HTC Vive XR Elite Virtual Reality Headset + Controllers

Vive has produced yet another high-quality product! Once again HTC Vive is making headsets for recreational consumers. I originally had the Vive OG, and the Vive Pro OG with the lens mod. I bought the quest 2 just for travel and mobility. After hearing everybody’s complaints with the XR Elite, I was concerned this headset would not be a vast improvement in quality of play… Especially with PC-based games. A good example is the quest 2 running kayak mirage… it is horrible… no detailing or definition in any of the landscape/scenery whether playing standalone, or PCVR with a cable! And I was concerned that without the video compression of the Vive pro that the XR Elite headset running off USB-C would not be good. I was completely surprised! Very pleasantly surprised!!! I’ve been using VR since the inception of consumer headsets, and this is a nice step up! The pancake lenses make all the difference and it is so much better than the quest 2!!! So much clearer, great definition in images. and the diopters are the icing on the cake! I wear contacts and as part of the set up process you have the option to adjust the diopters. I decided to adjust the diopters just for the experience and wow! So now one eye is set on 2 1/2 and everything looks pristinely clear!!! My vision is fine in all other scenarios, and now I’m glad to be able to see better in VR too. I’ve heard complaints of God rays, fix your diopters! Also, using the cable link, I was able to run Lone Echo flawlessly! I could never get the quest to run it, and when I did. It literally dropped more frames than it played and of course it just looked ugly. Even with a high-quality hardwired cable link. Lone Echo is also a program that doesn’t look great with the screen door effect… So I didn’t want to play it with my Vive Pro either. It looks glorious and runs so smoothly it’s insane with the XR Elite!!! Haven’t run half life Alex yet, but I’m sure it’s going to play as well as lone echo does, if not better! I have been thrilled to see that the headset runs all my old programs in steam, as well as revive! Sweet! Before getting the XR elite, I was using two headsets, my Vive Pro for at home on PCVR, and the quest 2 for mobility around the house, and when I travel using it as a standalone headset. The Vive XR elite is a step up in all directions! It is extremely comfortable, no mods needed like you have to do with the quest 2, (ouch!), and I can’t get over the clarity!!! I can use it anywhere in the house as stand alone, or run it with wireless streaming without sacrificing quality. Because it can run as a standalone, it makes it perfect for traveling… Especially with its low profile and lightweight! The XR Elite definitely meet my needs, and exceeds expectations. I did not have a headset that I could run wirelessly with higher quality PCVR. Absolutely love it! So exciting! Now, like all things in VR, the software is a little bit slow in coming. Patience wins here. Software will be coming, and I’m ready for it. I remember in 2016 trying to find software… There’s a plethora available now in comparison to that!!! Lol.

I was excited to upgrade from my Index to this, but Im going back to my Index - Im better off buying the Wireless add-on and keeping my Index. This thing is very uncomfortable, the IPD is a pain to dial in, and I cant get the IPD to the best sweet spot (Im sure thats on me). The controllers are basic and the Index controllers blow these away. WiFi playing - Also pretty bad, Alyx couldnt be played and Im on a 6e network for both the PC and XR - the only two devices on the network and it still cant be played wirelessly. Overall, this is overpriced for what you get - the FOV is small, white/bright lights are annoying, they shine way too much. Just a bummer, I had such high hopes for this....

I really see no reason for this half-baked product to have been released. For starters the hand tracking while decent clearly needed polish as it kept bugging out on me. Especially if switching from controllers to hand tracking which would sometimes cause freezing or other issues that required a reboot to clear. The main hub was buggy when downloading larger apps as downloading from there would always hang on anything beyond a certain size before starting over from 0%. Fortunately going to the actual app platform hub made it work but then why let us use a way to download that is buggy and incomplete? Just incompetence apparently. Trying to take the headset off to let it download something while you do something else would also cause the download to fail. I even got told by customer care to put something in front of the sensor so the headset could stay on. The headset itself would constantly overheat and crash, another thing to start over on a app download. Then I find out it cant even support Linux which mainly meant the Steam Deck which to me is quite surprising given how closely Valve works with HTC. On top of that the controllers would barely hold charge and seemed to die without ever using them. First time using a stand alone and but have also tested a quest and I think we need progress before its really ready. To me it feels half-baked at best and a mess at worse which is what this was for me. For the hardware we need at least what solid state batteries promise for longevity and weight as well as processors dont dont require screaming fans or a better cooling solution. I dont know exactly what that will require in terms of newly developed tech but I think Ill stay away from stand alone VR till that stuff is realized at the very least.

