HTC Vive XR Elite Virtual Reality Headset + Controllers

Preface to this review: I have an extreme negative bias towards Meta and refuse to use their products, so Im completely unable to compare this product to any of the Quest offerings. Ill primarily be comparing against the Valve Index. Furthermore, as other reviews have pointed out, the standalone experience is sorely lacking, and in my opinion HTC should have delayed the launch of this headset until they were able to get more apps into their storefront. Because of this, Ill only be focusing on the PCVR experience here. The HTC Vive XR Elite is not the best headset in any one category. Its not the best looking image (PCVR), it doesnt have the best controllers, it doesnt have the best tracking, and its not the smoothest experience out of the box. What it does have, is portability; both portability in travel and portability between users. We have a Valve Index already in our house, and sharing that experience is tedious to say the least, which means in the year weve had it in our house of 4, weve pretty much never shared a VR experience all together. That changed only a few days after the XR Elite arrived. The ability to quickly swap between different users of differing prescriptions, the ability to adjust the IPD to fit my (admitted hey-Arnold-esque) head, and the lack of a top strap to accommodate the widest range of hair styles make it an actually fun and immersive experience you can ***enjoy with your friends and family*** instead of alone. Ill admit the Quest lineup is probably pretty similar here, but as I mentioned above, I refuse to in any way support their parent company, and thus here I am. I believe that this product is perfect for those looking for a higher-end product as their first foray into VR, and many of the flaws the XR Elite has, I hope HTC is able to solve (primarily the lack of apps in the storefront). If youre listening HTC, one thing I would love to see is the ability to integrate with other controllers. The XR Elite can already track my hands, but it cant pair with Index Knuckle controllers and track those instead? Of course Id be giving up some precision the Knuckle controllers usually have by removing the base stations, but I cant see why it isnt possible. That, or release some higher-quality feeling controllers. All in all, I really wanted this to be a 4-star or 5-star review, and I think for the right person (such as myself) it definitely is, but as for the general public... Its a hard sell given that they probably dont share the same aversion to Meta as I do.

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...

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.

Horrible first-day experience at the initial setup, the software was a disaster, so many issues with the connection to the PC and phone. It appears HTC is aware of the problem and addressing the problem soon after users pointed it out. Hand tracking is improved, at least it no longer recognizes my feet as a 3rd hand. and Phone mirroring connection is now stable to a usable level. There are many other issues that still need to be addressed before a fair judgment can be passed on the unit. The good news is the developer has not given up on it yet. so I will keep the unit for a month to see.

Great for wireless vr gaming! I have not used it for other purposes but this headset works very well for steam. Be sure to have good wifi and itll fun flawlessly. I dont have 6e or anything fancy, just a good router (netgear nighthawk) and streaming to elite with no problems.

Marketing so aggressively to such a niche market is only risky if you are unable to deliver, and this headset falls very short of expectations they themselves set. The hardware has promise, in so far as I could be OK with it IF the software experience wasnt so underwhelming. I certainly would like to veer away from Meta to support privacy centric efforts and willing to pay a premium for that. However the state of the UI / UX is so rough, that I do not have the patience to cheerlead for future updates will sort this out. Not for $1200 after tax. I was ready to scoop up accessories and lean into this headset, but I will happily continue on with PCVR via the Quest 2 headset for now. It really boggles the mind how they could even ship a product with software in such a state as if there were no market leaders present currently highlighting the short coming so plainly. Hopefully they can get sorted on future iterations. Im increasingly interested in Big Screens product despite the workarounds for feature parity as I am not skeptical about their marketing. Unfortunately my opinion of HTC is now negatively informed by their willingness to ship a product that over promises and under delivers.

Ive owned the original Vive, Index, and Quest 2 and this headset has been the most disappointing.. Unboxing it and setting it up was alright, when I went to log in with my email it told me to use steam to log in which I assume it wanted me to plug into a PC which I cant so I eventually made a new account with a new email so I can download things which worked but now I cant use the built in browser since it says it needs to update and I cant open it anymore, also for a few hours on the first day I was stuck on a loading screen but could hear the menu in the background and resetting it a few times didnt help, I had to unplug and replug it in like 5 times to eventually be able to use it again. Software aside the fan on this thing is loud, like its pretty noticeable id say double maybe triple the Quest 2s fan noise. The passthrough is the only decent thing on this headset but its not perfect but so far the best ive seen on a headset, At this price point theres better options out there

Cons: 1. If your network isnt being broadcasted, theres no way to add to the hidden network from the Vive Manager app. So you have to join whatever broadcasting/visible network that you see then sign up the headset then go into the virtual dashboard to Connectivity to add the hidden network 2. Small sweet spot 3. Fan in headset is noticeable 4. Glare from the lenses and halo effect (or light bleeding) around the edges 5. IPD says 72 but only goes to 69.55 6. Grainy passthrough 7. First impressions of the hand tracking isnt that good. It works but you most definitely need the controllers nearby 8. Despite following the steps of this video, I have difficulties getting the headset to see the PC connection. After almost a hour of working on this, I gave up. I will try again tomorrow but Im more than likely returning the headset when I had high hopes for this as a glasses wearer and original HTC Vive owner. Pros: 1. Form factor: lightweight, compact, balanced 2. Good audio: crisp 3. No glasses needed

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

tried 8 hours to get vive elite xr to work, including 2 hours with vive chatbots. no go. returned item.