Get the best VR headsets, and take your gaming experience to the next level.
In the battle of the best VR headsets, competition is fierce. For now, Facebook’s wireless Oculus Quest 2 remains king thanks to its affordability and ease of use – and it looks to stay on top for a good while yet, especially if talk of an Oculus Quest 2 Pro or Oculus Quest 3 comes to pass. But the full picture of the VR headset market today is more complicated than that, and you may find a competing model actually serves you better – such as the Valve Index, a capable and powerful VR headset whose success has been choked by limited supply. Anyone with a PlayStation console will want to check out the current PSVR headset, or wait until the next-gen PSVR 2 releases some time in 2022 (probably a better bet if you’re using the latest PS5 console). Anyone who remembers when HTC was the market leader, too, may want to check out the wireless and more ‘VR casual’ HTC Vive Flow. Importantly, more companies are also making VR headsets, but often with wildly niche specifications. Other well-known brands, like Apple, are also working on VR headsets that could shake up the market in a big way. For now, though, the questions of the best VR headsets is relatively simple, with only a handful of great models each suiting different kinds of players and consumers. So if you want to know our top-rated picks, and why you’ll want one, read on below. Don’t forget to check out our guides to the best VR games, or specifically the best Oculus Quest 2 games, too. The Valve Index is an excellent VR headset and represents a next-gen system compared to its predecessors. We found it has a crisp display that runs fairly well even with older GPUs, a wider field of view, a higher refresh rate and Valve’s ‘knuckle’ controllers, which can track the movement of every finger. It’s a significant upgrade to the HTC Vive, and runs much smoother than the Vive Pro, a powerful VR headset that really struggled to deliver on the promise of high-end, room-scale VR. However, it isn’t without its snags. During our testing, we found setting it up can be tricky, updates can cause connection issues and there are often errors. You’ll also need one of the best laptops – this isn’t a standalone headset like others in this list. If you can look past those issues, this is a really good VR headset. Its higher-resolution screen and better refresh rate allowed us to use it for longer periods of time without discomfort, and the Index Controllers are a real step up from the ones that ship with the Vive. Although we think this is the best VR headset for 2022 and our top pick for PC owners, it’s worth mentioning the Valve Index can sometimes be hard to track down as manufacturing slowed down during the pandemic. The Quest 2 will be the best VR headset people for most people. It doesn’t need to be wired to an expensive PC, offers movement and freedom, and it’s easy to set-up and use. It’s a significant improvement over the original Quest, with a more responsive experience thanks to improved RAM and chip specs, as well as a higher resolution display that’s 50% sharper than its predecessor. Developer have the option to make their games run at 90Hz (important for increased comfort and realism while playing), and the headset itself is lighter than before, too. Hand tracking – which came to the original Quest via a firmware update, but is baked into the Quest 2 from the off – is also impressive. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of wirefree VR. Games like Robo Recall and Beat Saber should still amaze, and turning YouTube VR or BigScreen VR into your own personal cinema screen is a welcome distraction from the madness of the outside world. The original Oculus Quest is still a great choice if you’re looking for an untethered VR headset. The Quest 2 might bring a significant upgrade, but the original still boasts an OLED display panel with 1440 x 1600 per eye resolution, and is powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor. Expect to see an Oculus Quest 3 before long, too. It doesn’t come cheaply, but if you’re after the very best in PC VR visual fidelity, the HTC Vive Pro 2 should sit near the top of your list.