Late adopter to VR. If this is your first foray into VR, its a solid place to start. My other experience is HTC Vive Pro 2. So the inside out tracking coupled with AR capability is a freedom from base stations and wires. But you do get a downgrade in definition, which is understandable given how light the unit is. The FOV is much less than its Vive Pro 2 sibling. But if youre playing casual VR games like Beat Saber or just getting your feet wet in VR and utterly refuse to be involved with anything Mark Zuckerberg then HTC is the set for you.

Really enjoying the XR Elite. Great combination of form and performance. This VR headset is light and comfortable and as close to a pair of glasses as I’ve experienced. I’ve been wanting a high end headset with the convenience of being a standalone device, and this fits the bill. Resolution is clear, colors are vibrant, and refresh rate is very good. I’ve found the interface to be pretty intuitive so it’s relatively easy to use. Came with some interesting software and works with their own store and Steam. Looking forward for more mixed reality apps to take advantage of the color passthrough.

I purchased my XR Elite via the HTC Vive store, but Im so disappointed in it that I felt a warning on Amazon was warranted. Its impressive when you first pull it out of the box, but any possibility of a good review had vanished after using the headset for less than 10 minutes. Im a Vive fanboy... I own the original Vive and the Vive Elite Cosmos and LOVE them both, but I can only assume those engineers came nowhere near the XR Elite. For reference, my SteamVR streaming rig is a relatively high-end 3080TI with a WiFi 6E router... I have no issues running the most demanding VR games at high detail on my Cosmos Elite. Good -The diopter adjustment is great -HMD is impressively small and light weight Bad -AIO software might as well be nonexistent for whats offered -PC streaming is mostly a stuttering low-rez mess and when it does work and very few SteamVR games provide bindings for the XR controllers -Uncomfortable in every configuration... glasses mode pinches your skull to literally headache inducing levels and battery mode squashes your face when you wear it tight enough not to wiggle -Terrible internal reflected light bloom in the pancake lens assemblies... bright graphics wash out the entire display -Field of view is one of the worst Ive experienced with no ability to move the lens closer to your eyes -Controllers feel like a cheap Dollar Store knockoffs -Face gasket is made of a fabric material and is already dirty and deforming in addition to constantly coming detached from the headset at the slightest bump -A ridiculous piece of cheap elastic is included as a securing head strap HTC should be embarrassed by the XR Elite and ashamed of themselves for the price point. My shame is in not retuning it immediately... now I can only hope that active improvements to the software and 3rd party accessories can save it from a dusty death at the bottom of a drawer.

