The Guide to Choosing the Right VR Headset, Part 2

June 27, 2016

Last year we put together a Guide to Choosing the Right VR Headset – both as a blog post and as an infographic. However, it’s now 2016 – the year of Virtual Reality and it brings several new and big ‘players’ to the market.

So, you’re not sure if you should buy an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR or Samsung Gear VR? We’ll try to help you out because we’ve had the incredible opportunity to try them all in Silicon Valley.

Here are the main strengths and weaknesses of each one, they should help you decide which one is the best for you.

HTC Vive

Strengths:

  • Directly released with a controller – the Steam VR controller
  • Uses Steam VR
  • Has awesome content: Tilt Brush, Audio Shield, SculptVR, Realities.io, and much more
  • Great positional tracking – thanks to the two ‘lighthouses’ built into the headset, the user can walk around physically – provides room scale tracking
  • 2 OLED displays
  • High FPS => No motion sickness

Weaknesses:

  • Still rather heavy
  • The design is not that aesthetically pleasing
  • Highest price among the main competitors - $800

Oculus Rift

Strengths:

  • Appealing design
  • Lower price compared to HTC Vive - $600
  • Easy to use
  • Lightweight
  • Awesome content already available – The Climb, Chronos, and more
  • 2 OLED displays
  • High FPS => No motion sickness

Weaknesses:

  • Heats up pretty seriously
  • No room scale positional tracking
  • Their controller is not out yet. It’s expected during Autumn
  • Most available content is paid

 

Samsung Gear VR

 

Strengths:

  • Over 1 million devices sold => guaranteed interest and content
  • New version on the way
  • Cheapest headset among the ‘big players’ - $99
  • Wireless
  • Gives the opportunity to play every PC game in VR through Intugame VR 

Weaknesses:

  • Requires a specific smartphone – one of the following models: Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge
  • Comes without any additional hardware or software (including the needed smartphone)
  • Original content is mobile apps which don’t provide the experience that the other VR platforms do

 

PlayStation VR

Strengths:

  • Expected price is pretty low: $400
  • PlayStation console + PlayStation VR headset < Oculus Rift + required PC
  • Most promising and abundant content 

Weaknesses:

  • Worst positional tracking among the VR competitors
  • Just a bit late to the party – expected to launch in October
  • The PlayStation Move controllers don’t work well for Virtual Reality

Hopefully these key points would be helpful when you make your VR headset choice this year – you can take into account the prices and what you get for them.

And thanks to Quark VR SDK more and more games will be available on ALL VR platforms!

So, which one will YOU get?