Today I’m sharing my final thoughts on the HP Reverb G2 after using it for about a month.
This newest headset by HP.
It distinguishes itself with an interesting collaboration.
The headset was made together with Valve and Microsoft, and it has the highest resolution
screen you’ll find among major VR headset brands.
It’s a fascinating headset for sure as it adds a more affordable choice in the PC VR
market.
You can get one for 600 US dollars, which includes two motion controllers.
Keep in mind that HP is still working on shipping pre-orders at the time of making this video,
so if you buy one now, you will most likely not receive one until 2021.
Hey everyone!
Cas here, and we received the headset for free from HP, so thanks to them, but as always,
we never accept review direction and we give you our honest opinions.
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So let’s start with setup & software first.
The setup is painless if you’re a Windows user.
You do need the latest updates to have the Mixed Reality Portal installed.
Then to use SteamVR, all you need is the “Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR” app.
If you don’t have it, a pop-up will show asking you to install it when you launch SteamVR
with your Reverb G2 connected.
Content can be played through the Windows Store, but there isn’t a lot of content
there, so most likely, you will be using this headset with SteamVR.
Thankfully this is entirely possible.
But to connect the headset, you need a USB-C 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.3 ports or better on
your PC.
For laptop users, you get two adapters included in the box, a DisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort
and also a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
The USB-C input supports power delivery, so if your PC supports that, you don’t need
the power adapter, but if you don’t, you need to plug in the headset in a wall plug
too.
The cable length is 6 meters, which is really long and very nice as it gives more freedom
to move.
You also get this cable clip with the headset, and if you watched my previous video, you
know I broke it very quickly, but HP sent me a new one.
So a warning to take care when putting on this clip.
Now, let’s talk about design and comfort.
I think the headset looks great.
It’s all-black with some grey touches here and there, it has a nice logo in the front
that lights up when it’s on, 2 cameras in the front, two at the sides.
The strap tightens using Velcro hook and loops on the sides and a top Velcro loop.
The face cover is magnetic for ease of use, so it comes off and snaps on very easily.
The nose flap here is excellent as it lets almost no light in, even with my tiny nose
😉.
The back cushions can be removed or replaced if needed.
Like when you sweat a lot and wanna clean it.
You cannot remove the face foam from the facial interface, though, so don’t pull too much.
I think this is one of the headsets that doesn’t look too big on the head, and I find it the
most comfortable PC VR headset out-of-the-box to date because the headset feels light and
the face foam feels good.
The off-ear speakers by Valve help with comfort, too as they are off-ear speakers that sit
a couple of millimeters away from your ear, so it doesn’t get as hot as wearing on-ear
headphones.
Of course, the headset is still somewhat front-heavy, and comfort is very personal, so some people
might need to do some modding to make it more comfortable.
So these off-ear speakers from Valve are the same as those on the Valve Index, and I’ve
always said that those speakers have the best sound quality on a VR headset.
So same here, with these speakers, you won’t need anything else.
It’s a fantastic design too, off-ear, yet can direct sounds in your ear without much
sound leakage.
You can remove these speakers, but there is no audio jack, so unless you are using Bluetooth,
there is really no reason to do so.
Below the headset are dual microphones, and well, they sound like this.
Out-of-the-box they are very loud though and can cause cracking because of that, so to
get better microphone quality, make sure to turn down the recorded volume in the settings.
When you do that, it sounds pretty good.
But judge for yourself.
Now my favorite part of the headset, the display.
Whenever I put on the headset, I’m in awe of how crispy clear everything looks.
The dual LCD screens have a resolution of 2160x2160 per eye, and they have a full RGB
stripe arrangement.
This mostly removes that blank space between pixels, the screen door effect, which is beautiful.
And I don’t see any weird display issues either; only if I really start looking for
it, I can see some chromatic aberration, so a little bit of green, red color fringes.
But again, only if you start looking for it, and I don’t think most people will notice
this.
I think Microsoft just updated this and made this a lot better.
So there is blurriness at the sides when you move your eyeballs only and not your head,
other headsets have this as well but this is much more noticeable with a high resolution
screen like this one.
But I don’t think a lot of people look without moving their heads, so I don’t think it’s
much of a problem.
So I think this is one beautiful screen.
Since there are two screens, there is also a very welcome manual IPD adjustment to set
the lenses precisely to match your eyes’ distance.
The range for this is 60 to 68mm.
In the WMR software, you can choose between a refresh rate of 90Hz and 60Hz; the latter
can be used for movie watching.
Not very special as most headsets have these refresh rates.
The lenses are new, Fresnel lenses, designed by Valve.
So the lenses on the Valve Index had a pretty noticeable glare around the edges of the lenses,
but these newer lenses look improved.
There is still glare around the edges if I look at stuff with high contrast, but it’s
moved more towards the edges so it bothers me less.
The sweet spot seems decent too; it’s easy for me to find that sharp center of the image.
And well, everything combined makes the visual quality during gaming so beautiful and more
immersive to me.
I was replaying Half-Life: Alyx in this headset, and in like chapter 2, where you go into one
of the alien-infested zones, I saw an alive, moist root or something, and I honestly never
noticed it as much as with this headset.
It just looked way grosser to me, and I actually felt some goosebumps and I already finished
the game, so this was fascinating to me.
And that’s with every game actually and app as well in this headset; textures are
so sharp that it attracts you to look at it more closely.
Sadly, the field of view is smaller than most other VR headsets.
With the stock face-foam, the black borders are very present.
