Less than a year and a half after the first Oculus Quest, Facebook is already launching the second iteration of its 6 degrees of freedom, autonomous and wireless VR headset. This delay was sufficient to propose a real generational leap.
Only a year and a half after an already wildly attractive first-generation Oculus Quest, the Quest 2 is like a real little bomb on the virtual reality headset market. Not content to bring some very welcome ergonomic improvements to its predecessor, it also makes a real generational leap from a technical point of view. And as if that weren’t enough, it takes advantage of the immense improvements made to Oculus Link mode to establish itself not only as the best standalone VR headset ever released, but also as an excellent headset for PC, in every way equivalent or better. at the Oculus Rift S.
Strong points
- True roomscale experiences in a wireless, standalone VR headset.
- Lightweight, comfortable, well built, moderate heating.
- Dramatic jump in computing power compared to the Quest 1.
- Impressive fineness of the display, almost non-existent grid effect.
- Very intuitive and simple to use.
- High-performance motion tracking of headphones, controllers, and even bare hands.
- Both a standalone headset and a PC headset thanks to the Oculus Link function.
Weak points
- Low battery life — between 2 and 3 hours depending on the applications used.
- No more fine adjustment of the interpupillary distance (but a 3-position adjustment is still present).
- Narrow series face foam, may cause problems for wearers of large glasses.
NB: The reported price drop is calculated by comparing the lowest price of the day with the average of the lowest prices charged by all merchants for the product last month, with security rules to exclude prices from shops whose the VAT policy is not clear (known as “grey” shops, typically in the case of imports from China).
Alternatively
The Pico 4 is a great success. The manufacturer certainly still has efforts to make to catch up on Meta on the software side, but the developments observed over the updates made over the past three months and the good technical basis of the headset suggest good prospects. The technical and ergonomic advantages of this helmet are indisputable. In both standalone and PCVR use, the Pico 4 delivers good image quality, high precision, solid battery life and good user comfort. Only the catalog of games still needs to expand so that it rises to the height of its main competitors.