Oculus Quest 2 long-term review: still worth it?

A refresh rate up to 120 Hz means everything you see on screen can move way more smoothly than what a generic 60 Hz display offers, immersing you more into your games and tricking your brain better that you're in a virtual world. With a slower refresh rate the pictures on screen would change ever so slightly slower, enough for your brain to be like "this is fake, and I'm dizzy now."

The Quest 2 is also considered a "nearly 4K" VR headset, which means its display is high resolution, offering sharp and clear picture quality. There is no screen door effect visible either, which lower quality headsets tend to exhibit due to their individual pixels being too far apart. The only thing that occasionally bothers me is a slight rainbow effect near the edges of the lenses; with the image being perfect only smack down in the middle of them. It's hardly noticeable during gameplay, but it's there.

We also have a fairly narrow FOV (field of view), meaning the lenses are a bit smaller than what you may get on, say, a Valve Index VR headset. A small (around 89°) FOV, like we have on the Quest 2, means the lenses don't cover a lot of your vision, and thus don't immerse you as well as bigger lenses, with a bigger screen behind them, could. Again, this is something your brain eventually tunes out, especially during gaming sessions, but Meta sure should consider increasing the FOV on the Quest 2's successor.

Now let's talk about IPD, which is very important. What's IPD? It stands for (Inter Pupillary Distance), and it means the distance between the centers of your eyes. It's important for a VR headset to support several distances, accommodating as many people as possible, and the Quest 2 does – if your eyes are around 58 mm, 63 mm or 68 mm apart – this headset should be comfortable for you to use. You can adjust its lens spacing between those three options, and I personally find that 68 mm is closest to my IPD.

If your IPD is way lower or higher than what the Quest 2 supports – unfortunately you're out of luck here. My IPD is actually around 70 mm, which is higher than what Meta's headset supports, so occasionally I'll notice discomfort, as one of my eyes doesn't get a lens perfectly in front of it, but slightly to the side, and thus it sees a blurred image.

Here's hoping Meta supports a higher IPD range with the upcoming Quest 2, but in all fairness – the Quest 2's IPD range is already larger than what most other headsets support.

And speaking of eye comfort, the Quest 2 comes with an optional plastic separator part that can keep the lenses a bit further from your eyes, so you can wear glasses while gaming. It's also a bit of a hack to use this separator if your IPD is larger than the recommended, as at least in my case – it helps me a bit.

Performance

A very, very simple way to explain the Quest 2 would be to call it a smartphone with lenses. Because it's not only running the Android operating system, like most smartphones in the world, but it's powered by a smartphone-class processor – the Snapdragon XR2. And 6 GB of RAM.

The specs don't really matter as much as the actual usage experience, and – the performance on the Quest 2 is good. It boots up quickly, it opens games quickly, and since all games in its library are optimized for it – you shouldn't notice any lag, ever. I know I haven't.

So we do have great performance on this standalone headset, and that's not just impressive, but extremely convenient. Again – you don't need your own, super expensive, VR ready gaming computer to play VR games if you own the Quest 2 – it's completely standalone, and good at it.

In fact, Meta eventually started utilizing its 6 GB of RAM by offering multi-window multitasking! Indeed, you can enable a feature where you get to open, say, three web browser tabs at the same time, all visible in your field of view – and the Quest 2 handles even that well.

User experience

Prepare to read some complaints here. While I do admire how often Meta tries to push out cool new features for the Quest 2, it seems like with every (completely automatic and silent) update we get more bugs, or old ones remain.

Indeed, the Quest 2 may be the buggiest device I've ever used, and even if you only plan on playing games not doing anything even remotely more complicated – you'll face a bug occasionally.

Whether it's the headset randomly shutting off on its own, because maybe the sensor between its lenses is failing to detect if you're wearing it or not, or the entire user interface refuses to show up, or AirLink doesn't work until you reset the device – power users should expect to go through a learning curve of bug avoidance and fixing. The Quest 2 can be frustrating sometimes.

In all fairness, at the time of writing this long-term review, two of those three main bugs I personally faced have been fixed, with the AirLink one still remaining.

So I'm not going to lie – the user experience is a bit of a mess sometimes, and not something you may expect to see from a giant corporation such as Meta. Regardless, any bugs you may or may not face are easy to go around – usually a quick reset of the device (hold the power button for a few seconds) will do it.

Other than that, when it all works – the user experience on the Quest 2 is actually amazing, and super exciting. Because you not only get a web browser and optional multitasking, but a ton of fun experimental features to play around with. You can even enable Passthrough – which turns your Quest 2 into an AR headset, kind of. A black and white, grainy AR headset, but AR nonetheless. So whether you like tinkering with your device, or you only want the basics – besides the occasional bug, the user interface and experience are pretty great.

