Hello fellow travelers!
We have been using the Oculus Quest for about 1 month now and as you probably noticed, we
have been using it a lot.
So here are our final thoughts on what we think of the Oculus Quest.
The goal of this video is to let you know who we think this headset is for and whether
you should buy it.
If you already own the Quest, then we would love to know if you agree with us.
If not, why not?
Let us know down below.
Maybe it will help someone else too.
For those that are totally new to the Oculus Quest.
Let’s start with an introduction:
The Oculus Quest is a new VR headset released on May 21st, 2019.
You can buy the 64-gigabyte version for 399 dollars and the 128-gigabyte version for 499
dollars.
The Oculus Quest is an all-in-one gaming system that lets you explore Virtual Reality worlds
without a PC and completely wireless.
It features 6-degrees-of-freedom inside-out tracking which allows you to move in the virtual
world naturally as you would in real life without the need for external sensors.
It also comes with two controllers that allows your hands and gestures to appear in Virtual
Reality.
These features combined makes it the most portable VR headset out there that can give
you the same kind of experience as a PC VR headset.
But how does it perform and does the price justify it?
We will answer that in this video.
This is…
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Before we begin, a big thank you goes to Oculus for providing us this Quest headset so that
we had the time to review it properly.
First stop.
The look & feel.
So this is the Quest.
It has a hard cover on the front with four wide-angle sensors at the edges.
The on/off button is here and the USB-C port for charging is located here.
At the bottom, there is an IPD slider to adjust the distance of the lenses to your eyes.
And volume buttons.
At each side, there is one 3.5mm headphone jack.
You can use both to put headphones or earbuds in.
The straps are rigid, but a little less rigid than the original Oculus Rift.
The facial interface is made of spandex materials and knit mesh.
The thickness and structure make it feels soft and comfortable on the face.
It can be taken out and switched to a different material as well.
There is a little sensor here that activates the headset when you put it on.
We like the Oculus Quest’s look personally.
The rounded corners make it a little bit more playful, while the materials combined still
gives it an elegant look.
As for comfort when wearing the headset.
Let me start by saying that comfort is a very personal thing and depends on your face and
head shape.
So what we feel might not be as accurate for you.
The headset has adjustable straps.
You can adjust the sides and the top by hooking the velcro.
For us, the Oculus Quest is a front heavy headset.
The Quest has a weight of 571 gram and most of its weight is in front of the headset.
Not very strange since it houses everything in there to make it a standalone & wireless
device.
But that does come with the issue that plays sessions of longer than a half hour makes
it too front heavy and uncomfortable on the head.
Short sessions are okay as long as you wear the headset strap right!
Please take note of the tutorial on your Oculus app.
There are third-party solutions for this.
For example, this top head strap by Studioform VR for 22 dollars helps a lot against the
front heaviness.
I’ll put a link down below.
We can’t use the Quest comfortably without it anymore.
People have also been strapping various counterweights at the back of the headset to balance the
headset.
We do think that it would have been nice if Oculus provided a solution themselves for
people experiencing this problem.
Let’s move on to our thoughts on the Quest’s performance.
The Oculus Quest runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, this is a mobile processor found in mobile
phones like the Samsung S8.
The headset also has 4 GB ram.
The headset was designed with the goal of maximizing the performance on this chip.
There is an active cooling system with a fan in the headset that allows the CPU to run
at higher clock rates.
Do we feel the difference between this and for example, the passive cooling, on the Oculus
Go?
Most definitely.
The Oculus Go can heat up sometimes and turn it self off but we haven’t experienced this
with the Quest.
There were a lot of people concerned about this two-year-old processor being able to
handle VR games but we can happily tell you that the Quest performs very well.
Of course, we would love to see a stronger processor in next iterations, but there’s
also a benefit of using an older processor: you keep the price low this way.
The display has a refresh rate of 72Hz.
Do we feel any difference here from a 90Hz headset?
No.
We don’t notice any difference.
The display also has a resolution of 1440x1600 per eye and it features an OLED panel.
This is higher than the original Rift and it shows immediately.
Reading text is noticeably sharper.
