move on to some specs, and while you are watching this video, please leave
a like to show your support!
First up.
This headset has two LCD panels with a resolution of 1440x1600 per eye.
While this is the same as the VIVE PRO, these LCDs have more subpixels than the OLED display
of the VIVE PRO which allows for better sharpness.
However, the LCDs come at the cost of greyer blacks.
Do the greyer blacks matter, though?
While I can see the difference, I don’t think it matters much unless you only play
dark games.
The sharpness makes up for it in most other games.
Reading text and playing games are both crispy clear using the Index.
I think this has to do with the higher refresh rate and the low persistence too.
You can crank up the refresh rate of the Valve Index from 80 and 90Hz to 120 and 144Hz.
Cranking it up makes everything noticeably smooth and crisper when compared to a 72Hz
device.
In other headset reviews, I’ve said that I don’t notice much difference in refresh
rate between 72 to 90Hz, but going to 120 and 144 is a significant difference.
Games are much smoother, and I notice more detail.
Does it allow me to play more comfortably without getting motion sick?
I haven’t noticed much difference there, but I think by now I’ve gotten a fair pair
of VR leg.
Here’s the catch though.
Please be aware that we are running the Index on a PC with an i9-9900K CPU and a 2080TI
graphics card so we can play games at 144Hz without much trouble, but if you don’t have
the PC requirements for it, you won’t be able to do this without frame drops.
You don’t need the same specs as us, but I suggest you to check which specs allows
you to crank up the refresh rate.
The Valve Index displays also feature low persistence, which means that these displays
prevent motion blur when you move your head.
So anything you see in the headset stays as sharp when moving as when you’re standing
still.
Valve says that their low persistence is actually a 5-times improvement over the first generation
PC VR headsets like the original Rift and HTC VIVE.
So while the resolution is slightly more than the Rift S and exactly the same as the HTC
VIVE PRO, these upgrades allow for a better clarity still.
I think the Valve Index’s high refresh rate combined with the low persistence is the reason
that I’m noticing more detail.
It is an improvement over all other headsets I’ve tried so far.
Since the displays are LCDs, it also offers better fill-factor than OLED, which basically
means that the screen covers more light-emitting pixels.
The better the fill-factor, the crisper the image, and also less screen door
effect.
And here, the Valve Index does noticeably have less screen door effect than the HTC
VIVE PRO.
And much less SDE compared to the original Rift
and HTC VIVE.
The SDE is still there on the Valve Index, but I only
notice it when I look for it.
The lenses seem different too, but the most interesting part is that Valve has made the
lenses adjustable, allowing you to increase the field of view by putting the lenses as
close as possible to your eyes.
The field of view difference is definitely noticeable, it might not seem a lot, but if
you switch to a lower FOV headset and switch back straight away, then you’ll notice it.
I can still see the borders of the headset though, and the FOV increase is not as much
as the Pimax 5K+, but enough to make me feel more immersed.
Valve also canted the displays outward a little bit to increase FOV a little bit further.
It seems like Valve experience with making the HTC VIVE has paid off here.
Now, the Valve Index also has some rough aspects.
First thing I’ve noticed is that the new lenses seem to bring more god rays and glare.
Mostly only happens if you are looking at something with high contrast, like white text
on a black background.
You’ll see the white text kind of get washed out like it has a slight glow around it.
In reality, the contrast is lightening up the edges of the lenses.
It seems to be worse than the original VIVE, I usually forget about it though when playing
a game, but it is more noticeable to me than with other headsets.
The front of the headset seems to get hot too.
I don’t notice this on my face, but when I touch the headset, it feels very hot.
The cooling system blows the warmth out in the front, but it seems like the plastic front
is keeping the heat in.
So I tend to remove the plastic front when I’m playing longer sessions.
It looks less cool, but it seems safer.
This makes me wonder why there aren’t more air vents on the sides.
People have said that the headset gets too hot when playing long sessions and that it
creates issues with fogging.
I’ve been waiting for the heat to become an issue, but it hasn’t for me yet.
As for tracking, the Valve Index uses external sensors to track the headset; it uses the
same system as the HTC VIVE.
So with two Base Stations in your play space, you can get accurate, full 360 degrees tracking.
This tracking system has always offered the best tracking for us.
At of this moment, there is no other VR tracking system that tops this one for us, so yes,
the Valve Index tracking is good.
However, this comes at the cost of more complicated initial setup and much more cables.
The Valve Index is backward compatible with the original HTC VIVE Base Stations version
1.0.
We have tried both the original VIVE Base Stations as well as the new Valve Index Base
Stations.
I don’t notice a difference in tracking here.
The Valve Base Stations does seem easier to set up for accurate tracking since the new
tech doesn’t require the Base Stations to see each other and it has a bigger range too.
But if you already own the VIVE Base Stations, you most likely will have the setup ready,
so you won’t need to change anything.
If you are on a budget, I recommend keeping the old Base Stations while ordering the Index
headset and Index Controllers separately.
As for the controllers, they are fantastic.
They offer natural hand interactions, like opening your hand to drop something without
dropping the controllers.
Or doing the peace sign or even flipping the bird, it is a lot of fun, and no other controllers
are more natural at the moment.
Whether the controllers is worth its price will heavily depend on how many developers
will support it.
I will be posting a separate video review on the controllers soon as I think some people
are interested in just the controllers with their current headset.
Stay tuned for that.
Now, one of the most curious parts of the Valve Index for me was the audio solution.
These might look like headphones from afar, but if you look closer, they are actually
off-ear speakers.
They float in the air and so they don’t touch your ear, however, the sound is still
well-directed in your ear offering great 3D surround sound making it feel like the sound
is coming from around you.
This immerses me more in the game, and also, maybe slightly silly, but it makes me feel
safer too being able to hear what is going on in real life.
And the audio is fantastic to me, the bass sounds good, and it has enough power to make
it very loud.
I usually have the sound lower than 50%.
If you have people over, they can hear what you do if you put it very loud.
But at a low volume, there is surprisingly almost no audio leakage, while the audio stays
clear to the player.
This is a very pleasant audio solution and one I hope more VR headset manufacturers will
consider later.
And for the true audiophiles out there, you can remove these speakers and replace it with
other headphones.
So do I think the extra clarity is worth the price difference when compared to, for example,
the Rift S?
It is only fair to compare the full kit price of the Valve Index with the Rift S price.
Since buying the Rift S for 399 US dollars includes the controllers and full 360 tracking.
The full Valve Index kit costs 999 US dollars.
That is a 600 dollar difference, and I think that is expensive because the extra clarity
is not that much of a difference when compared with the Rift S. On top of that, you’ll
need a beefy PC to be able to handle the higher refresh rate for the extra clarity, and thus
you’ll need even more money.
So if you are looking to buy your first VR headset and don’t have the PC requirements
to run a high refresh rate.
I think the Rift S would suffice.
However, if you are a VR enthusiast, and you use VR quite often.
The Valve Index is the top choice right now over headsets in the same price range, like
the HTC VIVE PRO.
As a VR enthusiast myself, I am very happy with this headset.
I think Valve was able to deliver what they promised.
I do miss the clarity, FOV, and refresh rate when I’m playing with a different headset
now.
So as of now, this is my new go-to headset for any SteamVR games.
Do you agree with our final thoughts on the Valve Index headset?
Let us know your thoughts, agreed or disagreed.
Anything you comment down below might help a future VR enthusiast.
Plus we’d love to hear it too!
;) A special thanks goes to artArmin and a special
shout out goes to his Patreon page – Everyone, thank you all so much for your support
by watching.
And as always VR on!