IS VIRTUAL REALITY A FAD? The debate
rages within our own team, with the
pro-VR camp still holding out for a
killer app, while the detractors insist
that it’s doomed to pass by as another
feeble attempt at gaming immersion.
We’re going to try to remain as impartial
as possible for this review, looking at
Facebook-owned Oculus’s latest foray
into virtual reality: the Oculus Quest.
One of VR’s early stumbling blocks
was the lack of portability and flexibility.
Not only did earlier headsets require a
wired connection, but they also needed
a machine capable of powering VR games.
Oculus’s own first attempt at PC-less VR,
the Oculus Go, wasn’t powerful enough
to be a real competitor to PC-tethered
models. Other attempts involved glueing
smartphones to your face, but if there’s
one thing we can agree on, it’s that the
less said about those, the better.
Enter the Quest. With an updated chip,
the Snapdragon 835 from Qualcomm,
utilizing Kryo 280 CPUs alongside
Qualcomm’s Adreno 540 graphics, thisA new
standard for
all-in-one VR
Oculus
Quest
is the most powerful PC-free VR headset
on the market. The Quest also has four
exterior cameras that allow for proper
positional tracking, similar to the original
Rift. There’s 4GB of memory, 64GB
of storage, and two 1440x1600 OLED
displays. The headset is a sleek black box
with tough fabric padding and adjustable
headbands. It’s very comfortable, even
for extended gaming sessions, and we
had no issues with nausea while testing.
Hardware-wise, then, it’s powerful
for such a compact unit. It’s never going
to outperform a gaming PC, but Oculus
is confident that the Quest will fill a gap
in the market. Unfortunately, it takes a
good two hours to charge the battery
to full, and you’ll be lucky to get more
than the same amount of time from the
battery if you play continuously, which is
a real shortfall for serious VR gamers.
The 6m charge cable means you can still
play while charging, but that effectively
stymies the “wireless” selling point.
Weak battery aside, the Quest does
actually function well. The lack of ain the lab
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