Review – Oculus Quest VR headset

I’ve been reselling Oculus Quest VR units since December. It’s been 6 months, but the resell prices seem to have finally fallen close to retail price. I was lucky to pick up an Amazon warehouse one a few weeks ago and decided to try it out just to see what the hype was like.

Set up was pretty easy; you do have to connect a Facebook account to it. There’s an app that can help you set it up as well. You can buy games ($20-$40) on the Oculus app store. I bought Beat Saber after hearing from some folks and I was blown away how fun it is! You are standing in your living room with 2 light sabers and basically hitting blocks coming at you and the more advanced levels have you turning 360 degrees. When you wear the headset, there is a small gap by your nose that you can see into the real world. Besides that gap, you are pretty much fully immersed in VR.

After that I tried the roller coaster demo (disclaimer – I’m terrified of roller coasters,) and it was so realistic that I started to get nauseous after a few minutes. Then right when the roller coaster got to the apex, right before the drop, I took off the headset because it was just too realistic! There’s a rock climbing one that my buddy played and is really popular. There’s a zombie shooting game and while the scenery looks computer generated, you’re immersed in the environment, shooting zombies all around you. Makes those types of games super fun.

Besides that, you can watch Netflix on it. There’s a video streaming app as well that I bought (Skybox) that will let me stream movies off of my NAS. It feels like you’re in an IMAX theater with roughly a 120′ screen. Besides the sound not being as great and the video a bit subpar, it was still a very enjoyable movie watching experience. I watched a bit of Max Max Fury Road and it was incredible. Now I didn’t wear the headset for a full 2 hour movie to see if it won’t be painful; you may need to take a break in between since there is some heft to the headset.

There’s a Youtube VR app and my wife found some BTS VR videos, which she loved. It really does feel like you’re there with them. There’s a travel app/game that lets you explore Dubai, which was pretty cool. There’s just a lot more stuff that I haven’t explored yet.

All in all, it makes sense why the headset was in demand for such a long time. I can’t wait for the next versions to come out (hopefully faster processing, lighter, and better battery life (seems to be about ~3 hours now.)