I’ve tested the Oculus Quest 2
Less than a year and a half after the first Oculus Quest, Facebook is already launching the second iteration of its 6-degree-of-freedom, standalone, wireless VR headset. Is that enough time to offer a true generational leap? It turns out it is.
You would have guessed it, the Oculus Quest 2 is the successor to the Quest first of the name, released in spring 2019, which was in its time the first standalone 6-degree-of-freedom virtual reality headset from Oculus and Facebook. Understand by this that it is a headset that can operate without wires, PCs, consoles or smartphones, but still capable of providing a full roomscale virtual reality experience, with motion detection in a space of up to 5 x 5 m.
Compared to its predecessor, the Quest 2 has evolved not only in terms of its design and ergonomics, but also in terms of its technical specifications. The Snapdragon 835 chipset that powered the first-generation Quest has been replaced by a Snapdragon XR2 — essentially a modified Snapdragon 865, optimized specifically for virtual and augmented reality applications — backed by 6GB of RAM. The other major evolution is on the display side, for which the Oled PenTile screens with a definition of 1,440 x 1,600 px per eye are replaced by RGB LCD panels with 1,832 x 1,920 px per eye.
Despite this, it is not strictly speaking a “next generation” headset — at least not in the sense that we would understand in the world of game consoles. Indeed, both Quest share a common application library: all games and applications released on the Quest 1 so far are usable on the Quest 2 — with technical improvements -, and all applications to be released on the Quest 2 will also be available on the Quest 1.
The Quest 2 replaces the Quest 1 on the market, whose production has already been stopped at the time of this test. But that’s not all: eventually, it will also take over from the Oculus Rift S, which should gradually disappear from stores in the coming months. Indeed, the Quest 2 benefits from the Oculus Link feature, which allows it to be used on a PC by means of a cable — we’ll come back to this later. It will then become the one and only headset left in the Oculus catalog.
The Oculus Quest 2 is priced at €349 — €100 less than the Quest 1! — for the version with 64 GB of storage. A 256GB version is also available for €449. Both can be pre-ordered now, for an expected availability on October 13, 2020.
Usability
When unpacked, the Quest 2 immediately gives the impression of being significantly more compact than its predecessor. Is this an illusion caused by its new white dress? Probably partly, because in truth, the dimensions of the two models only differ by a few millimeters. Much more concrete, however, is the difference in weight: with its 500 grams on the scale, the Quest 2 has been lightened by a little over 80 grams.
This difference obviously has a very positive impact on the comfort of the helmet, which has significantly less tendency to lean forward and weigh on the nose. It is also thanks to this that the Quest 2 can afford to come with a fully flexible headband, which, in addition to being obviously very beneficial for the helmet’s wearability, is sufficient to ensure a very decent stability.
What’s more, the most demanding users will be able to turn to the rigid Elite Strap headband sold as an accessory, which balances the weight, reduces the pressure of the visor on the face and quite simply transforms the Quest 2 into the most comfortable virtual reality headset on the market. It becomes quite possible to wear it for several hours at a time without feeling any real discomfort.
As for the visor, eyeglass wearers should be aware that the foam supplied with the Quest 2 is quite narrow, measuring only 13.5 cm wide (almost 1 cm less than the Quest 1). It may therefore prevent you from putting on large frames over it. Here again, Oculus offers a solution as an accessory, with a “fit pack” that includes both a narrower foam — which can be used by children in particular — and a wider foam. However, we would have appreciated if these foams were provided as standard rather than asking for an additional expense.
On the left side of the headset is the USB-C port used not only for charging, but also for using the headset on a PC in Oculus Link mode. It should be noted, however, that the cable supplied with the headset cannot be used for this second use case: not only is its length of 1.20 m far too short, but it is also only compatible with transfers at USB 2.0 speeds, whereas the Oculus Link mode requires a USB 3.0 compatible cable.
The two Oculus Touch controllers supplied with the Quest 2 also have a new design, halfway between the first-generation Touch and those that came with the Quest 1. The front panel has been significantly enlarged, allowing the user to rest his or her thumb without placing it on a stick or button, and thus avoiding unintentional pressure; unexpected pauses in the middle of a frenzied game of Beat Saber should be much rarer.
The battery covers have also been slightly reworked, and are now held in place by mechanical lugs rather than magnetically. This should solve the worries of some Quest 1 users, who complained about the tendency of the magnetic covers to come off during use. But the main evolution of these new controllers is on the side of autonomy: with a single AA battery each, they are now capable of operating for more than 30 hours, instead of about ten hours for the Quest 1 controllers.
However, there’s no change in the headset’s autonomy, which still fluctuates between 2 and 3 hours depending on the greediness of the application used — and can even drop below an hour when using the Chromecast function to broadcast images from its game on a compatible TV.
As for the headset’s heating, it is perfectly contained. After an hour of intensive use, the maximum temperature recorded on the outer shell is just over 35°C; as for the interior of the headset, it remains below this limit in all circumstances. To achieve this, the Quest 2 makes use of active cooling, with a fan that removes heat through the gap between the front panel and the frame of the headset. This fan is very discreet and is almost inaudible during use. The Quest 2 does not cause any heat-related discomfort.
