This little thing is already one month old.
So here is my review of the Quest 2 after one month of use.
Hello good people – I’m Cas, and I’m actually a little late with this video because
if you’ve followed me for a while, then you know I’ve been using the Quest 2 for
over a month already since Oculus sent one to us early.
There was just a lot going on in the VR industry that took my time, which is only good.
But I want to stay consistent with our headset reviews so I don’t want to miss anything
as I think more reviews are always useful.
So let’s get started.
But first, this is your channel for VR info; consider subscribing if you haven’t yet.
And now, join me beyond reality.
This is the Oculus Quest 2.
Released on October 13, 2020, at 299 US dollar (EUR 349) for the 64 GB version and 399 US
dollars (EUR 449) for the 256GB version.
This little device has stirred up a lot of things in the VR industry.
Good things, but also worrying things.
Some of the good things are that it makes VR way more accessible since it’s a standalone
VR headset that doesn’t need a PC to play VR games.
It’s wireless so that you can play anywhere you want, and the price makes it more affordable.
What surprised most of us was that this new headset is cheaper than its predecessor, the
Quest 1, even though a lot of the hardware specifications are improved.
But of course, compromises have been made to lower the price, which we’ll talk about
in this video.
But the most worrying thing is that people say: Facebook was able to make this device
cheaper because they will also sell your data.
All fair points and I’ll touch on this topic as well today.
If you don’t have enough time, timestamps are in the description as always, but it does
help us if you watch the entire video.
So if you do that, thank you very much.
So let’s start with the exterior, the design.
It’s white, the only VR headset that’s white, except maybe the PSVR, that has some
white lines on it, but all of the other ones are darker colors.
I do like the color; I think it is pretty.
But the biggest con is that it gets dirty fast and it’s not easy to clean with Oculus’
recommended dry cloth.
We have two devices at home, and both of them already have something on it.
So you got to be more careful with what you do with this VR headset than any other.
This headset is probably the smallest of them all—weighing 503 grams, which is about 10%
lighter than the Quest 1.
Less weight is always better as it means less strain on your face and neck.
But unfortunately, 10% isn’t enough to make it more comfortable because of this soft strap
that you get out-of-the-box.
I think most gamers who want to play longer than 30 minutes will wish for a different
solution.
There are options out there.
Like the official Oculus Elite Strap, you can watch my review on it.
But be careful with this one, as many people have been reporting that the sides can crack.
It hasn’t happened to us, and currently, Oculus has paused shipping the Elite strap
while they look into this.
Another option I like is using the HTC VIVE Deluxe Audio Strap with 3D printed adapters,
which is also very comfortable.
And as time goes by, I’m sure more third-party accessories will come with more affordable
straps.
For now, I’ll link both I mentioned in the description below.
So for comfort, the headset is not getting any points from me as it’s still front-heavy,
and by having to buy an additional strap, the headset becomes more expensive.
But of course, the most exciting and essential part of this review is what’s inside of
it.
So let’s talk about its hardware specs and performance.
So the headset runs on the newest Qualcomm system-on-a-chip designed for VR and AR, the
Snapdragon XR2.
It also runs on 6GB of RAM, and when comparing this to Quest 1, it’s an excellent upgrade.
Not a lot of people expected this upgrade, us neither, and were positively surprised.
And it’s easy to tell that Quest 2 is faster just by measuring the headset’s boot time.
Games also run noticeably smoother when compared to Quest 1.
Plus, by now, many developers have also upgraded the graphics of their games for Quest 2, and
it makes a big difference in a lot of games.
Some developers even add additional gameplay elements just for Quest 2, like extra items
to explore, or it goes as far as adding more intricate enemy physics.
The refresh rate is at the time of doing this review for all games still 72hz.
Only an experimental 90Hz mode is available that only works for certain Oculus apps, like
the Home Environment and Browser.
Whatever does work in 90Hz though, does look noticeably smoother.
I feel that these upgrades (SOC, RAM & refresh rate) are the headset’s biggest game-changer.
In the next sections, there are compromises, so let’s get into that.
Let’s talk about the display.
It uses a single Fast-Switch LCD, while the previous Quest had dual OLED panels.
This means, when compared to the OLEDs, the LCD has greyer blacks and different color
contrasts.
On the OLED, colors are more vibrant, but I feel the LCD screens have better, more realistic
contrast levels.
Colors will come down to personal preference; some people dislike the new colors; some others
mind it less.
I’m with the latter.
The biggest pro of the LCD is the better subpixel layout, so a better fill factor, which significantly
reduces the screen-door effect.
You know that little black grid you could see in older VR headsets?
That’s really hard to notice now, which is excellent news.
This display, because of the new resolution of almost 4K (3664 x 1920 total - 1832 x 1920
per eye), is also crispy clear.