I got my unit today, and I have to say; ALL of my expectations were wrong. Im absolutely gobsmacked at how bad the experience is. Im coming from a Rift S; so I was under the, false, impression that no matter how bad this ended up being, itd be so far above the rift thatd Id be plenty happy to trudge through the early adopter tax and growing pains. I cant. The UI is so shoddy that after a couple hours using it I was overflowing with the desire to submit for a refund and buy a quest pro. I despise facebook, passionately; but Id rather get back into bed with them, than bytedance, and there are no other standalone wireless options to speak of. Here are a few of my takeaway Pros and Cons. PROS PCVR latency on Wifi 6 (5ghz) was actually really good. (see first Con in list below for more context) The first thing I did was, open Beatsaber and test out some E+ songs. The saber movement felt accurate and realtime, as compared to my typical displayport tethered setup. Screen quality is nice, but honestly not jaw-dropping or anything. I was expecting this to be a big upgrade, considering the Rift S is relatively low res and has Fresnel lenses, but it kind of felt equivalent/worse on the XRE, even after acclimating to the sweet spot. The unit itself is tiny, shockingly tiny. The compactness of it blew my mind, after holding it in my hands, Im convinced were only a few generations away from near sunglasses sizes of HMDs. I had NO ISSUES with setup, or with pairing for wireless PCVR, everything connected more or less immediately. The instructions were sometimes poorly worded, but mechanically, each step worked out as would be expected. **I did have to segregate my 2.4ghz network, because it was preferring it over my 5ghz when I was allowing the router to decide. The 2nd accessory USB-C port(beside the right eye lens) does support USC-C Audio, so when I plugged in my 3.5mm adapter, it worked instantly with no configuration or other steps. The port is deeply recessed though, so the majority of USB-C ends will probably not fit. I used the official adapter that Apple sells, it has very thin insulation on the cable end. The in-arm speakers are excellent, better than most would expect. I had no issues with stereo positioning while using them. Aside from privacy uses, I dont think Id have used my headphones for anything else. The unit is capable of functioning, in glasses mode, for a while on the 15W from a standard PC USB-C port. It does drain the internal battery, but that will depend entirely on your use case. The inability to get consistent tracking results seemed to constantly cause it to spin up into full power while searching for the controllers and landmarks. So its hard to say how long I would get away with it. Seemed like an hour or two would be possible with light-ish use. The full color pass-through was really nice. Had no problem walking around, fixing myself a drink, reorganizing things around the room, etc... Very nice. There was definitely some warping in the image, so someone who is focused on AR/MR might find it intolerable; but for the home user in a casual setting, it was super useful to get around and do stuff without taking off the headset. CONS Controller and Hand tracking is abysmal. Im shocked at how poorly this tracks in low-medium light settings. I can put on my Rift S, in a fully dark room, with only a TV offering indirect lighting, and it tracks extremely well. The XRE needs every light in the room on maximum brightness, or it will constantly lose tracking. This made playing high level Beatsaber almost impossible under normal lighting conditions. If I turn on all my lights I get passable tracking, otherwise the controllers would lose tracking during any quick motions. Even with all my lights on, it had a VERY hard time tracking movement on the outer edges of the play-space. This can be improved with software over time, because its clear the predictive algorithms facebook uses for the Rift S can outperform it on older hardware using the same type of camera+controller gyro setup. The screen glare/light bleed are annoying. The blurriness you get from Fresnel lenses is, in my estimation, equivalent to the lens glare on the XREs pancakes. Its not like Im not used to it on my Rift, but I really thought the pancake lenses would be a huge increase in clarity. I see these as essentially a 1:1 swap. The OS is terrible. It looks pretty, and the options I sought out were almost always where I expected them to be in their respective menus; however, the OS itself was rife with bugs. Swapping in and out of apps would cause inexplicable system hangs that would have bizarre compounding effects, like sporadically unpairing the controllers until I did a hard system reset. This would happen in standalone and PCVR, however, the issues were far more severe on PCVR and required frequent resets and reopening PC apps and steam VR in a just-so method to allow it to function without breaking. The ability to reorient yourself is treated like a one-time initial device setup, instead of something youd do constantly. This might just be an issue of how I use VR. Sometimes Im on my couch, or standing in my VR space, or sitting at my desk. In the Oculus software, I can just long-press my menu button in the home screen and Im instantly reoriented to my current facing. I probably do this half a dozen times in every VR session: whenever I move over in my chair, or lean back on the couch, or move over while standing for better positioning, etc... The XRE experience is terrible in this regard, it loses its relative position without warning or skews the home screen position to some nonsense location and direction, but its reset position option, in the one tap menu popup, rarely reorients true to your heading, and often tries to honor some absolute positioning it has decided on its own. Once you combine this with the repositioning of apps in steamvr, its compounded into a nightmare of rinse-repeat in both interfaces until the app youre running is finally aligned correctly. The boundary settings are extremely limiting and cant be disabled. This is one of the most damning things in my list. If you set a huge boundary to avoid being interrupted by it, youll be punished by the system relocating your displays all over the place. If you use stationary, youd better stay still. Your floor position may change sporadically if tracking is lost temporarily. Any deviations from the boundaries, in stationary or room-scale, seem to have a 50/50 chance of causing standalone apps to crash, or streaming to crash, or to cause a system hang that needs a hard reset. This is all ridiculous to me, because, while I dont need boundaries, anyone who does, would probably have an awful experience with it. When I set up my Rift S years ago, by the 2nd week Id turned off guardian completely, and Ive never gone back; but even when it was on, it never broke system operation. Hand tracking, technically works. Ive never had a hand tracking headset before, so I dont know if its this awful on other hardware too; but it seems like to function at the level of a gimmick. It seems to struggle tremendously with the changing shape of hands as they move or rotate; which strikes me as the sort of thing that would be first-in-line-things-to-resolve in a hand tracking system. Like the controllers, it requires as much light as possible, and its not usable in low-med light scenarios. The idea of taking the XRE anywhere without its controllers seems impossible to me. As others have mentioned; in the glasses mode, the arms will dig a hole into your head if your head is too large. It was pretty painful for me after ~40minutes, so if you decide to work through it, youll probably have to sort out secondary padding. Its not bad at all with the battery pack attached, it feels like a normal headset in that mode. The central fixed-foveated rendering is way more aggressive than Id have liked, it was very noticeable anytime I was in an environment with textured walls and especially for text, looking around with my eyes left delivered an unacceptable visual mess. I havent used wireless VR before, so maybe this is a limitation of the XR2 platform and not HTCs fault; but, if its on HTC, its a huge negative. I have the hardware and bandwidth to easily push 2-3x what the headset is asking for, Id have preferred user-control over the reduced peripheral quality. settings:200mpbs/ULTRA/DynamicOFF Overall, this was a huge let down for me. I was thrilled to finally divorce facebook, in regard to my VR experiences, but its just too soon for me. HTC can improve a lot of whats wrong with this headset through software, but based on just how rough it is right now, I think thatll be more than a year away...

