Headsets

There are many headsets on offer. Many are worth considering, most are not. For most it really boils down to just a few choices.

This page will have a lot of subjectivity, and if you disagree with anything here please let me know, I'd be happy to update something if I misunderstood or the braindump I have here is wrong.

I don't care what headset should I get

Steam Frame.

Headsets

Top Picks

All can be used in PCVR.

Standalone:

• Steam Frame
• Quest 3
• Pico 4 (ultra)

Wired:

• Beyond 2e
• Valve Index
• PSVR2

Upcoming:

• Pico's Project Swan - 4k screens, low latency wireless, foveation, etc etc. Basically EVERYTHING you would want in a headset. The downside; late 2026 projected, and a headset with those screens will be like $2000.
• Steam Frame. I hoped it would come out before I was done with this article.

(Dis?)Honorable mention:

• Quest pro. Best facetracking on any headset right now. The base headset is mid as fuck though, it's a quest 2 basically.

Notes:

• No headset listed is incapable of PCVR.
• Pricing wise; new hardware is fucked. Terms like 'cheap' or 'expensive' has relative in mind.
• Advantages and disadvantages will focus on what is different about that headset, not about the type of headset in general. For example; wireless won't be mentioned unless it is particularly good or bad. Advantages and disadvantages to that type of headset is discussed in the general types section below.
• Yes I know the steam frame is two weeks away

Standalone

Steam Frame

First next gen headset worth buying (IE; foveation built in) on the market. (The Galaxy XR gets a mention but I have NO idea how good the foveation is) Eye tracking (in theory), space for face tracking. In short, new best in slot for most people. It's a disappointment for some (retards) because it's "just a quest 3", but it is the polish that makes a headset usable and not a nightmare from start to finish to actually use.

Advantages:

• Wireless without the latency or the quality dropoff - or extra hardware needed (comes with a dongle)
• Okay screen, great lenses, good FoV.
• Comfort, audio all optimal out of the box, no need to fix the headset
• Moddabiltiy VERY high. Front port for a Face tracking camera, and an SD card for expandable storage, modular headstrap, etc.
• Open platform. No meta cuckware, can root own device, install anything,etc.
• Also plays flat games, can play android APKs, etc etc.

Disadvantages:

• Will need to wait two weeks for it to come out. Editors note: I will never have to update this line because it has been delayed indefinitely.
• Screen is only mid-resolution. (only slightly higher than the quest 3)

Quest 3

Overall, decent wireless headset. No foveation makes wireless shittier, but you can cope with a dedicated wireless 6E router for it.

Advantages:

• Okay screen, great lenses, good FoV
• Cheap on the used market.

Disadvantages:

• Meta cuckware - If meta updates and it's shit you're stuck. You never own the headset, rooting it is unintended. You can just set it up once with an account then firewall it so it doesn't ever change though.
• No foveation. "Paper" tracker exists to add ET/FT but it won't be usable for foveation.
• Needs modding; comfort bad out the box, audio is mid but passable.
• Wireless might need dedicated router etc to be usable.

Pico 4 (or ultra)

Overall, decent wireless headset somewhere between q2 and q3, but as cheap as a q2. The ultra is recommended over the normal one because of stronger decode (better wireless)

Advantages:

• Okay screen, decent lenses, good FoV
• VERY Cheap on the used market.
• Can use Pico trackers for cheap full body

Disadvantages:

• Pico cuckware - Same kind of deal as meta, but it's not as bad as meta. I've never seen anyone complain about bad updates, and it is overall a LOT more permissive with what you are allowed to do
• No foveation. "Paper" tracker exists to add ET/FT but it won't be usable for foveation
• Wireless might need dedicated router etc to be usable

Wired

Beyond 2e

Probably top wired headset at the moment overall, not counting all the meme ones.

Advantages:

• Okay screen, decent lenses, good FoV
• SteamVR/Lighthouse Tracked - No hybrid setup
• Eyetracking!
• mic is good, but no inbuilt audio
• light and small
• cheap replacement cable

Disadvantages:

• QA problems for them, might need a few to-and-fro
• Mandatory to mod it for audio at least since it doesn't even come with any.
• Won't get full res at full Hz out of the headset, there's a weird low-res tradeoff you need to be doing.

Index

It was so good when it came out that it's still kind of worth getting. Not really much for the headset itself, it's more like if you get a used Valve Index kit you get 2 basestations, 2 controllers, and also a headset. A full kitused for $500 is actually a good deal considering that base stations are $200 new EACH.

Advantages:

• SteamVR/Lighthouse Tracked - No hybrid setup
• Audio is best in slot. Excellent mic, excellent earphones.
• Valve RMA (Top class RMA)
• Best 'out the box'
• Just works
• Comes with lighthouses

Disadvantages:

• Remarkably expensive for how old it is - Most of the cost is in lighthouses and lighthouse tracking.
• Extremely outdated screen. Lenses are 'good fresnels' but good fresnels are still kinda bad in current year.
• Big, bulky, and kinda heavy.
• Controllers are good when they work, but they have issues: Thumbstick gets drift and replacing the thumbstick requires decent desoldering skills.
• Expensive replacement cable

PSVR2

Overall okay headset, only here because it's CHEAP.

