HTC Vive XR Elite Virtual Reality Headset + Controllers

I'm a big fan of VR since I discovered it just before the release of the Oculus Quest in 2019. I've used every Oculus headset, PiMax 8K X, Vive Pro 2, and now the XR Elite.The XR Elite brings some new tech to the non-Oculus VR game. Pancake lenses, independently adjustable focus lenses, a lightweight glasses-only setup using a power source not strapped to your head, color passthrough for mixed reality. It also supports a face tracking module. But if you're reading this review, you most likely already know the specs. You're here because you want to know how it feels and performs!Aesthetics: 5/5This is one attractive piece of hardware! It looks, and feels, quality. And it is. It's one of the best looking VR headsets to date!Performance: 5/5This headset is a solid performer, especially when connected to a PC. Vive has a streaming app that is meant to provide similar functionality as Air Link for Quest, and it works. You can also play by connecting via USB C. The real winner here though is Virtual Desktop (vrdesktop.net) by Guy Godin. For anyone unfamiliar with the app, its popularity soared as a wireless PC VR link, well before Air Link became a thing. One of it's strong points was and is the direct integration of launching Steam VR games from the app's menu. Well, the version of Virtual Desktop in the XR Elite store has the unique capability to play Oculus PC VR titles. Yes, you can play Oculus PC VR titles without an Oculus device, using your XR Elite. Due to the way it works, it's only available by connecting wirelessly and the headset must be able to run Virtual Desktop on its own, which makes the XR Elite one of .. 2? (Also the Focus 3) that has this capability. So if you're coming from Oculus and have titles you don't want to give up, you might not have to. It isn't 100% compatible with all titles, but most I tried seem to work great.Comfort 2/5 updated to 4/5:As it comes, I found this headset to be the least comfortable VR headset I've ever worn. Using it in glasses mode does help. Also, there is a strap that is more like an elastic band that is meant to go over the top of your head (there's a YouTube video about it made by Vive) to help, but it doesn't help much. The stock facial interface feels too small and awkwardly shaped, and when you think you have the headset in position, it can slide down a little in the back, throwing it all off. Honestly, this is the only real weak point I've found on this headset after a month of use. THAT SAID... I talked to Vive and they are aware of this common complaint, and they have released an alternate facial interface. It's my understanding that they are working to resolve the comfort issue. I've upped it to 4/5 because of the alternate facial interface and their acknowledgement of the issue and working on a fix.Features and Tech 5/5:People who wear glasses have struggled with comfort and usability with VR headsets from the very beginning. Some solutions have come out, such as custom prescription lenses that magnetically attach over the lenses on the Oculus Quest series of headsets. But that required ordering lenses and that's an extra expense. Vive upped the game with the XR Elite and is the first headset to offer adjustable diopters on each lens. What does this mean? Well, you know when you go to the eye doctor and you go through multiple lens power strengths to dial in your prescription "this... Or this... 1.. and 2... And 1 again... And 2 again..." So the lenses on the XR Elite are rotatable independently, and are adjustable from 0 to -5.0. I wear contacts and one eye is -2.25 and bthe other eye is -2.0. By taking off the bbú bú and following the very easy and simple instructions shown to you during setup, you dial in each eye individually. This is awesome! And it works. Very well! No ordering of prescription lenses. Note that this doesn't completely resolve all of your vision woes, as complex prescriptions would still need your corrective eye-wear, but it's a great option for most people.Continuing along this innovative feature-set is the expandability for facial tracking, eye tracking, or other future expansions. Who knows what will become available even within the next year. The tech world is kind of crazy like that.One major bonus is the ability to use Vive Trackers. These handy little pucks are not cheap (about $130 each) but they can be worn on your waist, legs, feet, arms, elbows, your cat... Don't ask. Vive is also working on a tracker that can watch you and track you. The device itself is stationary. This is something I have desperately wanted from Meta since the Oculus Quest, and so far, the only options have been using hacks that are still making progress, such as using a Microsoft Kinect (2.0, the one for the Xbox One) sensor for full body tracking. This does, of course, rely on PC software and only compatible with PC VR. To the best of my knowledge, it can also only be used with Steam VR, because Oculus...Controllers 4.5/5The controllers will remind most people of the Oculus Quest touch controllers, but... Bigger. I don't know why they chose to use such large controllers, as this was a complaint with the Reverb G2. They are longer and you expect them to be a bit unwieldy at first, but I found them to actually be comfortable and didn't pay any attention to what I was holding in my hands. They didn't break immersion, which is important. I guess we shouldn't be too worried about how the controllers look in our hands when we have a headset strapped to our face. If you've ever seen a video of someone playing VR, from the real world perspective, it's almost.. embarrassing. But who cares, as long as