Oculus - Rift S PC-Powered VR Gaming Headset - Black

=== Summary === The Oculus Rift S virtual reality system BLEW me away with its immersion, fun games, excellent controllers, superb motion tracking, and its ability to transport me away into wonderful & engrossing virtual worlds. The headset is very comfortable and weighted in a balanced way. I can game for hours and not feel head or neck fatigue. The audio is just so-so but a pair of good headphones or speakers can take care of that. There aren't a lot of triple-A games but there are some really fun ones out there and the library is continually growing. All in all, the Rift S is a FANTASTIC piece of VR kit that is highly entertaining & fun to use. Even better, setup is fast and simple thanks to no external sensors, the Passthrough camera, and great Inside-Out tracking. Highly recommended. _____ *Pros: -Simple, quick, & easy installation and setup. -Only one cable connection needed to PC (the end of the cable neatly splits up into a USB Type A & Display Port). -Display Port to mini-Display Port adapter included. -3.5mm audio jack included for connecting your own headphones. -The Halo-style headset is very comfortable & weight is well-balanced. Doesn't put pressure on the nose. -Easy to adjust for different head sizes with top velcro strap & back adjustment knob. -The Touch controllers are light and very intuitive & easy to use. -Inside-Out Tracking worked precisely to detect my head, arm, and hand movements. Also makes setup easier & quicker compared to using external room sensors. -"Passthrough mode" is cool & enables one to see his or her surroundings even with the headset on. -The "Guardian" feature is very helpful by setting up a "safe zone" in the room to play and move around in. -Worked flawlessly with my gaming desktop (RTX 2080) & gaming laptop (Alienware m17, RTX 2070 Max Q). -Depends on the game or video but the graphics are very nice & immersive. -The pricing is right. -Thanks to the cord, no batteries to recharge or heavy powerpacks to carry around. -If you have a laptop that meets the requirements, the Rift S can become a portable VR gaming system. Good for family & friend gatherings. -The Oculus Store app is easy to navigate, make purchases from, and adjust Rift S settings. -Worked well with the "SteamVR" and "HTC Viveport Infinity" game store apps. -The future of VR seems bright & there is a consistent influx of games including triple-A, Oculus exclusives. _____ *Neutral: -No physical mechanism to adjust for IPD (only software). -Not a lot of triple-A titles at the moment. -Audio quality could be better. I wish Oculus would make some snap-on headphones for the Rift S. -Performing bow and arrow movements are awkward. The tracking "loses" my hand position when I pull the arrow back too far behind my head. -Although MUCH better than Samsung Gear VR level of VR headsets, I wish the resolution was higher & denser. I can see pixels and jaggies often times. Still, it's good enough for most. _____ *Cons: -The cord becomes tangled up severely pretty easily. It's very annoying & time consuming to untangle. -No demo modes to try out games before purchase inside Oculus Store. Use the free trial of the HTC Viveport Infinity game service to try out games before buying. === My VR Background === The Rift S is my first "real" VR headset and I LOVE this thing. It has made me into a "believer" in VR and I like how my gaming spectrum has been expanded as a result. Having used a Samsung Gear VR before when I used to own a Galaxy S7 Edge, I feel like I am being taken to the next, higher level with the Rift S. With superior optics, "inside-out" motion tracking from its five sensors, and precise Touch controllers, there is simply no comparison. Whereas the Gear VR got used less than a handful of times from me, the Rift S has been used daily ever since I got my hands on one. My wife and 4-year-old daughter also LOVE it~! :D === Design: Ergonomics & Handling === Almost all of the hardware aspects of the Rift S are excellent. It looks cool, it's well-weighted & comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, headset adjustments are quick & simple to perform, the controllers are light & intuitive in operation, the single cord makes setup fast & easy, and the lens provide crisp & immersive visuals (my IPD is ~65mm). I like the Touch controllers a lot for their light weight, great button layout, and precise movements in the VR environment. The "Inside-Out Tracking" from the five sensors located on the headset worked very well in all the games I played except for when using the bow & arrow in some games. My arrow hand would get "lost" sometimes when I pulled the arrow back too far behind my head. Otherwise, everything just worked very well when grabbing objects, picking up & throwing things, slashing objects & foes, and shooting guns, etc. The Inside-Out Tracking feature also brings in other benefits such as the super convenient & helpful "Passthrough Mode" and "Guardian system." Passthrough Mode allows one to see and view their real-life surroundings even with the headset over their face so you can avoid bumping & tripping into things inside the room. The Guardian system allows you to "draw" a Safe Zone inside your room and helps you stay inside of it so that, again, you are protected from bumping into things. They are both very slick and well executed. The audio was the only aspect that was underwhelming. With no ear muffs physically covering over your ears, there is a lot of sound leakage in and out. The volume doesn't get very loud either. On the other hand, however, this is good because you can easily hear and respond to people talking to you. In order to improve my audio experience, I played games & viewed content using my in-ear earphones, over-the-head headphones, or my 5.1-channel soundbar system connected to my PC. It made a HUGE difference & increased sense of immersion and engagement. Besides the audio, I only have one other complaint - the cord. I don't mind that there is a cord connection to the PC. I do mind, however, the tendency of the cord to easily become tangled upon itself. Although it's not hard, it is very time-consuming to untangle each time. I wish Oculus would've used some sort of braided design to prevent the cord from tangling up in the first place, kind of like how HP includes a nicely braided power cord for their Spectre x360 laptops. With that said, I'm nevertheless tremendously satisfied and happy with the overall Rift S package. It is such marvelous engineering that makes access to virtual worlds so easy and fun. === Game Library & VR Experience === Compared to other gaming systems (consoles, PC), the amount of games out there are relatively small which makes finding quality games kind of hard. Each respective VR game store that I used - the Oculus store, SteamVR, and HTC Viveport Infinity - hosted many games from different genres that was easy to sort through and read reviews on. None of the stores, however, allowed me to download a Demo version of the game to try out before making a purchase. I heavily relied on YouTube reviews before making a purchase decision. Each game store, however, did a pretty good job making recommendations. During my search, I discovered some really fun games such as Beat Saber, Racket NX, Lucky's Tale, Superhot VR, Robo Recall, Lone Echo, and Sairento. My current FAVORITE VR game is Beat Saber and it is tremendous fun. Although the game comes with a decent selection of music to dance/play to, my Beat Saber experience shot up exponentially after I installed some mods and enabled custom music tracks. To install custom tracks, I used two apps - Mod Assistant and BeatDrop 2. Both apps are free and I used them to import and play tens of custom soundtracks. If you want a good workout, I recommend Psy's "Daddy" and "Gangnam Style." Black Pink also has many catchy and fast-paced songs. Mod Assistant for Beat Saber can be downloaded here: https://github.com/Assistant/ModAssistant/releases/ Link to BeatDrop 2: https://bsaber.com/beatdrop/ Another game I had lots of fun with was Sairento. Using super ninja skills with guns and swords, I shot & sliced through enemies feeling like an action hero. After experiencing VR gaming through the Rift S, I can say that I'm now a fan of VR gaming and I'm super stoked for its future. The immersiveness and experience are so cool and fun, I currently put on hold playing "traditional" games such as Resident Evil 2 Remake, Rage 2, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. With no motion sickness and vertigo, I'm having a blast with the Rift S. I highly recommend that everyone try it out. === Verdict === Being my first true VR system, the Rift S has opened my eyes and heart to the wonderful world of VR gaming. With a well-designed and comfortable headset, superb motion tracking, great clarity, excellent controllers, and fun selection of games and other media, the Rift S has brought me joy, wonder, and much fun. Thank you, Oculus, for such an awesome experience~!

