Oculus Quest 2- 128GB-USED

As someone who writes about virtual reality and has been stuck at home just like many people during the 2020 pandemic, I’ve gotten asked one question over and over: if virtual reality is so great and actual reality is so dangerous, why isn’t everybody turning to VR? This isn’t a totally fair framing, since VR usage has spiked by some measures. But it did expose a simple problem: I really couldn’t recommend a headset that was friendly enough for most people to buy.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with Oculus’ new Quest 2 headset, though, and that’s very close to changing. The Quest 2 is a self-contained headset that’s shipping on October 13th, and it’s an update to Oculus’ 2019 Quest. Oculus has kept that standalone Quest design with the same feature set, while improving its screen, reducing its weight, and — with one noteworthy caveat — making it more comfortable. It’s also dropped the starting price from $399 to $299, making the Quest 2 one of the lowest-priced headsets on the market.

The Quest 2 is everything I liked about the original Quest at launch but with the benefit of a stronger ecosystem that’s developed over the past year. Even with current-generation VR’s inherent awkwardness, it feels like a final product rather than an early-adopter experiment. Oculus — a company owned by social giant Facebook — has done some of its best work so far. It’s also provoked some of the biggest questions yet about VR’s future.