The best VR headset in 2020

21.07.2020 17:37

Pcgamer.com

If you're looking to pick up the best VR headset for Half-Life: Alyx and other VR games, we've got you covered. When creating this list, we've tried to offer several choices for those that are eager to jump into the world of VR, taking cost, comfort, and convenience into account, as well as the all-important FOV and resolution. You can rest assured that each of these recommendations is compatible with the biggest VR games out there.

The best of virtual reality

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Best VR headsets
Best VR games
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Relaxing VR games

If money is no object, the best VR gaming headset is the Valve Index. The financial barrier to entry makes it hard to recommended to the rest of the world since you need a high-end gaming PC to go along with this VERY pricey headset. Indexes are slowly coming back in stock after the release of Half-Life: Alyx, although they do seem to sell out again very quickly, so you may have a wait on your hands. In fact that's the case of many of these headsets—stocks are limited, and they all tend to sell out quickly whenever a big title gets released.

But the best VR experience doesn't necessarily have to cost you a small fortune. We've included several less-expensive VR headsets for those on a budget. The Oculus Quest may not be the most powerful but for the price and lack of cables—as well as the optional link cable to include PC-only VR titles—it offers one of the best VR experiences out there.

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Best VR headsets

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1. Oculus Quest

The best VR headset

Completely standalone

Excellent performance without a PC

Smart UI

The freedom of untethered VR is genuinely compelling—even after becoming more than slightly jaded by spending tens of hours in Oculus' other headset offerings, the Quest still manages to wow with its power and portability. While it's not quite at the same performance peak as the Rift S, in practical terms, you're unlikely ever to notice, and the magic of the passthrough cameras to see what's happening in the real world and walk around your house is wholly unique—going on a trip? Toss the Quest in your bag and go. At 571g, it's still pretty lightweight, especially since it doesn't require sensors or cables or any other constrictive accessories (other than the excellent, refined Touch Controllers), and it doesn't need to be connected to a massive, powerful gaming PC to function.

You can tether the Quest to your PC as well. That functionality is currently in beta, but it does work well. You can use any "high-quality" USB 3 cable for this, or you can buy "a premium, custom optical fiber cable" straight from Oculus. You won't get the Rift S experience exactly, but at least games that require a PC aren't off-limits if you own a Quest.

The Quest is currently the headset that delivers most convincingly on the magical promise of virtual reality, to the point that $399 seems like a bargain.

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2. Samsung Odyssey+

The best VR headset from the Windows Mixed Reality group

Same resolution as the Vive Pro for half the price

Inside-out tracking

Reduced screen door effect

The Odyssey+ is Samsung's refresh of, you guessed it, the original Odyssey HMD. It's a substantial improvement and the best of the current crop of Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) offerings. Don't let that category name fool you; the Odyssey+ is primarily a dedicated VR headset—the "mixed" nomenclature comes mainly from Microsoft's initial eagerness to bundle HoloLens into the same ecosystem as its VR initiative.

The Odyssey+ boasts an impressively high-res display for a WMR device, at 2880x1600, and also takes advantage of a proprietary anti-screen door feature Samsung deploys to reduce the fine-grain you see in the majority of HMDs. As a result, the screen-door effect in the Odyssey+ is practically undetectable, and combined with the WMR standard of inside-out tracking provides a remarkable level of immersion.

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3. Oculus Rift S

The best VR headset for a massive library of games

Excellent resolution and refresh rate

Great, deep library of games

Inside out tracking

The Rift S is an exciting proposition. It entirely displaces its predecessor, the original Oculus Rift. It is definitively an upgrade, but it's being sold at the same price point the original retailed for (and still does, on some storefronts). That said, it is also an odd step back in some baffling ways, with a slight decrease in refresh rate and in the fact it uses LCD lenses rather than OLED.

That said, the Rift S is easily the best mid-level wired headset you can buy for PC. Not only does it have a deep library of games—a library that's matured and expanded tremendously since the launch of the original Rift—its higher resolution and more comfortable fit means the original Rift is now obsolete (unless, of course, you can find one at a deep discount). While the original may have a slight advantage in some of the categories mentioned above, the experience of wearing the Rift S is far superior, especially given that it fully supports inside-out tracking. That means you don't have to buy, wire-up, and find a place for external sensors in your play space.

If you've already invested in a mid-tier or higher gaming PC, want a powerful headset, but don't want to spend a massive amount of cash for the privilege, the Rift S is a clear winner. It may be more of an iterative upgrade from the original than we initially hoped. However, it's still an excellent piece of hardware, and a fantastic way for PC owners to dive into virtual reality for the first time.

(Image credit: ©Valve)

4. Valve Index

The best VR headset for a premium experience on a gaming PC

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Best in class hardware

Comfortable to wear

Virtually no SDE

Expensive

Cumbersome setup

The Valve Index boasts some of the best visuals of any mainstream, commercially available HMD, with a display resolution equaling the Vive Pro, Quest, and Odyssey+ but paired with a 120Hz refresh rate (up to 144Hz in a currently unsupported, experimental mode). The FOV, at 130°, is also best-in-class, and there's virtually no detectable screen door effect inside the headset. It also boasts some impressive technology and handy convenience features, like per-finger tracking on the excellent Index controllers, USB passthrough for future accessories, and fantastic, crystal clear audio via the near-field speakers, which hover just above the ears. It's also comfortable to wear, built from carefully selected, high-quality materials and top-notch weight distribution.

But all that comes at a price. As we said in our Valve Index review, it's the best VR headset on the market... if you don't consider the value proposition. At nearly a thousand dollars, the complete Index offering costs more than double the price of the Rift S or Quest, and almost precisely double the MSRP of the Odyssey+, which can be regularly found at a discount. There also aren't many solid use cases for the finger tracking technology, apart from Half-Life: Alyx, which you get for free.

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Field of view (FOV)

The field of view refers to the amount of an environment that's visible to an observer; in VR, it's the extent of the game world that's visible in the displays. A broader FOV in a headset is integral to a feeling of immersion.

Head-mounted display (HMD)

Broadly any wearable mounted on the head with graphical capabilities but often used to refer to VR headsets specifically.

Inside-out tracking

Systems used to track a user's movements in VR that originate in the headset, as opposed to outside-in tracking, where external sensors are used to track movement. Tracking, and the method used, is crucial to enable either three degrees of freedom (being able to look around in any direction in VR) or six degrees of freedom (being able to look around and move your body in any direction in VR).

Latency

The delay between an input and a response, in VR, the delay between user input through a controller, moving your head, or other methods, and the response on the headset displays. Low latency is vital to reducing nausea in VR, which is most intense when there's a delay or stuttering between moving or looking and the display reacting.

Resolution

Resolution is the measurement in pixels, horizontal and vertical, of an image or display. Higher resolution in VR is essential because the displays are so close to the user's eyes, which emphasizes jagged lines, pixelation, and the screen door effect.

Refresh rate

The number of images a display is capable of displaying per second, measured in hertz. The high refresh rate is essential for VR similarly to latency, as a low refresh rate can cause stuttering (or even the appearance of freezing), which can cause nausea.

Screen door effect (SDE)

The fine mesh-like effect of viewing an image rendered in pixels at close range, where the grid between pixels is visible. Higher resolutions (or proprietary solutions like that built into the Odyssey+) mitigate this effect.