we stay in the Metaverse, right? I experience no issues with tracking, and Vive is still pushing out firmware updates actively, so expect things to keep getting better.Hand Tracking 5/5I'm giving this hand tracking rating a full 5 because it's honestly about as good as we're going to get with hand tracking without external sensors to see the other side of our hands. Some mixed reality content, like Maestro, uses one controller and one free hand to conduct an orchestra. For navigating the menus, I found it to be reliable and had no issues.Notables:There are a few extra things worth mentioning here. The battery pack, which can attach to the goggles and looks similar to the Quest Pro, is detachable. You can purchase additional battery packs and swap them (it does require removing the headset, pressing a button on each side to slide the arm out, and detaching the USB C power cable). The goggles have a very small battery and should give you enough time to disconnect the USB C power cable from one pack and attach the cable from the charged pack, though I'd do it quickly if I were you. I didn't test how long it will stay on, but I know it's not too long. You can, of course, opt to plug a USB C cable into the goggles that is attached to some other power source instead, such as a wall outlet with a long cord, or a portable power bank that you can slip in your pocket. Just be mindful of how you route the cable so you don't unplug it while embarrassing yourself in front of your family or friends, as you frantically try to beat that invisible monster to death. Unplugging yourself at that moment would force you to remove the goggles and see your family and friends taking cover and expressing confusion and fear. They're not doing it if you don't see them.Also, the app store for standalone apps is... Underwhelming at the moment. But some new releases are hitting for some popular titles, and I think in the near future we can expect to see many of the Meta standalone apps in Vive's store.I wanted to keep this review short because if you wanted a full article, you would probably be reading one of the many review sites. Well, I don't run a review site or publish a blog. Yet. However, I hope at least some people find this review useful.My final verdict is that yes, it's worth the price. Yes, it's comparable to the Quest Pro and Quest 3. You can expect great support for expansion of new trackers and ways to become even more immersed, than what Meta will provide you. Overall, this headset is a winner and even though I now own a Quest 3, this headset is still getting plenty of use.

I got my unit today, and I have to say; ALL of my expectations were wrong.I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how bad the experience is. I'm coming from a Rift S; so I was under the, false, impression that no matter how bad this ended up being, it'd be so far above the rift that'd I'd be plenty happy to trudge through the early adopter tax and growing pains.I can't. The UI is so shoddy that after a couple hours using it I was overflowing with the desire to submit for a refund and buy a quest pro. I despise facebook, passionately; but I'd rather get back into bed with them, than bytedance, and there are no other standalone wireless options to speak of.Here are a few of my takeaway Pros and Cons.PROSPCVR latency on Wifi 6 (5ghz) was actually really good. (see first Con in list below for more context) The first thing I did was, open Beatsaber and test out some E+ songs. The saber movement felt accurate and realtime, as compared to my typical displayport tethered setup.Screen quality is nice, but honestly not jaw-dropping or anything. I was expecting this to be a big upgrade, considering the Rift S is relatively low res and has Fresnel lenses, but it kind of felt equivalent/worse on the XRE, even after acclimating to the sweet spot.The unit itself is tiny, shockingly tiny. The compactness of it blew my mind, after holding it in my hands, I'm convinced we're only a few generations away from near sunglasses sizes of HMDs.I had NO ISSUES with setup, or with pairing for wireless PCVR, everything connected more or less immediately. The instructions were sometimes poorly worded, but mechanically, each step worked out as would be expected. **I did have to segregate my 2.4ghz network, because it was preferring it over my 5ghz when I was allowing the router to decide.The 2nd accessory USB-C port(beside the right eye lens) does support USC-C Audio, so when I plugged in my 3.5mm adapter, it worked instantly with no configuration or other steps. The port is deeply recessed though, so the majority of USB-C ends will probably not fit. I used the official adapter that Apple sells, it has very thin insulation on the cable end.The in-arm speakers are excellent, better than most would expect. I had no issues with stereo positioning while using them. Aside from privacy uses, I don't think I'd have used my headphones for anything else.The unit is capable of functioning, in glasses mode, for a while on the 15W from a standard PC USB-C port. It does drain the internal battery, but that will depend entirely on your use case. The inability to get consistent tracking results seemed to constantly cause it to spin up into full power while searching for the controllers and landmarks. So it's hard to say how long I would get away with it. Seemed like an hour or two would be possible with light-ish use.The full color pass-through was really nice. Had no problem walking around, fixing myself a drink, reorganizing things around the room, etc... Very nice. There was definitely some warping in the image, so someone who is focused on AR/MR might find it intolerable; but