Though not perfect, it offers a comfortable fit, solid build, excellent visuals and the promise of more great content to come. Though not perfect, it offers a comfortable fit, solid build, excellent visuals and the promise of more great content to come.
It’s a standalone device, meaning it’s finally cut the cord from the PC needed to run its older and more powerful brother, the Oculus Rift . We recommend keeping an eye out for Black Friday, coming up on November 27, for the biggest savings, followed by Cyber Monday.
You won’t mistake one for the other, but we have been continually impressed with how good Go’s VR is, especially considering everything needed to run the headset is contained in a little gray box that sits on your face. This is VR for the casual gamer, the relaxed consumer of media, the person without the time, money or interest in setting up a PC to power a higher-end headset. Its design is sleek and has some nice subtle touches; the front panel is a slightly different shade of gray in certain lights, for example. We tended to oscillate between the two ends of the spectrum; at times the light seeping through was distracting, and at others we were so caught up in a game we forgot it was there.
Oculus Go, which, remember, houses everything you need to run VR right inside the box that sits on your face, may have a very forward weight-distribution, yet all-in-all it’s a comfortable headset that feels good to wear. Instead of building in headphones, like the HTC Vive Pro , the Go’s plastic arms have slits that house the speakers, and this design feature helps the headset maintain its cohesive profile.
The controller felt intuitive here, and we were quickly caught up in the task (helping us to forget the light leakage, for one thing). It’s games like Coaster Combat where the Oculus Go controller shines because it goes beyond simply selecting things and becomes a part of the virtual world you’re seeing before your eyes.
Oculus Go Review in 2020: Still worth buying?
The Oculus Go is still a great starter VR headset with an excellent screen and loads of content to keep you busy. Specs Oculus Go Field of View 100° Max Resolution 2560 x 1140 Screen Type Fast-Switch WQHD LCD Pixel Density 538ppi Sensors Gyroscope Max Refresh Rate 60 Hz Tracking Orientational Tracking Weight 467g Requirements None Price Available on Amazon A poor quality screen will reduce immersion if textures are blurred or colors dull. The other screen technology used in VR headsets is AMOLED which can display deeper blacks and colors but with less sharpness. The screen of the Oculus Go is one of its strong points and when playing games and watching movies the images are sharp and colorful. 6DOF headsets track the movements of your whole body in the full 360 degrees and is considered the best VR experience.
3DOF headsets only track your head movements and a controller for pointing and selecting; this is a more limited VR experience and you can’t move forward, back, up or down. The Oculus Go is a 3DOF headset and has these limitations; you can only track your head movements as well as a controller connected via bluetooth. The Oculus Go doesn’t require anything else to work other than the headset itself and its wireless controller; in fact there are no wires involved at all. These headsets (like the Oculus Quest) are no doubt more advanced and provide a more realistic VR experience but they are also significantly more expensive. Comfort: The Oculus Go features face and head padding which makes the headset reasonably comfortable to wear for long periods of time and its light weight means you won’t experience neck strain. The Oculus library has literally hundreds of apps and games and even more 360 videos for you to watch.
The 32GB version is cheaper but I managed to fill it up pretty quickly, especially after adding my own 360 videos which can be several GB each. If you are looking for a casual VR device to watch movies, 360 video and YouTube then the Go is still the best headset for this thanks to it’s excellent screen and low price.
The Quest was launched in spring 2020 and provides the same wireless experience as the Go but with an improved screen, processor and full 6DOF tracking.
Oculus Go Review
Its comfortable design and accessible nature make it a compelling buy for curious users looking for a taste of VR without spending a lot of money. It’s a plain gray plastic face mask with a nondescript flat front bearing only the Oculus logo on the top. The front edge of the top of the visor holds a power button, a volume rocker, and an indicator light. You won’t find a microSD card slot like on the Mirage Solo, so you’re limited to the 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage. The foam easily pulls out of the visor, letting you insert an included rubber spacer underneath it for wearing the headset with glasses. The straps stay in place with hook and loop fasteners, and while they aren’t as easy to adjust as a dial on the back like with the Mirage Solo or PlayStation VR, the elastic has plenty of give and tightening or loosening the headband while it’s on is easier than on the bulkier, tethered Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
At just over a pound, the Oculus Go is much lighter than the 1.4-pound Mirage Solo, and is just two ounces heavier than the Daydream View with a Pixel 2 inserted. It’s very comfortable to wear, thanks to the breathable fabric on the face mask and the wide elastic straps of the headband.
