Should I get an Oculus Rift S or Oculus Quest 2?

October 07, 2024

Should I get an Oculus Rift S or Oculus Quest 2?

What is Oculus? Oculus is a brand of a division in Facebook that produces virtual reality headsets, including the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest lines. Both Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest lines were released on May 21, 2019, at a similar price. 

The Oculus Quest 2 is a standalone headset that runs on the Android platform featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, a per-eye resolution of 1,832 × 1,920 (3.5 megapixels), and a refresh rate of up to 90Hz. The Oculus Quest 2 can function as a tethered headset just like the Rift S by connecting to your PC using a USB-C cable. The Oculus Quest 2 is wire-free.

Compared to the Oculus Quest 2, the Oculus Rift S is a tethered virtual reality headset designed to work with your PC. This means the graphics that the Rift S handles may not work on a standalone headset. It connects to PCs via DisplayPort (not HDMI), so some gaming laptops are incompatible with the headset.

Besides, the Oculus Rift S has a per-eye resolution of 1,440 × 1,280 and a refresh rate of 80Hz which are all lower than that of the Oculus Quest 2. Unlike Oculus Quest 2, the Oculus Rift S is not wire-free.

Just because of the feature of “standalone” for this VR headset, I would choose Oculus Quest 2 because a headset without the need of a PC has many advantages. Oculus Quest is a self-contained VR headset. There is no cable back to a PC and all performance hardware is housed with the display and lenses. This makes the Quest much more portable and it gives you a lot more freedom.

PC VR is positioned as a premium segment focusing on graphics, as it uses a PC graphics card to process it. Consumer expectations are respective. Developing premium applications is expensive, and applications that do not meet certain quality standards crash before release.

Oculus Quest 2 is more affordable than Rift S since PC VR is positioned as a premium segment focusing on graphics and it uses a PC graphics card which is expensive.

As I mentioned above, in addition to its standalone feature, Oculus Quest can also function as a tethered headset just like the Rift S does. If you have a PC capable of powering VR games, you'll be able to play them on your Oculus Quest. The Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Quest share a huge library of VR games and apps- over 200 as of 2021. The Quest 2 allows you to (almost literally) step inside gaming worlds, as well as access 360-degree video content and apps covering all genres.

The tremendous immersive experience brought to you by this headset which is almost the best virtual reality headset will make you and me get it without any doubt. Thanks for reading. Sorry for my ignorance. I try to do a better job.