Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The all-in-one headset to beat!”.
When the HTC Vive launched in 2016, it was the de facto VR headset, But as time has passed, HTC’s presence in the space is kind of faded. As we see Facebook coming in with oculus Quest and valve coming in with their index headset. But that’s all about to change with HTC’s new! Oh my God. I just forgot the name we’ll put b-roll there, but that’s all about to change with the HTC’s Vive XR Elite, a brand new headset, that’s taking HTC’s consumer VR to the next level and look at the size difference, and we haven’t even talked about the fact that This has to be connected to a whole computer. This is a standalone VR headset, that’s competing with meta’s Quest 2..
What does that mean? It’S Standalone VR, which means it makes use of stuff like inside out tracking, using the four cameras on the front that allows you to have complete mobility and enabling you to use this in any room that you want, and it might actually make sense for traveling, because This comes with a incredible battery life. You can expect to use this for up to two hours at a time which is impressive, considering it’s using qualcomm’s, powerful, new xr2 processor. Now why not the xr2 plus well, the xr2 and the xr2 plus, are basically the same chip. What’S Qualcomm did with the xr2 plus was that they changed the orientation of some of the components on the chip itself to help with heat dissipation.
However, this has active Cooling in the form of a fan. That’S in the headset that’s going to prevent any sort of overheating from occurring. Let’S talk about the specs of the headset. It comes with 128 gigs of storage and 12 gigabytes of RAM, so you can hold a good amount of games on here as well.
But a nice feature is that there’s gon na be pass-through to your computer, pretty cool. It features 2K per eye. That’S a 1920! By 1920 display for each eye, they’re calling it 4K, but that’s not what 4K is. It adds up to 3840 by 1920..
That’S not 2160.. Don’T lie HTC. I don’t like it okay, but what is true is that we have a 90 Hertz display, with a 110 degree field of view, which is not best in class, but very, very good and directly in line with the competing Quest too, but they have other enhancements that Are going to make a big impact? Obviously they have interpupillary distance adjustments. We have speakers in for each of the ears very slickly integrated into the frame of the headset.
The audio solution that they have here is, I would say, sufficient it’s nowhere near as good as say, the audio on the index, but obviously it’s much much smaller and they do get relatively loud, at least as loud as I was comfortable having them here, and this Is a very loud room and these also feature a diopter for each lens which allows you to dial it in exactly to your prescription and these numbers here they line up with your actual prescription. So if you have a minus six, then you can adjust it to six and it should look great, that’s going to make a huge difference for glasses, whereas who have had a lot of issues of enjoying VR right. Here’S a proximity sensor so that when you take off the headset, you don’t have to worry about uh, it’s still running and rendering your games. It turns the displays off and pauses everything, but it’s not just an all-in-one device.
You can actually take off the battery pack and swap out for a lighter headband. While you use this with your desktop computer and what’s great, is that you’re not going to be locked into the Oculus ecosystem and have to use a hacky workaround to play your steam VR games? This has steamvr support, just like the HTC Vive, so everything that you have on Steam for all of the best VR games are, I mean now. I will say this kind of Disconnect feels a little bit flimsy, it’s a very Plasky headset and they did that in the name of weight reduction which helps make it super comfortable. But, as you can see – and this is pre-production – It’s a demo unit. But you can kind of see, there’s a there’s a little bit of stress. That’S caused these buckles to kind of come out a little bit.
I don’t know if that’s gon na be fixed in the final version right now. This connection is hard to pull out and feels a little flimsy. The headset by itself weighs about 250 grams, give or take a few with the battery attached. It’S only just around 650. when compared to the HTC Vive, which weighs 555 grams. Now you might be thinking, hey, wait! A second that’s like less than this combined, but because the batteries at the back of your head, it kind of counterbalances the headset, whereas with the HTC Vive, it’s all at the front and like an inch and a half away from your face.
So it’s kind of constantly pulling onto the front of your face. This makes a really big difference. This all sounds really good and I’m very excited to try it out. But first, let’s talk about dbrand, so our sponsor for CES 2023 actually dropped out, but dbrand footed.