Physically, the Oculus Go should be comfortable to wear for the duration of its three hours of battery life, but you should take regular breaks more often than that, especially if you’re prone to headaches or motion sickness when using VR.
It’s an LCD, which means it doesn’t have the same deep blacks or wide color gamuts as the OLED displays used by the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR (or the Samsung Gear VR, since Samsung’s flagship phones also use OLED screens). Its picture still looks crisp, but the vastness of space in sci-fi games and science apps doesn’t look quite as inky as it does on OLED displays. Of course, all of those systems require hardware investments of at least twice the price of the Oculus Go, including the necessary gaming PC, PlayStation 4, or flagship smartphone.
A standard selection of movie and TV-watching apps are available, including Oculus Go versions of Hulu, Netflix, and Showtime. The Madefire app lets you read comic books in VR, and Calcflow provides a first-person, three-dimensional view of parametric equation models. It’s a simple game I completed in about 15 minutes, after which I was shown the full trailer for the movie on a virtual theater screen.
It put me in the kaiju shoes of one of the three big monsters of the franchise, and let me walk around simple city environments in first person, smashing buildings and fighting the military. Smashing buildings involved staring at the architecture I wanted to punch and swinging the remote left and right, and picking up tanks to throw them at helicopters required pointing the remote at a vehicle until it shimmered, holding the trigger down, then aiming at my target and releasing to throw. It’s not fancy, but there is enough mindless smashing, combined with some very light puzzle-solving for upgrading your chosen monster with gene splicing, to waste a few hours on. You can use the Oculus Go while plugged in, but if you plan to do that you should invest in a much longer micro USB cable than the short one that’s included. Simply being able to watch Netflix or Hulu on a virtual theater screen in relative comfort will be worth the price of admission for some.
Ultimately, this is the best introductory virtual reality headset we’ve seen yet, with the lowest price tag and no additional equipment required. Limited software library View More The Bottom Line The Oculus Go is an affordable, comfortable standalone virtual reality headset that lets you try out VR without making a big investment in hardware.
Oculus Go Review
Its comfortable design and accessible nature make it a compelling buy for curious users looking for a taste of VR without spending a lot of money. It’s a plain gray plastic face mask with a nondescript flat front bearing only the Oculus logo on the top. The front edge of the top of the visor holds a power button, a volume rocker, and an indicator light. You won’t find a microSD card slot like on the Mirage Solo, so you’re limited to the 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage.
The foam easily pulls out of the visor, letting you insert an included rubber spacer underneath it for wearing the headset with glasses. The straps stay in place with hook and loop fasteners, and while they aren’t as easy to adjust as a dial on the back like with the Mirage Solo or PlayStation VR, the elastic has plenty of give and tightening or loosening the headband while it’s on is easier than on the bulkier, tethered Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. At just over a pound, the Oculus Go is much lighter than the 1.4-pound Mirage Solo, and is just two ounces heavier than the Daydream View with a Pixel 2 inserted. It’s very comfortable to wear, thanks to the breathable fabric on the face mask and the wide elastic straps of the headband.
Physically, the Oculus Go should be comfortable to wear for the duration of its three hours of battery life, but you should take regular breaks more often than that, especially if you’re prone to headaches or motion sickness when using VR.
It’s an LCD, which means it doesn’t have the same deep blacks or wide color gamuts as the OLED displays used by the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR (or the Samsung Gear VR, since Samsung’s flagship phones also use OLED screens). Its picture still looks crisp, but the vastness of space in sci-fi games and science apps doesn’t look quite as inky as it does on OLED displays. Of course, all of those systems require hardware investments of at least twice the price of the Oculus Go, including the necessary gaming PC, PlayStation 4, or flagship smartphone.