While the screen gives me more immersion, this breaks the immersion a little again,
especially if you come from other headsets.
This section is for those who wear glasses.
I always use these medium-sized ones, and well, good news, these will fit.
Then, I think this is also important, even though the headset seems affordable, do keep
in mind that this is a PC VR headset with a high resolution, so you’re going to need
a VR ready PC that is pretty beefy computer to handle the full resolution of the headset,
the game, and potentially your multiple monitors.
HP recommends these minimum PC specifications at full resolution.
There are also minimum specifications for running the headset at half resolution, although
that would be a shame and then I think you’d be better off with a different headset.
If you don’t have a VR ready PC yet, then the price can really add up.
Even my RTX 2080TI graphics card still had some trouble in some games like Half-Life
Alyx, but I am also running dual monitors, one of which is a wide-screen monitor so I
think that won’t help either.
As for the controllers, unfortunately, these are not my favorite controllers.
I think they are big, bulky, and they need two AA batteries per controller.
The battery life is okay, about 7 to 10 hours, which is a guess btw as I sometimes forgot
to time my playtime (I’m sorry).
Then they have these big rings that glow with lights that are used for the tracking.
They are so big that I bump them together a lot in games where I need to put the controllers
close to each other, such as for reloading a handgun.
Eventually, if you have the patience for it, you do learn to compensate for it.
That brings us to tracking.
The G2 comes with inside-out tracking and 6-degrees-of-freedom, natural movement.
So in my first impressions video, I got a lot of comments of you saying that it’s
my green screen studio that’s causing tracking issues.
So for this review, I tested everything in my living room as well as in my studio, and
I tried several lighting situations too.
Sad to say, not much has changed, while the tracking is slightly better, the main issues
persist.
So headset tracking is good, no issues there.
But the G2 tracking uses visible light where the cameras need to see the controller’s
lights to know where the controllers are positioned.
This comes with some disadvantages, the tracking will have trouble when something in your room
is really bright.
For example, sunlight from the window can cause tracking loss.
This technology also needs contrasting colors, so it works best in a fully furnished room
with multiple colors instead of a room with just one color.
So when the controllers are in sight, tracking is good enough.
Some controller occlusion trouble here and there.
That’s when you put the controllers in one line, and the lights kind of merge into each
other for the cameras.
But the tracking has the most trouble when the controllers move out of the camera’s
viewing range since that range is small.
So there are several tracking areas where the controllers lose tracking.
These areas are on the top of the headset, below the headset, and also right in front
of the headset.
For example, tracking loss is most noticeable in shooters, where you need to grab a gun
from below the headset a lot or aim while looking through a scope.
In games like Beat Saber, where movement is fast, it happens like two or three times per
song because it does recover fast enough.
I think this isn’t as much of an issue when you’re a casual player or even a mid-range
player if you don’t mind compensating for it because it does recover fast enough.
Like I spend a lot of time in the 3D drawing app Tilt Brush, and when I wanted to draw
in detail, I would zoom in and put the controllers in front of me to draw.
They then lose tracking as I’m in the front dead zone.
So then, to compensate, I have to move the drawing further away from me so that I can
continue drawing.
Bow and arrow games are completely fine, by the way, because of the side cameras.
Games like Half-Life: Alyx are playable too.
Any simulator games are completely fine as well.
However, if you’re a competitive player where every point counts, I think this is
an issue.
But, even so, I do not think the tracking is terrible, since it happens occasionally
and not all the time, but it would be nice if it were improved further.
The inside-out tracking software is all maintained by Microsoft, and it used to be much worse
actually, so it is possible they can improve it even further over time.
There is one benefit from having inside-out tracking on a PC VR headset, and that is,
if you have a VR laptop or a mini-ITX case, then it’s much easier to carry this headset
with you than a headset with external base stations.
So the HP Reverb G2 is definitely the king of clarity, but it’s not the perfect headset
as it does have compromises in other areas.
The biggest one is tracking, but it might not bother everyone as you can play most games,
and you lose tracking only occasionally.
In my opinion, this headset is suited for certain game genres, and those that are willing
to compensate for the tracking loss and just want that visual fidelity.
I don’t recommend people who get competitive to get this headset.
But whether this headset is for you depends on what factors you find the most important,
and I can’t say that for you without knowing that.
For example, you all ask me a lot whether I prefer the Valve Index with 144Hz or the
G2.
By the way, I’m going to make a big VR headset comparison video later this year again where
I go into detail about this but summarized for now.
I, personally, don’t mind trading the field of view of the Index for the higher resolution
of the G2.
I find the G2 more immersive like I get that wow-factor again when playing games because
of the clarity, so I find myself picking up the G2 for certain game genres as I don’t
mind the occasional tracking loss so much.
But when I want to play Beat Saber, I do rather use different headsets with better tracking.
Some people might find a wider field of view more important or more immersive, so then
the Valve Index is the better choice.
I recommend checking what is more important to you, then checking out other VR headset
reviews, like the ones on our channel and based on that you should be able to pick one
that suits you best.
Of course, I wish we had a headset that had all the best specs combined.
This perfect headset just doesn’t exist yet, but I’m hopeful we will get one eventually.
By the way, I do know that there are ways to use the Valve Index controllers and base
stations with the G2, I did that for the Rift S as well, but I think that warrants a whole
video by its own.
Now I’m curious, what aspects of a VR headset do you find most important?
Like, is it visual quality or wider FOV?
Let me know in the comments below.
Anyway, I hope this video helped you out, and if you got some time left, you could support
us by watching more.
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And as always, VR on!