IT FEELS LIKE only yesterday we were gearing up for last year’s
Gear of the Year awards. That prestigious moment where we
gather our thoughts on the very best hardware that has been
launched in the last year (or at least the gear we’ve had the
opportunity to test) and give you our picks for where you should
invest your money. It has certainly been an interesting year,
that’s for sure, and jam-packed with a ton of new releases.
Last time around, we were still reeling from the first year
of the pandemic, the world of computing had just arrived at a
rather abrupt silicon shortage, and Nvidia had just launched
its latest and greatest 30 00-series GPUs as well. Life was, fair
to say, a little odd. And, arguably, it still is.However, a lot has changed since then. Most notably, we’ve
had to rework our list this time around. Over the past 11 issues,
not a single graphics card has scored higher than an 8. With the
prices sky-high and supply still at an all-time low, we couldn’t
justify including any from either Nvidia or AMD this time.
As always, there’s a lot of kit out there and companies that
we haven’t included this time around. That’s not to say that they
haven’t produced some exceptional products, just that, well,
we only have limited space in this old magazine of ours and,
sadly, some parts just didn’t make the cut.
So, with that out of the way, let’s get stuck into our favorite
gear of the year, shall we? –THE MAXIMUM PC TEAMVR has had a bit of a bumpy ride since its conception, but
Oculus seems to be starting to get all the pieces just right,
especially with its latest headset, the Quest 2.
This $3 00 budget VR headset packs in a ton of tech,
including refresh rates up to 12 0Hz, a resolution of
183 2x19 20 per eye, WiFi 6 connectivity (including complete
wireless connectivity with your PC), some impressive
controllers, 64GB of storage, 6GB of memory, a Qualcomm
Snapdragon XR2 CPU, and it also manages an incredible
three-hour battery life.
Easy to set up and easy to configure, if you’re thinking
about trying out VR for the first time, there’s no better place
to start than with the Quest 2. The
only downside? Well, you need a
Facebook account to use it.-^ $300,^ http://www.oculus.com^
-^ Reviewed:^ Maximum^ PC,^
July 2021
SPECIAL MENTION
OCULUS QUEST 2
gear of the year