The bill the only catch is they want me to come out onto the streets and offer Tech tips to random people for free. It’S, I I’m not optimistic. Do you want a tech tip on what, on anything any kind of tech any ever ever, have any questions about technology? No, I don’t think you don’t need any Tech tips. No, I’m not very techy. You know how to use Google perfectly yeah. Was that an iPhone yeah? Do you like iPhones, but you don’t want any Tech tips about how to use it? No thanks your master. I think so. Yeah! Okay, can you do one thing for me: what go to shortliness.com? This is for a YouTube video.
The headset also comes with a set of these Vive controllers, they’re a little bit different than the ones that you’re used to with the Vive Pro or the original Vive. They’Re a lot more like the quest Pros again they use Inside Out tracking. You have a analog trigger up here with a hard press at the bottom.
Instead of using proximity for grip sensing, there’s a single button, so you’d hold it indexing on the trigger. You want to squeeze with your hand you just kind of grip there that button A and A B button and some joysticks that are not really that comfortable, I’m not a huge fan of them, but they track really well speaking of tracking really well, I was really Blown Away by how good the finger tracking was, it was very, very responsive and the range was much further than the tracking on The Meta Quest where, if you go full arms out, if you’re a tall person like me, it just loses track of them. My full range of motion was totally usable for me and the only way I could break the hand tracking was when you were doing stuff like hiding your fingers.
I was really impressed with it and it makes a big difference in terms of how immersive things feels being able to like. Actually, you know pinch away, guitar pick and like finger the guitar. It was really really impressive. On the back of the headband, you have this soft rubber that keeps a good grip with the back of your head and for the gasket, it’s a very nice nylon kind of texture. It feels really good. It’S very soft and I found that it did a great job of alleviating the pressure of the mask on my head, despite the fact that it’s so thin and small, and I’m very pleased to be your Guide to the metavera today, I’m really excited.
Are you? I’M excited I’m a huge, classical music fan. Uh-Huh, you got Bach Mozart, Beethoven. All the big ones today we’re gon na conduct Verdi will be in your right hand. Okay, that’s it finger on the trigger, as we say here in the U.S and you’re gon na see me. I see it. Yes, you see me in real life and now you see me digitally about the power of Maestro and the middle name.
I think it’s incredible. I’M glad that culture is finally coming to Tech. Look at it, so I’ve spent some time playing a couple of games. We played like this Maestro demo, where I was controlling an orchestra and this air guitar demo, where I was about as good as air guitar. As I was at real guitar and I have some thoughts – one – it is a supremely comfortable headset. It’S very light – it’s really easy to use, but there are some issues for one: the gasket.
It’S a magnetic attachment for the pressure that you want on your face to make sure it’s secure, especially if you’re playing like an active game here. Here’S a demonstration look at how easy, like I barely had to touch that it has an RGB camera in the front for pass-through. So you can see, what’s in front of you and a depth sensor, to help make sure that what you’re, actually seeing kind of reflects, what the physical space is showing and it’s a really good. Looking camera, you can like use your phone with it, you can type a message out. It’S a very, very good camera you’re buying into an ecosystem, and Facebook has had a lot of time to develop their ecosystem, filling it with great exclusives and a ton of Community Support, thanks to being the most popular option out there, whereas the metaquest 2 is 400. This comes in at 1100, which is pricey, especially considering that you know the valve index is a thing which a valve index has higher resolution, but you require base stations, so this allows for the convenience of the metaquest 2, but with some quality improvements in terms of The specs, as well as accessibility, improvements like just the glasses and the die-opters, makes a huge difference to how many people can finally get around to experiencing VR, assuming they have the cash. This is going to come out in February 2023, so keep an eye out, and it’s really cool to finally see HTC back in the consumer space again in a real big way. If you like this video, why don’t you check out some of our other CES coverage? There’S been a ton of cool stuff with the show this year and we’ve covered a lot of it. Go go watch other thing. .