for the home user in a casual setting, it was super useful to get around and do stuff without taking off the headset.CONSController and Hand tracking is abysmal. I'm shocked at how poorly this tracks in low-medium light settings. I can put on my Rift S, in a fully dark room, with only a TV offering indirect lighting, and it tracks extremely well. The XRE needs every light in the room on maximum brightness, or it will constantly lose tracking. This made playing high level Beatsaber almost impossible under normal lighting conditions. If I turn on all my lights I get passable tracking, otherwise the controllers would lose tracking during any quick motions. Even with all my lights on, it had a VERY hard time tracking movement on the outer edges of the play-space. This can be improved with software over time, because it's clear the predictive algorithms facebook uses for the Rift S can outperform it on older hardware using the same type of camera+controller gyro setup.The screen glare/light bleed are annoying. The blurriness you get from Fresnel lenses is, in my estimation, equivalent to the lens glare on the XRE's pancakes. It's not like I'm not used to it on my Rift, but I really thought the pancake lenses would be a huge increase in clarity. I see these as essentially a 1:1 swap.The OS is terrible. It looks pretty, and the options I sought out were almost always where I expected them to be in their respective menus; however, the OS itself was rife with bugs. Swapping in and out of apps would cause inexplicable system hangs that would have bizarre compounding effects, like sporadically unpairing the controllers until I did a hard system reset. This would happen in standalone and PCVR, however, the issues were far more severe on PCVR and required frequent resets and reopening PC apps and steam VR in a "just-so" method to allow it to function without breaking.The ability to reorient yourself is treated like a one-time initial device setup, instead of something you'd do constantly. This might just be an issue of how I use VR. Sometimes I'm on my couch, or standing in my VR space, or sitting at my desk. In the Oculus software, I can just long-press my menu button in the home screen and I'm instantly reoriented to my current facing. I probably do this half a dozen times in every VR session: whenever I move over in my chair, or lean back on the couch, or move over while standing for better positioning, etc... The XRE experience is terrible in this regard, it loses it's relative position without warning or skews the home screen position to some nonsense location and direction, but its "reset position" option, in the one tap menu popup, rarely reorients true to your heading, and often tries to honor some absolute positioning it has decided on it's own. Once you combine this with the repositioning of apps in steamvr, it's compounded into a nightmare of rinse-repeat in both interfaces until the app you're running is finally aligned correctly.The boundary settings are extremely limiting and can't be disabled. This is one of the most damning things in my list. If you set a huge boundary to avoid being interrupted by it, you'll be punished by the system relocating your displays all over the place. If you use stationary, you'd better stay still. Your floor position may change sporadically if tracking is lost temporarily. Any deviations from the boundaries, in stationary or room-scale, seem to have a 50/50 chance of causing standalone apps to crash, or streaming to crash, or to cause a system hang that needs a hard reset. This is all ridiculous to me, because, while I don't need boundaries, anyone who does, would probably have an awful experience with it. When I set up my Rift S years ago, by the 2nd week I'd turned off guardian completely, and I've never gone back; but even when it was on, it never broke system operation.Hand tracking, technically works. I've never had a hand tracking headset before, so I don't know if it's this awful on other hardware too; but it seems like to function at the level of a gimmick. It seems to struggle tremendously with the changing shape of hands as they move or rotate; which strikes me as the sort of thing that would be first-in-line-things-to-resolve in a hand tracking system. Like the controllers, it requires as much light as possible, and it's not usable in low-med light scenarios. The idea of taking the XRE anywhere without its controllers seems impossible to me.As others have mentioned; in the glasses mode, the arms will dig a hole into your head if your head is too large. It was pretty painful for me after ~40minutes, so if you decide to work through it, you'll probably have to sort out secondary padding. It's not bad at all with the battery pack attached, it feels like a normal headset in that mode.The central fixed-foveated rendering is way more aggressive than I'd have liked, it was very noticeable anytime I was in an environment with textured walls and especially for text, looking around with my eyes left delivered an unacceptable visual mess. I haven't used wireless VR before, so maybe this is a limitation of the XR2 platform and not HTC's fault; but, if it's on HTC, it's a huge negative. I have the hardware and bandwidth to easily push 2-3x what the headset is asking for, I'd have preferred user-control over the reduced peripheral quality. settings:200mpbs/ULTRA/DynamicOFFOverall, this was a huge let down for me. I was thrilled to finally divorce facebook, in regard to my VR experiences, but it's just too soon for me. HTC can improve a lot of what's wrong with this headset through software, but based on just how rough it is right now, I think that'll be more than a year away...