A Review of the HTC Vive Pro 2 Headset
Some are calling it a design overkill, while others are calling it the mother of all headsets. Some say it’s impractical and clunky, while for others, it is the perfect headset. Let’s take a look at the facts and see what the VIVE Pro 2 really has to offer and whether it’s worth the premium level price.
The Vive Pro 2 Build
The overall build of the Vive Pro 2 is pretty much identical to its predecessor, which is not a bad thing since it is a robust and sturdy build. The weight is spread evenly across your head so that your neck won’t punish you for playing for too long,
To tighten and loosen the headset on your head, use the hand-crank mechanism on the back. The back of the seat has substantial padding to relieve pressure, wrapped neatly and securely around your head.
Visuals and Display
The Vive Pro 2 has undergone some significant spec upgrades. It offers sharp images with a huge 2448 × 2448 resolution per eye and a quick 120Hz refresh rate.
The screen door effect, often known as SDE, which has been a long-standing problem in VR, is the main issue it resolves.
As the name implies, the result is a visible mesh created by tiny gaps between each display pixel, giving the impression of gazing through a screen door and through the environment. The effect was noticeable in early VR headsets and has diminished as resolutions have risen, but this is the first instance of a headset that fully eliminates it.
The display isn’t exactly as wide or expansive as anticipated. That’s because benchmark testing using TestHMD 1.2 imply the horizontal field of vision is much narrower than that, closer to the 102 degrees, and the 120-degree range corresponds to that.
The vertical FOV, however, seems shorter than the original and most of the competitors, despite the fact that it is still an improvement over the original Vive Pro.
Graphically, improvements won’t be very noticeable in more cartoonish games, but they don’t have to.
If you live to explore immersive and stunningly realistic settings, then this headset will not disappoint you. Rendering distant mountain tops, vast forests, and graphically stunning landscapes down to the leaf is what this headset is made for – and the price reflects.
Vive Pro 2 Price
This headset was not made for casual gamers. It is made for avid gamers who are willing to cough up thousands for the ultimate graphical display of detail and beauty.
The price of the VIVE Pro 2 Headset comes at a steep $799 on their website for the headset alone. The rest of the gear. That’s the price of a whole new laptop, and given that the headset can only be used in combination with a PC, gamers would have to be quite persistent.
Final Verdict
The HTC Vive Pro 2 is definitely an impressive piece of hardware and is the king of the hill in terms of resolution and the removal of the screen door effect. However, its steep price, weird FOV, and some design issues make it a hard sell with such a premium price. This is especially true when comparing it to other headsets on the market.