It's time we compared two of the most popular VR headsets right now – the affordable Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2), and the Valve Index, coming from everyone's favorite brand behind Half-Life and Steam.
The Meta Quest 2 is the most affordable mainstream VR headset you can buy right now, at just $399.99 for its base model with 128GB of storage, or $429.99 for twice the storage – 256GB.
Those are two box-shaped devices that help the Valve Index track your movements, and must not just be plugged into the mains, but positioned in a good way so as to always see your headset and controllers, too. The Quest 2 can track your position without any Base Stations, it measures your height automatically, plus can detect objects in your play area that you may want to remove. Its intro tutorials are a bit more simplistic and dare I say corporate and uninspired, but it works, and it's vastly simpler to set up and start using.The Meta Quest 2 is made out of matte plastic, with a soft and comfortable head strap, and as a whole, it feels sturdy and substantial.
It's worth noting that the Valve Index comes with a foam padding accessory that can be slotted into the back of its head strap, and is meant to help people with smaller heads wear the headset, but that just made things more awkward and uncomfortable for me, so I don't think the head size is the issue, it's that the head strap just isn't that comfortable, and the headset is pretty top-heavy.
Meanwhile the Quest 2 has none of that. Its display feels like a whole, big step forwards from the Valve Index, which is particularly hard to believe, considering how much cheaper the Quest 2 is. But it's true.The Valve Index also wins when it comes to FOV , as it has a higher one of about 108 degrees, while the Quest 2 feels a bit more narrow and cramped to look through, due to its 89 degree FOV.
To explain what the lens glare entails a bit better – it's a phenomenon caused by light from the Valve Index's screen reflecting into the lenses, which are right in front of your eyes. So while you're playing your VR game, you'll be noticing ghostly lights moving around in your field of vision constantly, especially if it's a dark game, but with passing light sources, say street or car lights.
Basically all modern PC VR games will work perfectly whether you're using a Quest 2 or a Valve Index, so long as your PC is powerful enough, but the Index does have its flagship title – Half-Life: Alyx. And Valve gives you that game for free, when you buy the headset, which is pretty cool.The Meta Quest 2 is a standalone VR headset that comes with its own operating system, based on Android.
If you do that, you get a different interface, with simple buttons to launch your most recent games, to open the app store, or to see your PC's desktop and control it from the headset. Nope, you can go into any new room, a hotel room, a crowded bus, whatever, and easily set up that new place as your play area, whether room scale or sitting down, in a matter of seconds.
However, the big minus with the Quest 2's controllers is the fact that they use AA batteries, so you'll periodically need to replace them with new ones. If you don't spring for alkaline batteries, the battery life of the controllers isn't too long either. But with decent alkaline ones, I usually get over two weeks of use.
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