The best VR headset for your money, from Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Go.
Best VR Headset Buying Guide: Welcome to TechRadar’s round-up of the best Virtual Reality Headsets on PCs, phones and consoles you can buy in 2018.
Update: Oculus Go is now on our list of the best VR headsets. The standalone headset is an affordable and accessible way to jump into VR, and it offers an experience that’s almost as good as its tethered older brother, the Oculus Rift.
The Oculus Go starting price of $199 / £199 / AU$299 is reasonable for what you’re getting: a premium headset that’s fun and relatively easy to use. This could be the new way forward for VR.
Original article continues below…
The best VR headset is not an easy thing to pin down, especially with so many VR headsets coming to the market and many high-end devices dropping prices with increasing frequency.
PC-powered headsets that used to cost a small fortune are now much more affordable thanks to permanent price drops, though this only makes the decision of picking the best VR headset more difficult.
In addition price drops, more advanced VR headsets have come to the fore, like the HTC Vive Pro. Of course, on the flip side are the mobile headsets, namely the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View.
Then there’s the whole new category of standalone VR headsets, which sees the just-launched Oculus Go leading the charge.
You can skip down below to see our choices and explanations in depth, but it’s important to note that permanent price cuts have brought the so-called traditional VR headsets more closely in line with one another.
The four best on the market right now, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro and PlayStation VR, are unsurprisingly also the most expensive of all the mainstream VR headset offerings.
Each headset has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and if you’re not aware of these before you buy, it could be a very costly mistake to make. But that’s exactly why we put this guide together.
And, if you want less expensive fare, our guide also includes a few mobile VR headsets for your consideration.
Availability: Out now| Price: $499 / £499 / about AU$615
When it originally released, the HTC Vive was streets ahead of its nearest competitor, the Oculus Rift. It supported room-scale tracking out of the box, and came with two motion controllers that allowed it to offer a much more immersive experience.
Now, however, the gap has narrowed. Nowadays the Oculus Rift matches much of the Vive’s functionality and includes two motion controllers of its own.
But the Vive still has the edge over the Oculus because, for our money, the room-scale tracking is that much better. The feature allows you to walk around a space that’s 4.5 x 4.5m big, adding another dimension to the feeling of presence that you experience while using it; you’re not just pressing up on an analogue stick, you’re using your legs to walk.
That’s if you have enough space in your real room, of course.
The headset itself contains two 1080p screens which makes for a very crisp image. Unfortunately it’s not quite high-resolution enough to prevent you from being able to discern individual pixels when you wear it, and the HTC Vive Pro, with its 78% increase in dots per inch, offers a much sharper screen in addition to built-in audio, which the original Vive lacks.
However, despite not being the latest and greatest Vive, where the original HTC gains back points is in its price.
Though it’s still more expensive than Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive Pro has a few shortcomings that don’t quite justify its high price tag. For the regular user who doesn’t have the funds to buy an HTC Vive Pro, the HTC Vive offers a still-excellent experience for less cost.
Read the full review: HTC Vive
Availability: Out now| Price: $199 / £199 / AU$299 for 32 GB
Simply put, Oculus Go signals a new era for virtual reality, one that doesn’t require a smartphone or PC to run excellent experiences. But forget the grandiose statements – you want to know what it’s actually like to use, right?
Oculus Go is a standalone headset that rivals Oculus Rift in more than just its affordable price; the quality of VR on offer is nearly as good as that of a tethered VR headset.
With impressive visuals, limited screen-door effect and a comfortable fit (one that’s front-heavy, to be sure), you’re in for loads of fun with the Oculus Go.
Its content library is already quite large with over 1,000 apps, games, movies and experiences available at launch, and that should only grow because the headset is compatibility with Samsung Gear VR content. The headset comes in two storage options, 32GB or 64GB, so you can take your pick for how much memory you’ll need.
Oculus Go isn’t perfect – in addition to sitting heavy on the face, light leaks through the bottom, right where your nose is, which could prove anywhere from mildly annoying to downright distracting to you.
What’s more, its battery-life-to-charge-time ratio isn’t ideal, but you still get around two hours of gaming on a full charge.
If you’re looking for a fun, quick and easy way to get into virtual reality, Oculus Go is your best bet. The experience is better than mobile VR headsets that require a smartphone to use, while at the same time being more affordable than PC-powered headsets.
Read the full review: Oculus Go
Availability: Out now| Price: $299 / £259 / AU$655
There’s no getting around the fact that in order to run either the HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro or the Oculus Rift you need a pretty substantial gaming PC, which is a hefty investment for most people.
That’s not the case with Sony’s PlayStation VR, which requires little more than a PS4 console to run.
Considering the huge difference in power between the PS4 and PC, the PlayStation VR is a surprisingly capable virtual reality headset. Its refresh rate is nice and responsive, and we’ve had no problems with the reliability of its head-tracking.
Thanks to Sony’s backing, the selection of PlayStation VR games is also impressive. There were dozens available at launch, and many more have followed over its first year on sale.
Sony has addressed one of our biggest complaints with the PlayStation VR – that its accessories are sold separately – by offering a variety of packs and bundles with devices like the PlayStation Camera included. However, PlayStation Move controllers, while are included in some bundles, aren’t in every one.
While you have to be wary of the additional charges involved, depending on what bundle you opt for, recent price cuts have made the PlayStation VR even more affordable. It may not be the top VR headset, but the PSVR is certainly making a strong case to users.
Read the full review: PlayStation VR
Availability: Out now| Price: $399 / £499 / AU$649
The current VR arms race is all thanks to one man: Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. As a teenager, Luckey collected VR tech and was fascinated with making his own headset in his garage. Numerous prototypes and a $2 billion Facebook buyout later, Oculus is still the biggest name in VR.
It’s seen some decent upgrades over the years thanks to the inclusion of the Touch controllers (which we’d argue are slightly superior to the Vive’s), and a couple of key price drops.
Yet, compared to the HTC Vive’s room-scale technology, the Rift isn’t quite as good. The reason is that while the Vive is designed to let you walk around in any direction, by default the Rift has you place its two sensors in front of you. This means that the tracking is more single-sided, and you can’t let yourself get turned around, or else the sensors will lose track of you.
The experience is a bit different when you add a third sensor to the mix, but if you’re comparing apples-to-apples, we still believe the Vive does room-scale a heck of a lot better.
That being said, by being cheaper than the Vive, the Oculus Rift offers a very compelling mid-range virtual reality option for those with less space to spare.
