I'm still waiting for a high-end VR headset good enough to make me ditch my Quest 3

I love PCVR. Standalone VR headsets do their job admirably but where VR really shines for me is in those big experiences you just can't quite get anywhere else. I remember the feeling of playing Half-Life: Alyx and knowing that VR as a medium had changed from there on. Like Half-Life 2 before it, other companies had to sit up and pay attention to the new king of the medium.

This same dynamic is true of Meta with VR headsets. There's a point somewhere between the launch of the original Oculus Quest 2 and it becoming the Meta Quest 2 where the market started waking up to the budget-friendly standalone headset.

In turn, the Bytedance Pico 4 and Pico 4 Ultra felt like iterations of Meta's efforts. They come with a similar UI, colour scheme, and controller feel—new variations on the popular format, popularised by Oculus/Meta.

However, this leaves high-end VR headsets in a bit of a weird spot. There's a marked difference in resolution quality for the higher price point and increased FOV and lossless video certainly help show off that extra price. Compared to the Quest and its compadres though, everything else feels a little cumbersome, and any downgrade on a headset you paid over $1000 makes that shiny new tech feel a little less shiny.

Nothing made this clearer than testing out the Pimax Crystal Light, a headset I should really like. Its aspheric lenses display at 2880 x 2880 per eye, which outperforms the 2064 x 2208 of the Quest 3. The Light has a higher FOV and is even equipped with fixed foveated rendering to make up for some of the performance loss of running such a high-resolution headset. Unlike the dynamic foveated rendering of the PS VR2, this isn't led by eye tracking and instead focuses its processing power on whatever is at the centre of the screen.

Even with this enabled, you still take a hit to performance. Furthermore, it's not only a heavier headset but the bulky addition of a thick cable, which is mandatory to use the headset, means that more active games are much more difficult to play. I have an urge to call this a Pimax Crystal Light problem but, the more I think about it, the more it feels indicative of a broader question I find myself asking about the VR market.

Would you take a worse-feeling experience for a better-looking one? I recently upgraded to the Quest 3, which succinctly answers that one.

Let's give Pimax a break and look at the HTC Vive Focus Vision instead. For just 1,000 of your American dollars, this more high-end headset offers 2448 x 2448 pixels per eye and even gives lossless PCVR quality (when using the DisplayPort). It's also a standalone headset, but it uses the older Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 present in the Quest 2 (which sold for just $199 at the end of its life).

The Vive Focus Vision does come with a hot-swappable battery and the eye tracking is a helpful new feature for both computing power and social spaces. But the 800 g this headset weighs would deflate me all the same.

My point is that you aren't getting a direct upgrade for the extra $500 versus the Quest 3. You're making compromises in some areas for improvements in others.

In our Varjo Aero review, we really liked it, and the headset even fixes some complaints I might have about the need for a mains connection. It comes with a box that connects to the mains and DisplayPort, which you connect to via USB-C, so you don't need a huge cable strapped to the headset. Though it still costs a lot of money, it doesn't come with controllers and uses base stations, which all feel a little old school as far as VR headsets work. This is before mentioning the whole thing is rather heavy and doesn't even support AMD GPUs.

High-end VR headsets have improved significantly over the last few years. Some even take inspiration from cheaper headsets regarding passthrough and standalone support. But the Metas and Bytedances of the world (Meta and Bytedance) have improved at such an exponential rate that it feels hard for everything else to keep up with.

Of course, both companies (the former owning Facebook and the latter (temporarily?) owning TikTok) can afford to sink billions into that tech, and even take a loss just to get people to adopt them. The newer and smaller companies dipping a toe into VR don't quite have the same privilege, which partially explains the focus on the more niche high-end.

The lenses in these more costly headsets are great but the ergonomics and ease of use are not as convincing. Ultimately, I don't want a dedicated 'VR zone' in my house. I've found myself not putting on a high-end headset just because I couldn't bother to get things plugged in. I also don't want a chunky wire constantly weighing my head down a little. These are tradeoffs I'm willing to make in some circumstances but not all the time.

It ain't much but it's honest work

The mid-range VR headset's almost console-like approach makes me more willing to duck, dodge and swing around in VR. That can already be a tasking process to set up but Meta has managed to put out a headset easy enough to quickly get going.

I wish I felt differently about high-end VR right now. I don't much like the hegemony of Meta at the centre of the VR market and I want the competition to thrive. In this same sense, the Pico 4 Ultra is a very solid competitor, and worth considering if you live outside of the U.S. However, I just haven't been impressed enough by high-end VR to justify the extra expense.

When Meta and Bytedance have more or less nailed the ergonomics, as far as they can for a big screen and computer you slap to your face, it feels harder and harder to justify the more cumbersome feel of everything on a high-end set. Especially when you're spending so much more on it.

This isn't to talk down about high-end VR. If you are a sim racer and want something to go with the best PC racing wheels, I see the vision. High-end VR has always been a bit of a niche in the already niche market of VR. But the growing mid-range market makes the whole thing feel even more so. It doesn't feel like you are getting a directly better experience with more expensive rigs, just something that hyper-focuses on a different aspect. The importance of that aspect is very subjective.

High-end VR has always been a platform to test tech. You can even see this with the Valve Index. Launching back in 2019, almost all of its tech has been surpassed by much cheaper choices. I've always wanted to be on the ground floor of new tech, but here, I think I'm happy to be a little behind the curve. And pocketing the extra money.