Text is readable, and it’s the first headset I feel I can finally work in for at least
a couple of hours.
Unfortunately, this LCD has a limitation, which is more latency response times.
It causes some kind of motion blur that is very noticeable when you look at something
with high contrast.
For example, white text on a black background.
This isn’t really distracting when playing VR games as you don’t notice it as much
when you’re slaying zombies, and it may get better when we get 90Hz mode indefinitely.
But some people might be more sensitive to it.
The lenses are not so different, still fresnels, and they are even the same physical size,
so if you have any prescription lens adapters, you could keep using the same ones, which
is nice.
But yeah, no improvement here on glare, god rays, and sweet spot.
By the way, I made a separate video where I deep dive into the display.
So if you’re interested in more info and thoughts on this, then check that out.
The link is below.
But I want to move on to one of the most significant changes to this headset—the IPD adjustment.
Your IPD is the distance in millimeters between the pupils of your eyes and if set correctly,
what you see in the headset is sharp.
If not correctly, the image is blurry and can cause motion sickness or headache.
On Quest 2, you can set three fixed IPD settings by moving the lenses with your hand.
My IPD is 59mm and Chary’s IPD is 66.5.
For me setting 1 is clear and great.
For Chary, she has some trouble deciding between 2 and 3.
So for people who are in-between settings, you might have some trouble.
However, people have found out you can move the lenses between two settings if you move
it really slowly, which does help a bit but the lenses are not made for that so it could
not be easy.
So if your IPD is not within range, make sure to try out the headset first before buying
as this is important for the best VR experience.
Then there is one more con here.
If you set the lenses to setting 3, so the most outward one.
Then you will also see the edges of the display, which means you will have less field of view
than the other settings.
While I’m glad Oculus added an IPD adjustment, this part is definitely a compromise.
Speaking about FOV, let’s touch on that now too.
FOV is also one of those things very personal as it’s very different per face shape, but
for me.
FOV is a bit smaller, about 3 degrees less in horizontal and vertical at least compared
to Quest 1.
This isn’t by a lot, and it’s tough to see the difference, so it doesn’t bother
me.
But if you’re sensitive to this and you’re on setting 3, then it might be a dealbreaker.
As for tracking, the headset uses 4 sensors to give you 6-degrees-of-freedom movement
with inside-out-tracking.
This means moving like you would in real life without the need for any external sensors,
so just like Quest 1, HP Reverb, and the Vive Cosmos.
They did slightly move the sensors on Quest 2 a little more to the sides; maybe this helps
a little with better tracking.
However, I haven’t noticed much difference.
The tracking is about the same, Oculus has one of the best inside-out tracking software,
where even when the controllers move out of the sensors range, it is still able to use
artificial intelligence to predict where your hands are.
It’s challenging to eliminate tracking loss with inside-out tracking completely, so occasionally,
you -will- see your controllers drift or even fly away from you.
Then just make sure the sensors can see the controllers again, and you should be fine.
But, for the most part, tracking is fantastic.
You can play any game, even PC VR games, without trouble.
As we’re talking about controllers already, this third version of the Touch controllers
are heavier, bulkier, but Oculus did solve a couple of problems that people had with
the previous Touch controllers the version twos.
For example, the battery cover kept coming off, which doesn’t happen anymore.
There is now more space for your thumb to rest.
And it’s a bigger controller, so it’s much better for people with bigger hands.
Ergonomic-wise, I prefer the previous controllers, but these new ones suffice for sure.
Maybe that’s because I have smaller hands.
Unfortunately, the previous ones do not work with the new headset.
The controller battery life is also very good.
I’m still using these AA batteries that came with the headset, and I think they have
about 2400 milliampere hour, and it’s still not empty.
I do recommend getting two pairs of rechargeable batteries so you can always switch them up
whenever you need them.
As for battery life of the Quest 2 headset itself.
I can get about 2 to 2.5 hours of playtime at a full charge.
Most of the time, I get near 2 hours, most of the time.
Bringing it back to full charge is around 2.5 hours with the provided USB-C cable.
Unfortunately, this charging cable that came in the box is very short (3ft / 1m), so you
can’t use it to charge while playing games because it’s just too short.
But the Oculus Link cable (16ft / 5m) is long enough for you to charge and play if you plug
it into a wall plug, which is what I sometimes do.
If you use the Oculus Link cable in your PC, then it does charge and extends battery life
a little, but the charge is too slow, and it still drains your battery.
So battery life is not the best.
And you most likely will need a power bank solution, like the Elite battery strap.
Unless you play no more than 2 hours each time
The headset comes with on-board speakers and microphone.
It also comes with one 3.5mm audio jack.
Positional audio is built directly in the speakers, and that works well.
The speakers are not the best audio you’ll hear though, so most of the time, you may
want to plug in your own headphones.
