HTC SteamVR Base Station 2.0

I ordered two base stations and it came quickly and was packaged well. When I got everything out and plugged up is when red flags showed up. One of them had the number ‘7’ and the word “loud” all over the sides in sharpie. The other sounded like a jet engine when plugged in. Both flashed blue for a moment then red, meaning critical hardware failure. On the plus side, returning them was easy.

Like other reviews have stated there is no mount. You will have to buy a stand or mount separate. The cord is also a lot shorter (maybe about 5 feet) than the one that came with my Steam VR set. So plan accordingly. It is steamVR compatible. If this is your 3rd+ base station when you first start steamVR you may get notified that you need to change the channels on the base stations. The steamVR popup window will guide you through this process. If they add the mount and increase the length of the cord. I will raise it to 5 stars. This base station is $50 more than it is on the steam store (but at least it is available). edit: I had a mechanical failure under a year. HOWEVER vive replaced it for free and even has a recycling program for the old broken one. Because of this I am raising it to 5 stars for the time being (I will lower it back to 4 if this one dies under a year as well).

This light house has a markup of $50 compared to the steam store light house, but at least I can order it lol. Also it doesnt come with mounting hardware which seems odd but a 3 pack of mounts is really cheap and I like them better than the mounting hardware that comes with the index.

I needed one more base station to clear out some occlusion issues I had due to items in my room, and it works perfectly. I liked it so much I got 2 more, and now I have 5 bases and very little issue with tracking anymore.

Dose whats its supposed to do

This Base Station works quite well for SteamVR

These are identical to the ones sold by Valve (it even says Valve on the back still), but these are $50 more expensive and comes with a shorter, bulkier, and sideways oriented power supply compared to the ones sold on Steam by Valve. Not only that, but there is no wall mount included either. They charge you more for far inferior hardware or lack thereof and this has always been HTC’s MO. I was ok with paying $50 more because I needed the extra Base Station and I was already aware of the shorter power adapter, but I expected at least a wall mount in the box! If Steam wasn’t currently sold out of Base Stations I wouldn’t have even considered this. I will be keeping an eye on Steam’s stock and returning this if I can get my hands on a Valve Base Station. Do not buy this if you’re not in a rush for another Base Station. Period.

I wanted to buy two base stations for my VR setup in June but Valve was out of stock at the time. Amazon came through with these. If you set them up properly for standing or room experience, they work great. Key point, dont leave them on all the time. The lasers inside spin at extremely fast RPM and you will wear out the base stations over time. Thats very important. With bluetooth this is easy, but wired, you have to manually unplug the power to the base stations. I left mine on for two months and I felt like a complete imbecile. Thankfully, I only play VR games infrequently because Im busy. They still work fine, but Ill be monitoring them over time for stability and performance issues.