The valve index had set a very high bar, years before the quest 2 ever cam to market. Based on the quality valve is known for and numerous early reviews, I was expecting an exceptional headset when I preordered this one. I already own a quest 1, quest 2 and pico 4, so Im very familiar with vr. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. The headset wasnt comfortable at all. I couldnt get a very good light seal around the face cushion. The cushion itself seemed very flimsy and had a tendency to fall off if I grabbed it the wrong way. The battery pack that attaches to the back, like the pico 4 , is a great way to balance everything. However, unlike the pico, the back doesnt pivot at all. This means you have to loosen the back every time, which is inconvenient. This might have been manageable, but the only way to keep the headset on when I moved around was to tighten it excessively so that my face bit into the face cushion and it stayed on the back of my head. (This gave me headaches after 15-20 minutes of using it.) Visually, its not very impressive either. While it does look better than my quest 2, it doesnt look better than the pico 4. Also, the field of view seemed smaller, sort of like I was looking through binoculars. I tried playing Pop One and found myself having to look around a lot more, because my peripheral vision was almost non existent. Lastly, the controllers seem like a step backward. The body of controllers are straight bulky sticks, without any effort made to help them conform to your hand and be comfortable. The controllers on the quest 2 and pico 4 both feel comfortable in my hands. The xr elites did not. Both the quest 2 and the pico 4 are better headsets than this at a lesser price.