If you are looking to get into VR, now has become one of the largest changes in VR for years. There are now multiple options for VR and it really all comes down to what you are willing to invest and what you are looking for. I personally have several VR systems and I have had the original Oculus Rift for over 2 years. So, I have been desiring an upgrade. However, the Rift S isn’t a complete upgrade from the original Rift, as some things have been somewhat downgraded in my opinion, but that is not to say this is a bad choice. I personally feel that the increased resolution, the reduced screen door effect, the reduced glare on the lenses and the simplicity of set-up have justified changing to the Rift S. The lack of on-ear headphones, the LCD screen and the inside out tracking have been what I feel are the slight downgrade. The major reason I moved to the Rift S is because of my current room set-up, I can’t stretch USB cameras to ideal positions. Where the original Rift recommended 3 cameras for room-scale and needed 4 USB ports, the Rift S only needs one USB. Though the tracking is not as good with 3 external cameras, it’s not too bad and with their recent updates it is getting better. The room setup of the Rift S is the easiest of any VR system I have used and with a recent update it even became one step less. I also really enjoy taking my VR to parties and gatherings to share the experience and even compared to a Windows Mixed Reality headset I am up and running quicker. As for the LCD screen, in normal colorful well lit experiences, I notice the increase in resolution but not the fact it is an LCD over OLED. However, in very dim lit games, ones where darkness is a key element, I can’t help but to notice the back lit panel washing out the experience. The contrast between black and grey areas is near impossible to distinguish in some experiences. I feel the biggest let down for me has been the audio. One thing I used to rave about the Rift over the Vive was that it came with headphones built in. All you had to do is grab the controllers and put the headset on and you are good to go. The Rift S has audio built in, and I was surprised at the quality, however it is so open that I feel I lose the immersion. One thing I enjoy about VR is that I am in a completely different place, taken away from actual reality. With the open audio concept of the Rift S I can now hear everything else around me, pulling me out of that immersion. The good thing is that it has a 3.5mm jack on the headset, however with the halo head brace, it’s hard to use just any headset and is best suited for in-ear headphones. There are other options that users have come up with and I am using one of them now, but wish there was a better manufacturer option. Also to note is that you must have a Display Port or a mini-DP, as the Rift S comes with the adapter. I have an ASUS G752 laptop that has a mini-DP and it works perfectly. Overall, I really enjoy the Rift S and if it was my first VR system I probably wouldn’t have any of these minor gripes. I still prefer the Rift S for the clarity and simplicity and it will be traveling with me every time I want to share VR.