A standard selection of movie and TV-watching apps are available, including Oculus Go versions of Hulu, Netflix, and Showtime. The Madefire app lets you read comic books in VR, and Calcflow provides a first-person, three-dimensional view of parametric equation models. It’s a simple game I completed in about 15 minutes, after which I was shown the full trailer for the movie on a virtual theater screen. It put me in the kaiju shoes of one of the three big monsters of the franchise, and let me walk around simple city environments in first person, smashing buildings and fighting the military.
Smashing buildings involved staring at the architecture I wanted to punch and swinging the remote left and right, and picking up tanks to throw them at helicopters required pointing the remote at a vehicle until it shimmered, holding the trigger down, then aiming at my target and releasing to throw. It’s not fancy, but there is enough mindless smashing, combined with some very light puzzle-solving for upgrading your chosen monster with gene splicing, to waste a few hours on.
You can use the Oculus Go while plugged in, but if you plan to do that you should invest in a much longer micro USB cable than the short one that’s included. Simply being able to watch Netflix or Hulu on a virtual theater screen in relative comfort will be worth the price of admission for some.
Ultimately, this is the best introductory virtual reality headset we’ve seen yet, with the lowest price tag and no additional equipment required. Limited software library View More The Bottom Line The Oculus Go is an affordable, comfortable standalone virtual reality headset that lets you try out VR without making a big investment in hardware.
Oculus Go review
Though not perfect, it offers a comfortable fit, solid build, excellent visuals and the promise of more great content to come. Though not perfect, it offers a comfortable fit, solid build, excellent visuals and the promise of more great content to come. It’s a standalone device, meaning it’s finally cut the cord from the PC needed to run its older and more powerful brother, the Oculus Rift . We recommend keeping an eye out for Black Friday, coming up on November 27, for the biggest savings, followed by Cyber Monday.
You won’t mistake one for the other, but we have been continually impressed with how good Go’s VR is, especially considering everything needed to run the headset is contained in a little gray box that sits on your face. This is VR for the casual gamer, the relaxed consumer of media, the person without the time, money or interest in setting up a PC to power a higher-end headset.
Its design is sleek and has some nice subtle touches; the front panel is a slightly different shade of gray in certain lights, for example. We tended to oscillate between the two ends of the spectrum; at times the light seeping through was distracting, and at others we were so caught up in a game we forgot it was there.
Oculus Go, which, remember, houses everything you need to run VR right inside the box that sits on your face, may have a very forward weight-distribution, yet all-in-all it’s a comfortable headset that feels good to wear. Instead of building in headphones, like the HTC Vive Pro , the Go’s plastic arms have slits that house the speakers, and this design feature helps the headset maintain its cohesive profile. The controller felt intuitive here, and we were quickly caught up in the task (helping us to forget the light leakage, for one thing). It’s games like Coaster Combat where the Oculus Go controller shines because it goes beyond simply selecting things and becomes a part of the virtual world you’re seeing before your eyes.
Oculus Go review: $199 VR, no strings attached
There will be more advanced but expensive devices: the twice-as-pricey upcoming Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream, another standalone phone-free VR headset, has more sophisticated full-room sensing and motion. And, if you already have a phone that runs Google Daydream or Samsung Gear VR, you don’t need this.
The Go goggles press onto your face instead of using a visor-type design, but the foam padding is far better than the Oculus Rift or Gear VR. The display and the speakers sound a lot better than you’d expect for a budget VR device, and it can even feel, at times, better than higher-end headsets.
The piped-in, headphone-free, built-in speakers deliver pretty good 3D effects — what Oculus calls “spatial audio” — and the LCD display looks particularly crisp when reading text or watching videos. Sound comes through little holes in the head straps, delivering spatial audio that’s great (when you’re not in public spaces).
The screen-door effect is less than what is typically encountered on most VR headsets, thanks to Oculus using optimization that makes the most of the Snapdragon 821 processor — less impressive than that of current top-end phones. Most people who wore it — family, friends or coworkers who were pretty picky about good tech and AV quality — came away impressed.