Which is what I do when I play Beat Saber for example.
And the microphone, well, is just okay.
Not the best, but you can judge yourself:
“This is recorded with the Oculus Quest 2 microphone.
What do you think about the audio?
Put it below in the comments and don’t forget to leave this video a like if you found it
helpful so far”.
PC VR gameplay Ok, so you may know that the Rift S will be
discontinued in early 2021, and Facebook will no longer pursue PC-only hardware.
So moving on, the focus is the Quest line, standalone headsets that you can also use
to play PC VR games.
So the Quest 2 is essentially a hybrid headset.
Currently, there are two suitable methods to play PC VR games: with the Oculus Link
USB-C cable and wirelessly with Virtual Desktop.
Keep in mind that Virtual Desktop requires you to sideload and a good 5ghz WiFi connection
so may not work for everyone.
Oculus Link, which has gotten better because the XR2 chip can handle higher video bitrates.
This means way less compression artifacts and it looks very good now.
At the time of making this video, Oculus Link is in beta and does have some stability issues,
but will move out of beta later and I think when that happens, Link will be a great option
for PC VR gaming.
For both methods, I made how-to videos with tips on making it work, which I’ll link
below.
But overall, the PC VR experience is great!
This ‘hybrid’ ability is definitely one of the unique selling points of the Quest
2.
Of course, my review videos cannot miss this part for those who wear those sexy glasses.
Chary wears glasses too, and I always use her glasses for this.
They are medium-sized, and they fit in there nicely.
Do make sure to use the glasses spacer to make a bit more room.
And please make sure your glasses are not touching the lenses and scratching it because
that would be a shame.
To be completely safe, I always recommend getting prescription lens adapters.
I’ll link the one Chary uses below.
So there is one question that I repeatedly get is whether you should get the 64 or 256
GB storage version.
So here are the install sizes of some of the top-selling games.
Most of these games have already been updated for Quest 2, and well, I don’t think it’s
a huge difference from previous measures on Quest 1, except maybe for Saints & Sinners.
But it could be that newer games will get bigger if they are made only for Quest 2.
But still, if you are not going to storage movies and plan on actually finishing games
and then deleting them after, games are not very long right now anyway, then 64gb is enough
I think.
Do keep in mind that effectively, with 64gb, you get around 50 because the OS also takes
up some space.
However, if you play many games that you want to jump into once a while, so games that you
can’t really finish like Population: One, Beat Saber, or Onward.
Or maybe you just tend to move on to different games before finishing them; then, I would
recommend getting the 256gb as it’s not easy to transfer save files.
As for me, I did transition to a 256gb version.
Last but definitely not least, we need to talk about the Facebook requirement.
If you buy this headset, you will need to connect a Facebook account to it.
Facebook is about collecting data, and they don’t have a good reputation on data privacy
so keep that in mind that if you use this headset.
If you don’t want to share anything with Facebook, the only option you would have is
not to buy a Facebook headset.
Whether this is a problem for you is up to you.
I’m a tester, so I cannot stop using it, and frankly, I don’t want to, because I
love the technology.
So if you’re like me, then I recommend keeping educated on this subject so we can at least
find ways to protect our data as much as possible.
Currently, not much has happened yet to our data, and Facebook’s privacy policies have
only begun to surface.
So it’s interesting, so on this channel, I will always keep you up-to-date if something
happens.
Concluding…
I think the Oculus Quest 2 is currently the best value VR headset for its price.
There are compromises, but the pros outweigh the cons here.
Of course, there is also just no competition at all on the market unfortunately.
It is the only affordable headset that you can use for both standalone VR experiences
and PC VR games.
And both ways to play work well.
Plus its specs come so close to headsets that are much, much pricier.
So aside from the Facebook thing, it’s hard to not recommend the Quest 2.
And well, it is currently my go-to headset for most VR things.
Would I recommend getting the Quest 2 if you have a VR ready PC?
I think this depends on how much you use your headset outside of your PC.
If you want to take your headset with you to other rooms or friends a lot, then the
Quest 2 is the best option.
But if you only use it for PC VR, then going for a PC VR headset is usually better as it
will always have better games and graphics since you’ll have the power of your PC powering
it.
By the way, next on the channel, we’ll be reviewing the HP Reverb G2 and comparing it
to the Quest 2.
It’s coming very soon so stay tuned for that.
But that’s it for now.
I hope I was able to explain all the pros and cons in this video so you can decide whether
you want it or not.
Let me know in the comments what you think about the Quest 2, and if you don’t have
it yet, are you going to get it?
If not, why not.
Thanks for watching, and if you got some time left, why not support us by watching more
videos?
I hope to see you in the next.
Stay healthy & a special thanks goes to all our Champions, especially these Patrons down
below.
As always, VR on!