I have an Index reserved for August 31st. I have sold my Vive and bought a Rift S for playing VR in the meantime, but now I am in love with it, I`ll probably going to pass the Index. I have a narrow IPD (60) but the carity and sweet spot is so much better that the original Vive. The blacks are surprisingly good and even, not to mention the screendoor reduction, and glare control. The lightness and the halo design really beats the Vive with the Deluxe Audio Strap in confort. About the cables, just pass them trough the strap headband, it will feel in the right place behind your head. Try the Mamut Grips on the Touch, to emulate the Knuckles controllers hand holding design. I also recommend buying the Plantronics RIG 500HX headphone, it is very light, great sounding, fits perfectly over the halo strap and it is cheap. Passtrough + makes easy to get and put it over. The tracking is great with the new 1.39 firmware upgrade, I actually had more ocasional jitters and hiccups with my gen 1 Vive Lighhouses. The only real downside comparing to my Vive is the horizontal field of view, it feels narrower and more squared, in the Vive it looks to me a bit larger and rounded.

The first time I tried it on I was amazed by the 3d and VR, 10 days into it and I started having connect issues. Every time I want to play it I have to unplug the usb cable 2 times and restart oculus before it will start working properly. I struggled to get it working the first time it started having connect issues, I reinstalled everything 2 times, deleted the headset off of oculus and rebinded it. I think I finally have it down where I can get it to start working again, as much as I love it I'm really disappointed in how much I have to mess with it to get it to work. It's not just me that is having problems from what I can tell it's alot of people. I'm starting to think there is a design flaw in how the data link cable plugs into the oculus and after a while of moving around the plug gets loose and you end up with connect issues. I still love it don't get me wrong, if someone else buys it make sure you zip tie the cable to the headset so your plug doesn't get worn out. If you do that I think you should be fine and won't have any problems. I did that after the fact, pretty sure I stopped anymore future connect issues that would leave me with a $400 brick. But I still have to play with the cords to get mine to work.