The Oculus Go is actually a step-back device, in a sense: it lacks cameras and can’t track a whole room, or even part of one. The included 32 gigabytes of storage on the $199 model might be a bit less than you’ll need for lots of storage-needy 360 videos, if you’re downloading regularly.
The Oculus Go is packaged elegantly and cleanly, like a Google product or an Amazon Echo. There’s also a microfiber cleaning cloth, and a spacer for eyeglass-wearers that can be inserted if needed by removing the headset’s foam lining.
A piece of paper folded over the headset’s eyepieces tells you to download the Oculus app to pair with your phone. Everything’s self-contained with the Oculus Go, but it pairs with your phone to set up, like a smartwatch, an Echo or most smart things. The phone app browses the Oculus store for easy purchases and installing. And the lack of full 6DoF movement makes some apps feel too stiff, unmoving, and can create a tiny bit of dizziness. I hop into AltSpace VR for a live session with the Actors Theater of NYC, where an actor-avatar delivers a monologue from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and I chat with some others for a bit. I play some Settlers of Catan, my favorite board game-turned-VR game, but I don’t have enough friends to invite yet.
I join a party with CNET’s Sean Hollister, who also has a headset in San Francisco. We talk as avatars, sitting on my sofa, watching videos from Facebook (the only service that works in Oculus Rooms right now).
As my New Jersey Transit train gently curved along its track, I found my fishing game shifting slightly to the left. I originally thought that wasn’t the case, but it supports the Xbox wireless controller and the Steelseries XL: pair it via the phone app, and it’ll connect via Bluetooth. But Gear VR-optimized videos may play strangely on the slightly different optics of Oculus Go. This happened to me — 30 minutes in the park on a bright day shooting our review video, and I came back to the office and found a yellow splotch in a part of the display.
The Go can’t track location or how much you lean forward, and neither can Samsung’s Gear VR. But, the Gear VR has pass-through cameras that let you peek at what’s going on without removing your headset. A thing that annoys me on phone VR is when I pop it into the headset and there’s a crumb on the display. But these films are in Oculus’ content catalog, as opposed to iTunes, Google or Amazon.
Xiaomi, which made the Oculus Go, is developing a Chinese version of the headset without Facebook software. On my early review unit, trying to download apps made the system slow down.
Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream, another stand-alone VR headset that has spatial-tracking cameras. The Oculus Go lacks it, but Google and Lenovo’s stand-alone Mirage Solo with Daydream has it — albeit at twice the price. Project Santa Cruz feels great, and will also be mobile like Oculus Go, but it’ll inevitably cost more — and it won’t be here this year.
The good news for you, potential Oculus Go buyer, is that none of those future devices are likely to come anywhere near $199.
What’s amazing to me is that the Oculus Go delivers an experience that is good enough that, for most people, a larger VR device won’t be necessary. It’s a superior little headset for watching 360 videos, sampling quick immersive demos and experiencing what VR has to offer.
And therein lies the problem: VR, after all these years, is still a novelty in search of an everyday use case. As one friend said as I showed him 360 videos in CNN, a magic wand-dueling game called Wands and a few other apps, “This is a want, not a need.” I’ll reserve saying “it’s the best of all options” until I’ve tried reviewed the Lenovo Mirage Solo and HTC Vive Focus stand-alone mobile VR headsets, which are also arriving this year.
Customer Reviews: Oculus Go 64GB Stand-Alone Virtual Reality Headset 301-00104-01
While it is true that the Oculus Go has some limitations in comparison to more advanced VR setups, the primary benefit is it’s ease of usability. It is just so easy to pop it on and power up without having to hassle with cables for a PC setup or shoving your phone into a headset adapter. I have had this unit for three weeks and It is still great fun put it on and watch a 3d movie, shoot some zombies or relax with some virtual fishing. The Oculus Go runs on smart phone hardware after all using the Snapdragon 821 processor, otherwise found in the LG G6 and the original Google Pixel. Many of these games are incredibly fun and addictive but don’t expect a ton of depth and super advanced graphics that a smart phone would not be able to produce.