Advantages:

• Decent screen
• Cheap

Disadvantages:

• Wired without lighthouse tracking so you're going hybrid for FBT.
• Replacement cables just don't exist. Anywhere. (Except when buying an entire headset)
• Controller tracking issues?

Types

Wired

Wired headsets use some other system to render the VR content (like a PC) and are connected to it via a wire. High resolution screens have a lot of pixels and it's a fundamental challenge that to get 90 updates of every single pixel every single second to the actual screens, that's a LOT of data. Gigabits. Controllers connect to the headset wirelessly, and tracking data, video data and power get sent up and down the cable.

Examples:

• Valve Index
• Vive Pro 2
• PS2VR

Pros:

• Not battery powered - Lasts indefinitely.
• No compression artefacts - you get the raw video stream so it looks great all the time.
• Most have better (but more expensive) tracking

Cons:

• Cable gets in the way
• Cables wear out and need to be replaced (Index is like every 1-2 years of approx 20 hours a week

Standalone

Standalone headsets can either render content on the device itself (hence standalone), or can 'stream' the video from another device (like a PC) in order to play PCVR too. Stuff running on the headset itself is easy enough to understand. How PCVR games are ran on the headset is that the PC runs the game, and then the PC sends it to the headset over your local wifi network (NOT over the internet). Requirements wise depends exactly on the headset, but in general expect to be complementing these with a new 6E (or 7) router and battery banks to do PCVR properly.

You run software like Steam Link (free), Virtual Desktop (paid), or Oculus Airlink (Quest only - Supports video over USB cable). Each one has its own pros and cons, and you should generally try them in that order to see what works for you. Steamlink works best on the frame. Pico has its own streaming software too that works for most.

Examples:

• Steam Frame
• Oculus/Meta Quest Series - 2, 3, 3S, Pro
• Pico Series - 4, 4 Ultra, (5/swan?)

Pros:

• No cable to get in the way
• Can play standalone games and also PCVR games (like VRChat...)

Cons:

• Battery Powered - You will have limited life and will need to recharge/keep power somehow
• Reliant on camera tracking, limited range. Getting it into lighthouse tracking is possible but requires investment.
• Ones without low latency eye tracking will suffer from video compression artifacts
• Most need a bunch of bits to buy (extra battery banks, better strap, wifi router)
• More expensive to run with full body tracking in most cases.
• Higher latency between movement/render and it being displayed in the headset

Features To Consider

Before going into detail on specific headsets, headsets have different features, properties, and things you may or may not want in different proportions. Considering there's a market, and you might want different things, you should consider what is important for you and buy on that.

Tracking

How headsets and controllers keep track of their location in space is done with a tracking system. In large, a usable tracking system has two components:

• IMU accelerometers to judge relative motion
• Anchoring system to judge absolute position

Any tracking system without both components will be fatally flawed. Why you need both is that while the IMUs are sensitive, fast and accurate, they are subject to drift, which is accumulated errors since they only measure movement, not position, and even tiny tiny errors lead to drift. The anchoring system tends to be slower and less accurate, but keeps track of absolute position so that there is no error accumulation. In theory.

Camera Tracking

Camera tracking is used on standalone headsets. How this works is that the headset has an IMU in it, and anchors itself using cameras facing to the room. It maps out the room and then learns its absolute position from that. Controllers are tracked via IMUs and the headset cameras looking at them. Mostly, the quest pro actually has cameras in the controllers and they do the entire process themselves too.

Pros:

• Cheaper

Cons:

• Proprietary unexpandable systems (No FBT except pico)
• Less accurate
• Needs illumination (IR or visible depends on system)
• Can lose all tracking when controllers are out of vision of the headset

Lighthouse Tracking

Pretty much the gold standard. This works by having two (to four for 2.0) lighthouses, that send out pulses of sweeping light, that the tracked devices pick up the timing of and via mathematics and precise timings figure out where they are relative to the lighthouse. Which is stationary, so relative to the real world. They also use IMUs for fine movement.

Compatibility wise, ther'es a '1.0' system and a '2.0' system. 1.0 lighthouses can be used up to 2 at a time, while 2.0 can be used up to 4 at a time. 2.0 tracked devices are backwards compatible so work with 1.0. 1.0 tracked devices don't really exist any more but if you find them (grey button Vive tracker) they don't work with 2.0 lighthouses. The takeaway is that 1.0s or 2.0s lighthouses will work fine for you.

This system is the big 'compatible with anything technically' tracking environment because it's steamVR native and so you can bring any device into this environment with a tracker. So it's the FBT environment that 90% of FBT users use. FBT systems will get covered somewhere else, but the tl;dr is vive trackers is the gold standard and basically anything but fluxpose is a 'buy shit buy twice' measure.

Generally though because VR is kind of dying, this tracking system is on its way out and the main source of equipment will be from the used market. Even though it's the best one? Yes.

Pros:

• Open system - Can bring anything into the system with a tracker - Like a camera tracked headset. A common tactc is to attach a tracker to a camera-tracked headset to 'sync playspaces' so they work together.
• Very accurate
• FBT

Cons:

• Expensive
• Can occlude. The trackers need to be able to see the lighthouses

Game Library

Wired headsets can only play PCVR games while standalones can play standalone games AND connect to a PC to play PCVR. Worth considering. (One exception is the PSVR2 - that can play PS5 VR games)

Note that the quest library of games can be sideloaded onto Pico and frame and such.

Explanations later...