Oculus Quest 2

Hardware

Overall, the hardware is solid, but Meta made concessions to keep cost down. I enjoy the controllers overall as they feel more sturdy, but the safety straps are cheaper than other Oculus products. The headset also feels sturdy, but not 'premium' like the Quest 1. The facial interface is very nice overall, it fits me better than any stock interface I've used.

The headstrap is the cheapest move, but surprisingly more usable than I was expecting. There is a nice gap in the back to run the Quest Link USB cable. Overall the hardware is what I was expecting.

Visuals

There are a decent amount of god rays, probably more than Quest 1 or Rift. The black point is not good, dark colors are muddy. Coming from Q1, G2 and Rift, I feel this is least dark panel I've seen. Muddies up games like The Room: VR. The field of view is very small and I can clearly see weird effects where the lens meets the frame of the headset.

All that being said, this headset's visuals are comfortable to my eyes.

Looking at text in the view was generally acceptable. I set my IPD level and forgot about it completely. I don't feel the need to constantly re-adjust the headset to find the sweet spot.

Even with its flaws, this headset truly delivers a good experience, as it is comfortable to my eyes and not fussy to get a nice image.

Comfort

The stock faceplate is very good. The controllers fit my hands better than the older controllers as they are slightly larger, with the downside being they are heavier.

The strap is, a strap. I have found a way to wear it comfortably. I will be fine until I get my Elite Strap. This headset is overall more comfortable out of the box than the Quest, and maybe more comfortable than the original Rift. The heaviness of the Quest 1 is not here. It feels balanced on my head.

(Of note, I eventually did get the Elite Strap and it was quite nice, and only recently broke many years later.)

Software

The Quest software is basically the same as the Quest 1. I love some things about the Quest interface (responsiveness of the dock, quick keys on the controllers, settings in headset, etc) and find other stuff unbelievably annoying (sharing limitations, having to open Quest→Quest Link→Stream, the silly Explore Home tab which is totally redundant with the other tabs). I wanted to get away from the Oculus ecosystem as I dislike the lock-in, but it really is the best interface in VR (at the time). There is a similar amount of random bugs and occasional restarts as you would expect with the Quest 1.

Audio

The audio is bad. In some ways this feels worse than my Quest 1 because it feels more obviously directed at my ears. Completely lacking low end. So much worse than the Rift or G2. It's bad audio. I exclusively wear my Astro A50s when I use this device.

Tracking

Very good. Seems on par with the Q1. I was hoping for any amount of improvement, but it seems to be exactly the same. Which means it is far better than the G2, a little more finicky than the Rift, but it all comes down to this:

I went into Alyx and tried to throw a grenade into an air duct. In the G2 I couldn't accomplish the task after 10 tries. I went into the Q2 in the same spot and hit the throw on my second try. The inside-out tracking is just way better than anyone else at this point.

Performance

Tried a few games on the headset itself. They all seemed to be running at 72hz which was disappointing, as it didn't feel very different than my Quest 1 other than the resolution. But then I plugged into my PC, cranked the resolution scale to 1.7 and turned it up to 90hz. I have been missing 90hz. The Rift spoiled me as to how VR should feel. I really don't think VR gets very special until you are at least 80-90hz.

The added control I felt in Beat Saber moving from 72hz→90hz was very noticeable. I felt way more in control. I will use this headset as a standalone sometimes, but I think I'm going to be using Quest Link the majority of the time.

I tried out Elite Dangerous and Microsoft Flight Simulator. Elite was good performance but suffered from the bad dark point of the panel, Microsoft Flight Simulator on the other hand was significantly better. The resolution made the controls easier to see and read and the game seemed to actually run more smoothly.

Update: I did all that testing on a 1080, but today I installed at 3080 into my machine and I must say, it has completed the PCVR experience for me. Alyx looks amazing. I get 90fps locked on pretty much anything I tried with Quest Link. I feel like this is such an incredible deal for a headset if you are just looking for a straight up PCVR headset I would still recommend the Quest 2 over a Rift or G2 at this point.

Social

Oculus is overall pretty bad at social experiences. The party system barely works. The voice chat is low quality. There is a bunch of spammy friending upsells of people don't know.

That being said there are two redeeming qualities with Oculus social experiences:

One is the 'who is online' affordances and two is the scoreboards. Both make VR feel like a place with other people in it from when you put the headset on.

But to be quite frank on the communication side, I have zero interest in their party system and just use Discord by default. It's clear they would never allow Discord to integrate into their platform, but if they did their social experience would be much better.

Overall

Even though these thoughts may sound quite a bit negative, I am very happy with the headset. This is the best headset you can buy right now at this price point. It's not perfect, but it will definitely satisfy me until someone nails it with a really high end headset that's not full of compromises (outside-in tracking (Index), crappy tracking (G2), 400pounds (PiMax), etc).

Or maybe this is just the way headsets will go from this point forward. It ends up being a really great PCVR headset. I wish the Rift was still being developed since PCVR is really where my heart is at, but this is a solid compromise.