The XR Elite is a wonderful product that is horrifically painful to wear. There are a lot of good things about it but ultimately the pain was what made me get rid of it. The optics are really, really good. Edge to edge its super clear. Even when the HMD jiggles around and loses centering everything is still clear. You can truly look with your eyes. In complete blackness you notice the screen isnt as black as it could be. When a high contrast object shows up in the darkness it will tend to glow a little bit. It doesnt look like light shafts but instead multiple instances in a line losing definition. They have individual Diopters as well but I left them both at zero. There is IPD Adjustment using a very coarse slider instead of the usual dial on other HMDs. Its kind of difficult to get it dialed in to the exact sub millimeter but the lenses are very forgiving so precision wasnt needed. The IPD adjustment did jiggle itself loose once when moving a lot in VR. The screens are pretty good minus the blackest of blacks, though coming from a Vive Pro 2 there isnt much difference. Resolution is dense and not much more could be stuffed in without the battery suffering. When used fully standalone the battery life is somewhere between bad to okay. For a quick XR adventure its no problem which is what I think HTC is aiming for, not multi-hour adventures into the mist. I dunno if it was atypical but without the rear battery cradle the HMD would power on for about a second then shut off. With the battery cradle fully charged it lasted a little under 2 hours. When plugged into a computer it would charge but the drain would be larger than the supply. From full it would last around 3 hours when plugged into a PC. The controllers battery life is a totally different story. They would drain passively over the week and every time I went to use them they would be zeroed out completely. They automatically wake up from the tiniest of movements and theyd randomly wake up in the middle of the night from a 2.0 earthquake or something. I eventually left them on the charger for days on end until they would be needed to circumvent their drain. When fully charged I think they are supposed to last 6 some hours. Other than the controllers battery lives there isnt much to say about them. They feel comfortable in the hand and the buttons are in logical places. The thumb stick is kind of hard to push down but thats really about it for the main controls. They are kind of hard to differentiate left from right from feel alone if you dont have pass through mode enabled. They tracked well enough for the games I played but it got a little annoying when they got out of tracking space like above the head. They would track for about one second using only gyro and accelerometer when out of visual range then theyd go rotation only, no position. One second is enough if youre just tapping your back or putting a hat on but anything further and its a mess. The HMDs self tracking is pretty good and it never really bugged out. In complete darkness it would complain but even some ambient lights like monitors it worked well enough. Pass through mode must have some crazy noise reduction because I can still make out shapes in darkness. Upon startup it asks to create a playspace that you draw on the ground. Usually thats just a room minus some furniture. If for any reason you completely leave that playspace while wearing the HMD, like in passthrough mode, it will completely lose the original playspace and ask you to create a new playspace. If you agree to make a new playspace itll kick you out of whatever content you were looking at to do the setup. To get around this you can probably just draw a playspace that includes every room you think youll be in. I really wish it was less dependent on defined playspaces than it currently is. The XR Elite is basically bound to one area, despite being standalone and portable. AR content is basically non existent on the XR Elite. Its primarily VR stuff with passthrough visuals in case you step out of bounds. There built in hand tracking which is cool but limited to only a gimmick because the entire UI is built like a VR interface. You dont reach out and touch any buttons or wave for gestures or anything like that. You vaguely point your wrist at a button then pinch your fingers to simulate a click. There is some content that uses the hand tracking a little better but not the home UI. There is an option to allow the hand tracking to pass through to SteamVR as a controller emulator. You can pinch your fingers to pull the trigger. You can also flip your right hand over and pinch to open the XR menu. Thats about it. The built in speakers are actually decent. The Quest 2 internal speakers arent quite as good and the PiMax 8KX strap speakers were a joke. Your ears are fully unobstructed so you can still hear your environment which is useful when activating passthrough. Youll notice an extreme lack of sub and bass through the speakers. They are fine for music like jazz and is particularly suited for human voices. If the environment outside the XR Elite is noisy things get progressively worse but thats the nature of off-ear solutions. For discussion between 10 some people I kept the volume at about 90% most of the time. The ergonomics SEEMED good at first but quickly devolved once positioned. The gasket around the face was really soft and pliant around the sides but at the top there is a plastic bridge that goes over the eyebrows. When using the battery cradle to crank down that plastic bridge gave me a headache after about an hour and I kept loosening the battery cradle until it just fell off. 100% of the tension is placed right on that forehead bridge. Since there is no top strap to keep the XR Elite elevated it only relies on squeezing around the head to stay up. The battery cradle side was comfortable but the effects at the front are unforgivable. There is also the alternate Glasses Mode which takes the battery cradle completely off and turns it into what looks like super techy glasses. The temples grab on ULTRA hard and the sides of my head were immediately aware of something trying to reduce the width of my skull. I wear medium-large motorcycle helmets and anyone with a wider head would be worse off. That being said, it was more comfortable than having my forehead be in pain though anything is more comfortable than being stabbed. There is a TINY amount of cushion in the temple ends that have about 1mm of squish. Problematically, it places all that squeeze on what feels like less than one square inch per side so you really feel it. Surprisingly even though there is no back strap to keep the XR Elite held on it manages to stay on my face, fully planted, through a bunch of action games I played. You might ask, how did I power the XR Elite without the battery cradle? You can use any power bank that outputs 12v like QC3.0/4.0 or variable voltage stuff. Generally, if it can charge a laptop it can definitely power the XR Elite. I put the power bank in my pocket and ran a 3 foot cable up to the cable holding pinch at the right temple and into the power slot. My power banks are decently large, two being 50wh and another at 100wh, and last way longer than the included battery cradle. You can also push the power banks through the battery cradle and get all the extra charge associated. With a quick charging power bank itll push the battery cradle to 100%. As soon as the power bank dies itll go back to using the battery cradles charge and in this time you can plug in another one or ride the remaining energy to the end. Additional note, the battery Cradle can be used for USB tethering. I thought it was just a charge port but it pushed data through just fine. I plugged it into a USB 3.2g2 port but Im not sure how fast the batter cradles port is, might be 3.2g1 or it might even be 2.0. The cabled port on the side of the XR Elite obviously has full USB capabilities but without a power source it wont do much. There is also an additional USB-C port to the right of the right eye and to the left of the temple thats hidden. I didnt manage to try that port out but I believe its a host port. Tethering is great on the XR Elite. Just install the app on both a PC and the XR Elite, make sure Wi-Fi is working OR the USB is tethered, and in the XR just click Streaming App. That kind of convenience made me really, really like the XR Elite. There was a few times when the Wi-Fi streaming would get a bit overcompressed possibly from environmental issues. Upping the SteamVR resolution had ZERO effect on visual quality since it must pass through the Streaming Hub compression in the end. Upping the resolution just made more pixels have to fit through the same bitrate through Wi-Fi which had negative effects scaling up. There seemed like some of the gradients would lose a bit of smoothness, especially in light greys to slightly darker greys, while using the Streaming Hub. The convenience factor was just too good though. Ultimately, the Wi-Fi on the XR Elite stopped working. That combined with the extremely painful mounting systems brought me to the final crossroad. I returned it.

Dude...dont buy this unless you are strictly using it for PCVR. Half the apps dont work. The controllers bug out. The lens are glary . There is practically zero games. No refund policy for games. Oh yeah you heard me right. No refund (meta lets you refund anything as long as you havent played it over 2 hours) and the fan is crazy loud. This thing feels very underdeveloped. We got scammed man