The OLED panel gives deeper blacks and more contrast in colors which is beautiful but
it also causes us to notice more glare.
This isn’t very noticeable in normal lighted scenes, however, if you are in a scene with
high contrasts like a black screen with white objects.
Then you’ll notice the glare more and it kinda looks like the lenses are not cleaned
properly.
This doesn’t bother me much personally though but there are people more sensitive to this.
The screen door effect is still noticeable but better than the original Rift.
Oculus says that the Fresnel lenses are improved over those used in the original Rift but I
haven’t noticed much difference here.
The field of view also feels the same as the original Rift which is about 100 degrees.
So what about tracking?
As said before the Oculus Quest features 6-degrees-of-freedom tracking which allows you to move your whole
body around naturally in the virtual world.
Most other standalone devices like the Oculus Go only had 3-degrees-of-freedom tracking
which only allowed you to look around.
These older standalone devices also did not have two controllers that you could use naturally,
while the Oculus Quest has.
This is definitely one of the unique selling points of the Oculus Quest since this is like
the 360 tracking experience that you would get on a more expensive PC VR headset.
The Quest also has inside-out tracking which is tracking without any external sensors.
The benefit here is that you can use this headset almost anywhere you want.
The tracking is made possible by the four wide-angle sensors on the front of the headset
and because there are four it works very well.
We are able to play fast-paced games like Beat Saber on Expert or even shooters without
much trouble.
This does mean that if you put your controller behind your head where there is no sensor,
then your hand could lose tracking.
This only happens very occassionally though since you don’t put your hand behind your
head that often and Oculus’ software is able to compromise this without you noticing.
So 360 tracking with external sensors will always be better but we are very satisfied
with the Quest’s inside out tracking.
It performs very well, better than the inside-out tracking headsets with only two sensors on
the front.
There is one disadvantage here though, you cannot play with the Oculus Quest in the dark
since it needs light to continue tracking.
You can play in dimly lighted areas.
Playing outside only works in the shadows.
We won’t recommend playing outside though since the sun can damage the lenses.
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The Oculus Quest also comes with a new Guardian system and Passthrough.
A guardian is a virtual wall that you can create around you to indicate where your real
life walls or furniture are.
It is to help prevent you from bumping into them.
Passthrough allows you to see your real world play space through the cameras while wearing
the headset.
This combined makes it possible for you to create a guardian more easily by just drawing
the walls around you using a controller pointing it at the ground.
There are also two modes available: stationary and room scale.
If you choose stationary, a small virtual wall will be automatically created around
you.
This is mostly used for seated games.
The new guardian system works really great and adds to the headset’s ease of use.
It also makes it safer since passthrough will activate automatically if you walk outside
your virtual walls.
The Oculus Quest headset is also able to memorize multiple guardian setups.
We have noticed though that this works about half of the time.
It seems to depend on where you are standing when you put on the headset.
If you stand in the same place where you created the guardian, then it will have less trouble
recognizing where you are.
This combination of passthrough and the new guardian system also creates a very cool Holodeck
effect when you walk from outside the walls to inside the walls…
Anyway, moving on!
Even if the Quest performs right, it’s no fun when there is no content at all.
I think this is where Oculus has done a great job though, they are working with many developers
on getting games on the Quest.
So at launch, Oculus launched 50 Oculus Quest games with it which will definitely keep you
busy for a while.
The Quest has a separate content store than the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Go and it has
a stricter policy for devs.
While the Quest tracking is like a PC VR headset, there is one major trade-off here.
The graphics of the games.
The visual fidelity of Quest games is noticeably lower than that of a PC VR headset.
It’s logical since the Quest is powered by a mobile processor, while a PC VR headset
is powered by a powerful PC.
To give you an idea, here’s a comparison with the PC VR Robo Recall and the Quest version.
The Quest versions will look more cartoonish as it will have fewer textures and shadows
for example.
The good news here is that gameplay plays the same.
If you are completely new to VR, then I don’t think visual fidelity will matter much.
However, if you are a veteran VR gamer that owns headsets like the HTC VIVE or the RIFT
S for its visual fidelity, then you will notice this and it might not be for you.