Content library

As a standalone VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2 has its own app store, similar to how your phone has an app store. It's called the Oculus Store, and that's where you head on over to buy your games and apps. And there are a lot of them.

Beat Saber, Among Us VR, BONELAB, Job Simulator, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Superhot VR, GORN, I Expect You To Die, Sniper Elite VR – some of the biggest, most popular VR games are available on the Quest 2's app store, optimized for that particular headset, ready for you to just download and play them – no PC required.

Besides some really tripe-A VR games you may have heard of, such as Half-Life: Alyx and Skyrim VR, pretty much everything else you may want can be bought from the Oculus Store and played on your Quest 2.

Indeed, the Quest 2 has a massive library of games, but that's not all – it also has countless useful apps too!

Netflix, YouTube VR, DeoVR, are just some of the most popular video-watching Quest 2 apps you can download. There are also fitness apps and games, web browsers and other productivity apps; pretty much anything you can think of.

And if that's not enough, if you actually do have a good gaming PC at home, you can always pair your Quest 2 with your PC and play PC VR games on it too, such as the aforementioned Skyrim VR, for example. I do that all the time using the AirLink feature. Let's talk about that…

PC tethering / AirLink / Link Cable

AirLink on the Oculus Quest 2 is incredible. Besides being a standalone headset, AirLink turns the Quest 2 into a traditional PC-tethered VR headset, except without the cables! It's a completely wireless connection, and with no noticeable latency either!

It uses your Wi-Fi connection, so it better be fast, though. And it's working really, really well – a true game changer in PC VR gaming, I dare say.

To get AirLink working you need a capable PC running Windows, and to download the Oculus App. Then you either use a wireless connection (AirLink) or a wired connection (Link Cable) to connect your Quest 2 to your PC, and off you go playing computer VR games too!

Overall, over the years I've used the Quest 2, AirLink has consistently remained my most cherished feature of this headset. And although it doesn't get the same update treatment with new features as the core standalone software, and yet it does feature some bugs, I consider it among the Quest 2's biggest pros, over any other VR headset.

• How to set up Oculus Quest 2

Controllers

The Quest 2 controllers are nice, light and comfy. Besides the obvious joystick and buttons, they have touch-sensitive pads; so even if you rest your fingers in a certain position, the headset can detect it.

While the controllers remain perfectly functional years later, their one major con is that you need to swap their AA batteries all the time, as they do not have built-in rechargeable batteries. Clearly this is a cost-saving measure, and it makes sense in a budget VR headset, especially when everything else about the Quest 2's controllers is anything but budget-feeling.



Their tracking of your hands' position and even your finger gestures is very good, and I've never had a single issue while playing games. Overall – nothing to complain about here; just be ready to buy alkaline AA batteries from time to time.
In my experience, a good alkaline AA battery can keep a Quest 2 controller going for at least half a month of daily gaming, or more if you're playing less often. But don't go for cheaper non-alkaline AA batteries, as those may last you as little as a single week.



An issue I started having over time with my Quest 2 controllers is joystick drift, and while I wouldn't consider it major, it is worth mentioning. Occasionally you'll press, say, the joystick upwards to scroll a menu up, but when you release it it will false-detect a downward press also, scrolling back down. Quest 2 joystick drift, or controller drift, as it's called sometimes, appears to be common, and not just my problem, but the good news is that it hardly ever affected my gaming experience. It's just an occasional annoyance, and clearly something Meta needs to address.

Battery life

Since we have a standalone headset here, it does have a rechargeable battery inside, which charges via USB Type-C, just like the average modern smartphone. Charging is fairly quick, usually taking less than an hour, so that's good news.

As for how long the battery lasts on a charge, you'll hear 2-to-3 hours, but in my personal experience, it's normally less than 2. If you're just playing Beat Saber or another Quest 2 game – expecting about 2 hours is reasonable.

However, if you use AirLink like I do, the battery life takes a hit – lasting me an hour and a half at best, so in those cases I just keep it plugged in. That's always an option if you don't mind the cable.

I haven't noticed any battery life degradation over the years, so that's good news. Nearly two years later, my Quest 2 appears to hold a similar charge to what it did when it was new.

Value for Money

This is a big one, and hard to argue with – the Oculus Quest 2 is great value for the money. It not only saves you from having to buy an extra expensive gaming PC, because it does all the work on its own, but the Quest 2 is the most affordable headset of the mainstream bunch at just $399 for its base model with 128GB of storage, or $499 with 256GB of storage.

It's hardly going to be a regrettable purchase for anyone, so if you're looking into trying out VR for the first time, pull the trigger on a Quest 2 and enjoy. Despite being a budget headset, it's actually arguably the best one too, due to its great display, awesome speakers, huge library of games, and my personal favorite – AirLink.

Verdict