Pros: * Much more comfortable on my head and face. * More compatible with those who wear glasses. * Clearer optics; although not night-and-day. * Much easier to set up. * More convenient audio. Cons: * New controllers aren’t as comfortable to hold and use. * Audio is not as robust. * A modest but not major upgrade over the original. I’ve been enjoying the original Oculus Rift for about a year and decided to upgrade when this new model was available. The original was great but had some fairly significant flaws; most namely that it required at least 4 connections to your PC; 2 from the headset and one from each of 2 cameras that sense the position of the headset in space. If you wanted room-scale sensing, you’d need a 3rd camera which brings the total to 5 connections to your PC. Unless you have a dedicated PC and play space, this is a lot of cable management; not to mention needing to leave least 3 cameras set up in the right spots in your play space. While this Oculus Rift S is not a major upgrade over the original, it does improve upon the original in a few crucial areas. The cameras for the room-scale sensing are now built into the headset, so that not only eliminates 3 cables that needed to be plugged in to your PC, but also means that you don’t need to leave 3 cameras positioned in your room. It also enables the cool pass-through video when you get near your play space boundary (that’s easy to set up). The harness that balances the typically front-heavy VR headset is also much improved and is now much easier to adjust for comfort and stability. It also is much more forgiving for those who wear glasses. The A/V portion of VR; the audio and video, has been improved a bit as well, although with compromises. Image clarity is definitely better, but it was pretty good already. For audio, the original Rift had attached on-ear headphones that articulated and needed to be positioned over your ears each time you put the headset on. This new Rift S has the audio built into the headband which is much more convenient but the sound isn’t quite as rich. You can attach wired headphones instead, but the built-in audio is just not as good, although it is more convenient. The last thing worth mentioning is the new controllers. They are definitely good but not quite as comfortable for me to hold on to as the original. I prefer the comfort of the old controllers to the new, but they work well enough and I’m sure I’ll get used to them. Overall, if you don’t already own a Rift, the Rift S is definitely the one worth getting. And if you already own the Rift, the Rift S is still a worthwhile upgrade if you find yourself sharing your play space with others or if you don’t have enough ports on your PC so you need to constantly swap plugs when you want to get into VR. Having only 2 plugs and not needing separate cameras is a HUGE improvement, IMHO, that makes it much easier to jump into VR whenever you want.

TLDR; Get the Rift S if you already have a gaming PC. You won't be disappointed! I tried the Quest but after trying the S, I promptly returned the Quest. My son has the first gen Rift, so I was also able to compare the quality between the two. The S is a marked improvement! No external cameras, better display, and almost zero screen door effect makes for a truly immersive experience. Between the S and the Quest, I'd rather put up with the cable (I ordered a 6 foot extension for only $15) and enjoy PC powered graphics than go cordless with the Quest's PS3 (some say PS2) graphics quality. If the Quest were $100 less, I'd have a harder time making the decision. Being the same price, I'd say portability lost out to a better VR experience. Since the "R" in "VR" stands for "Reality" and you want the absolute best experience, go with the Rift S. Not having to worry about Battey life and the 2 hours it takes to recharge, is another strike against the Quest in my opinion.

Having used mobile VR adapters before, this is a leap forward. Setup (Simple): Oculus Rift S only works with Windows 10, with higher end video cards. Won't work unless the computer has discrete video from Nvidia or AMD with a DisplayPort. Also needs a single USB 3.0 The remote controllers pair wirelessly with the head unit, and no additional connections are needed on the PC. As seen from the pictures, the controllers have a ring to help against smashing your hands on a wall. While the headset has some weight, its halo band is very simple to adjust with a single knob on the back and a single Velcro band on top. The headset has cameras around the eye mask to help know where one is in a room without having to install additional (beacons) around the room like on other models. With a single cable connecting to the PC this is as simple as it's going to get with a wired headset. It can be worn with glasses, which fit comfortably inside the headset. Image (Good enough): The image is very clear with a single high-resolution display behind specialized optics. First time I used it, noticed the left and right views didn't look aligned, so there are some adjustments for the distance between eyes, but it's in software, since the headset has a single large display. Sound (Works): It comes from the halo, and it doesn't cover the ears. I found the sound to be fine, and there is a headphone plug on one side of the headset, if one prefers to wear earplugs. Overall, PC-Based headsets provide better graphics, and have more games than mobile based headsets. Besides the Oculus store, it can run games from Steam.

The inside out tracking is perfect for beginners to VR because it eliminates the need to install sensors in your room. The controllers are lightweight and the tracking is great. Only issues I've had so far with the tracking is it gets spotty if you reach behind you where the cameras can't see the controllers or you put the controllers too close to the headset. Something to note though is sometimes I'll start the Oculus app and it won't detect the headset, prompting me to run a file via win key+R which can be a foreign concept to some. Another issue is when you close the oculus app to use your PC normally, the headset goes into standby mode, but my controllers still drained their batteries, which can be a pain unless you invest in rechargable double AA's like I did. In the end, for $400, this is a perfect startup for VR enthusiasts and I will stand by this headset firmly