What about battery life then?
A full charge gives you about two hours of play time.
You can also charge and play at the same time since the cable is long enough, although Oculus
does not recommend doing this.
Charging the headset from empty to full takes about 2 hours too.
You can also use an external battery to charge the device.
You can then put the battery in your pocket and continue playing.
We tested a battery in our latest accessories for the Quest video.
I’ll link it down below.
Let’s talk about the controllers now.
The controllers are new and they are the same controllers that you get with the new Rift
S headset.
So you can use the controllers with the Rift S too if you’d like.
The buttons are still the same as the old Touch controllers.
The buttons are still capacitive giving you the ability to make a couple of hand gestures
like a thumbs up.
These new controllers feel more ergonomic to me with its longer base handle and the
way the buttons are now positioned.
It’s also a little less heavy (how many grams?).
While playing a game I don’t notice much difference between these controllers compared
to the older ones.
There have been people mentioning that the battery cover flies off while playing a game.
We have not had this issue before ourselves.
Moving on to audio.
The Oculus Quest features positional audio built into the headset.
There are holes at the sides of the straps where the sound comes out.
This means you can use the headset without headphones and others will be able to hear
what you are doing.
This comes as a benefit that you can hear people sneaking up to you while you are busy
fending off orcs in VR ;)
You can plug in headphones or earbuds in one of the two 3.5mm headphone jacks.
You are also able to plug in two pairs of earbuds and it will both have sound.
The audio sounds okay to me.
I have to be honest, I’m not an audiophile so I don’t know much about audio.
I am, however, able to hear some bass, but I do prefer using headphones or earbuds when
playing games that rely on music like Beat Saber since that sounds better.
When I’m just playing any game, then just using the speakers isn’t that bad either.
At maximum volume, it is able to drown out any outside noise.
I usually have it around 50%.
The audio is clear enough to make you feel immersed inside a VR game.
There is a built-in mic too which sounds pretty good.
I did catch some crackling when talking too loud occasionally but this mic will do the
trick for social VR experiences.
So we have come to the conclusion.
Who do we think this headset is for?
And should you buy it?
We think the Oculus Quest is a quality headset for its price tag.
While it does have some trade-offs, I think these trade-offs are for the greater good.
In my opinion, I think Oculus’ goal with this headset is not to give you an upgrade,
but to make a more accessible headset that everyone can use.
We think that more people in the industry will help get the industry more money and
that is what we need to get more content and better hardware in the future.
Especially if you are new to VR and are looking for a headset to have fun in.
Then this is definitely one of the most affordable options that provide experiences that comes
near to that of PC VR headsets and we recommend it.
If you already own a PC VR headset and a powerful PC, then this headset might not be for you
as you are probably used to visual fidelity.
Unless you are looking for a more portable headset to accompany other headsets.
So if you are planning on bringing the headset to friends to play with or to use while traveling,
then this headset is perfect.
Especially with cross-play, you’d be able to continue some adventures straight from
your PC VR headset to the Oculus Quest.
If visual fidelity is very important to you, then I would not recommend the Oculus Quest.
A standalone VR headset like the Oculus Quest cannot compete with PC VR headsets.
A PC VR headset will always have better graphics since it's powered by a powerful PC.
However, that is also much more expensive.
As you probably know, we own most of the major PC VR headsets, however, we don’t think
visual fidelity is that important personally.
When we are immersed in an Oculus Quest game, we kind of forget about the graphics.
That is the power of VR, for us.
I honestly use the Oculus Quest more than my other headset because it is much easier
to put this one on my head than to turn on the PC and plugging in the other headsets
and sensors.
And now, to the last but not least question...
Which size should you get if you are planning to get one?
I think the 64-gigabyte version should be enough since most games are under 3 gigabytes.
However, if you are planning on storing a lot of movies then I would recommend getting
the 128-gigabyte version.
So let us know in the comments if you are going to buy an Oculus Quest!
If not, let us know why not.
Maybe your opinion will help someone else reading your comment too.
And if you already own a Quest, let us know if you agree with us.
Or not.
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!