Oculus Go Review: Standalone VR Priced for the Masses

Nearly seven months after its announcement back in October 2017, Oculus Go, the company’s first standalone VR headset, is finally here. The company’s thesis is that this affordably priced unit, which doesn’t rely on a docked smartphone, will make for a more seamless mobile VR experience. But does it go above and beyond Gear VR? Read on to find out.

As usual, we’ll start with a summary and then dig into the details below.

Launching today in 23 countries, Oculus Go is the company’s new take on mobile VR. Aimed for affordability and ease of use, the headset is priced at $200 for the 32GB model and $250 for the 64GB model. The headset shares the same Oculus content store and overall software experience as Gear VR.

Rather than relying on a docked smartphone like Gear VR, however, Go has everything built right in, meaning you don’t have to sacrifice your phone’s battery (or your ability to easily access texts, calls, and the like) just to scratch your VR itch.

Hardware wise, Go runs a less powerful chip than what you’d find on the latest Gear VR compatible phones, but Oculus says the standalone design means they can crank the performance higher thanks to better thermal performance, and a handful of other optimizations.

Oculus says you can expect two to two and a half hours of battery life while watching video, or one and a half to two hours of battery life while gaming. Anyone hoping to use Go as the ultimate personal media escape on long haul flights better pack an external battery. But be aware, Oculus doesn’t recommend charging the headset while using it, likely due to added heat buildup.

Compared to Gear VR, the Go uses a different type of lenses (Fresnel) and display technology (RGB-stripe LCD). The result is a slightly wider field of view, and generally improved overall clarity despite a few drawbacks. Unfortunately, few apps are optimized enough to truly take advantage of the lenses and display, leading many experiences to look and feel worse than the kind of gaming content you’d expect to find on a smartphone.

The headset comes with a spacer which increases the distance between the lenses and the user’s eyes to more comfortably fit glasses. There’s also clip-on brackets around the lenses which Oculus says will eventually be used for a prescription lens add-on.

The Go headset feels solid and well built, and is roughly the same weight as Gear VR. Thankfully Go includes stereo speakers hidden in the headstrap which offer decent enough audio to keep you from bothering with headphones in most cases. However a 3.5mm jack means you can plug in for more discrete listening and better audio quality any time you’d like.

The Go headset and controller offer 3DOF tracking (only rotation), which makes the headset best for seated use. Both have very little latency. The controller’s shape feels more refined than the Gear VR controller that came before it, but generally works the same—you’ll see it inside the headset where it will be used mostly for laser pointer-like interactions, as it is limited to 3DOF tracking.

A new companion app for Android and iOS devices helps to set up the Go headset, and also allows you to browse the Oculus content store and install apps without putting on the headset.

Working from the same library of apps as Gear VR—which has been around for a few years now—Oculus says Go has “more than 1,000” apps to choose from, but the number is a red herring—apps that look and play well are few and far between, and Oculus’ convoluted Home interface makes finding them a chore. There’s also a lot of traditional ‘flat’ and 360 media available, but the former doesn’t greatly benefit from being in a headset, and the latter has few truly compelling offerings which end up being spread out across various 360 content apps, many of which don’t offer pre-downloading for maximum quality.

With few standout apps, and an experience which isn’t appreciably different from what Gear VR has been offering now for several years, Oculus Go’s hardware and ease of use improvements feel like they would have been more alluring in VR’s early days—meanwhile in 2018, Go looks like a tough sell against other compelling portable entertainment devices like Nintendo Switch.