Image Quality
The Oculus Quest 2 is equipped with lenses of almost the same shape and size as its predecessor, ensuring a very respectable field of view, equivalent to that of most PC virtual reality headsets — and therefore significantly superior to that of the PlayStation VR, for reference. Behind these lenses are LCD screens, as has become the norm on all recent headsets. The benefits of these good old liquid crystals for VR are now known: we certainly lose the almost infinite contrast of the Oled panels of the Quest 1, but we gain in return an RGB pixel structure (3 sub-pixels per pixel, instead of 2 with the PenTile structure of the Quest 1) and a much higher pixel-fill, which increases the clarity of the image, and considerably reduces the grid effect — that impression of seeing the image through a screen.
This is especially true since the Quest 2 also makes a dramatic leap in display resolution, which now stands at 1,832 x 1,920 px per eye. The precision it offers is not only superior to that of the Quest 1, it is even clearly superior to high-end PC headsets such as the Vive Cosmos and the Valve Index (1440 x 1700 and 1440 x 1600 px per eye respectively). Only the HP Reverb, and its future successor the Reverb G2 do better, with 2,160 x 2,160 px per eye. The optics ensure performances perfectly worthy of the screens: their resolving power is excellent, the chromatic aberrations almost non-existent once the headset is well adjusted, and the effects of luminous halos (“god rays”), although always existing because of the use of Fresnel lenses, are of an intensity quite weak enough to never get in the way of the immersion of the user.
In use, these new screens are a real joy. Even when the rendering definition of the games is lower than their native definition, their pixel density makes it possible to limit to the maximum not only the grid effect, but also the tingling of the image, and thus to clearly improve the feeling of presence. What’s more, we have no doubt that this sensation will be even more convincing once Oculus has activated the possibility of increasing the refresh rate to 90 Hz. At the time of writing, the refresh rate is still limited to 72 Hz, as on the Quest 1, but we are promised that this limit will be lifted in the wake of the public availability of the headset.
Unfortunately, the operation of the headset prevents us from performing our usual color accuracy measurements of the displays. With the naked eye, however, there is absolutely no noticeable drift: the artistic direction of the games is perfectly respected.
Finally, as for the pupil distance adjustment, the Quest 2 no longer offers a “fine” adjustment like the Quest 1, but simply proposes to place the optical blocks on 3 fixed positions, at 58, 63 or 68 mm distance. Purists will of course see this as a loss, but in truth, this approximate setting is more than enough to ensure a completely satisfactory visual experience for the vast majority of users. The author of these lines can testify to this, since his real pupil distance is exactly halfway between 63 and 68 mm; yet, whether in one or the other of these positions, no geometric distortion or major loss of homogeneity mar the image.
Audio
Like its predecessor, the Quest 2 is equipped with two small directional speakers integrated into the arms of the headband, projecting their sound directly towards the user’s ear canals. This system can obviously not work miracles in terms of sound reproduction quality, but there has been a significant improvement since the Quest 1. While we criticized the latter for a very unnatural spatialization, the Quest 2’s speakers manage to create a much more ample stereophony, and to truly restore the binaural sound scene of games and applications — an eminently critical element in virtual reality.
On the other hand, the power remains very limited, and the rendering lacks terribly of punch and bass. To remedy this, the solution is of course to connect headphones or earphones to the mini-jack output. The latter provides a perfectly respectable signal quality, worthy of a good smartphone. The available power is more than enough to power any mobile headphones, and can even be used for monitoring or hi-fi headphones that are not too demanding.
User Experience
The operation of the Oculus Quest 2 is based on the same foundations as the Quest 1, to which are added not only the benefits of the hardware evolutions of the headset, but also all the software improvements made by the Oculus teams over the past year and a half.
We find here a system of “inside-out” motion detection using the four cameras located at the corners of the helmet to locate itself in space, without any sensor or external beacon. The initial configuration is very intuitive: when the helmet is first turned on, it automatically switches to pass-through mode, allowing the user to see his environment. The user is then invited to draw the limits of his or her available playing space on the ground using one of the Oculus Touch devices. Once this step is over, we are ready to live real experiences in roomscale. Let’s just say that for this type of experience, the Quest 2, like its predecessor, requires a minimum area of 1.5 x 1.5 m, and recommends at least 2 x 2 m. If you don’t have this space, don’t worry, the vast majority of applications and games can also be used in “stationary” mode, sitting or standing, and only require you to clear a circle of one meter in diameter around you.
A small detail worth mentioning: the helmet’s cameras are no longer used only for tracking, but also allow the user to instantly reconnect to his environment. At any moment, you just have to tap twice on the helmet to reactivate the pass-through mode and get back the view of the outside. What a comfort!
Conclusion
Only a year and a half after an already wildly attractive first-generation Oculus Quest, the Quest 2 is a real bombshell on the virtual reality headset market. Not content with bringing 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 wasn’t enough, it takes advantage of the huge improvements made to the Oculus Link mode to establish itself not only as the best standalone VR headset ever released, but also as an excellent PC headset, in every way equivalent or superior to the Oculus Rift S. And all this for 100 € less than the Quest 1? It’s definitely Christmas!