Oculus Go review: mobile VR, minus the phone
It’s got basically the same features as Samsung and Oculus’ Gear VR, but as a dedicated piece of hardware, not a combination of smartphone and plastic shell. The Gear VR’s image quality depends on your phone, and my Galaxy S7 Edge displayed harsher and brighter colors than my Oculus Go’s screen. But like almost every VR headset, it eventually weighs on your cheeks, leaving red marks that make you look like a caricature of extreme embarrassment.
The headset looks a lot like Google’s second-generation Daydream View, but with no-frills gray plastic instead of soft upholstery, as well as a volume rocker and power button on top. But Oculus’ standard Home interface is otherwise full-featured, including a web browser and options for left-handed and right-handed browsing. This is pretty dire by most electronics standards, but I’m already used to these limits from other mobile headsets, and most VR experiences I’ve tried, including games, are still best in short sessions.
Most of these games are also still frustrating in some large or small way, which is painful to be saying in 2018, three years after Oculus started selling mobile VR headsets. But as with any app library, only a fraction of the projects are worth checking out — and there’s an inordinate number of generic rail shooters, flying games, and escape rooms. Some of the substantive games I’ve enjoyed playing, like horror-adventure title Dead Secret Circle and stealth puzzler Term1nal, are marred by flawed control schemes or game-breaking bugs.
These are games with small, repetitive feedback loops, like Angry Birds or Tetris, that are often played while you’ve got half an eye on some mundane task like cooking or commuting. Maybe I’ll eventually adjust to giving knitting games my full attention; after all, Tetris was originally played on a dedicated arcade cabinet. If so, I’m not sure how mobile VR will break out of that rut, short of developing a big enough user base to support a larger array of ambitious games.
There are plenty of VR social spaces, including Oculus Rooms, a customizable virtual environment where you can invite friends to hang out and play games or watch videos. Many people believe that social experiences are the future of VR, and apps like the incredibly popular VRChat (available on high-end headsets) might prove them right. But mobile VR headsets don’t offer some of the physical immersion that makes these spaces fun, including virtual hands.
A new mobile VR app called Oculus Venues is designed for watching concerts, Major League Baseball games, standup comedy, and other live shows.
You can also catch decent 360-degree videos like the schlocky Campfire Creepers anthology, directed by horror filmmaker Alexandre Aja.
Oculus Go Review in 2020: Still worth buying?
The Oculus Go is still a great starter VR headset with an excellent screen and loads of content to keep you busy. Specs Oculus Go Field of View 100° Max Resolution 2560 x 1140 Screen Type Fast-Switch WQHD LCD Pixel Density 538ppi Sensors Gyroscope Max Refresh Rate 60 Hz Tracking Orientational Tracking Weight 467g Requirements None Price Available on Amazon A poor quality screen will reduce immersion if textures are blurred or colors dull.
The other screen technology used in VR headsets is AMOLED which can display deeper blacks and colors but with less sharpness.
The screen of the Oculus Go is one of its strong points and when playing games and watching movies the images are sharp and colorful. 6DOF headsets track the movements of your whole body in the full 360 degrees and is considered the best VR experience.
3DOF headsets only track your head movements and a controller for pointing and selecting; this is a more limited VR experience and you can’t move forward, back, up or down. The Oculus Go is a 3DOF headset and has these limitations; you can only track your head movements as well as a controller connected via bluetooth.
The Oculus Go doesn’t require anything else to work other than the headset itself and its wireless controller; in fact there are no wires involved at all.
These headsets (like the Oculus Quest) are no doubt more advanced and provide a more realistic VR experience but they are also significantly more expensive.
Comfort: The Oculus Go features face and head padding which makes the headset reasonably comfortable to wear for long periods of time and its light weight means you won’t experience neck strain. The Oculus library has literally hundreds of apps and games and even more 360 videos for you to watch.
The 32GB version is cheaper but I managed to fill it up pretty quickly, especially after adding my own 360 videos which can be several GB each. If you are looking for a casual VR device to watch movies, 360 video and YouTube then the Go is still the best headset for this thanks to it’s excellent screen and low price.
The Quest was launched in spring 2020 and provides the same wireless experience as the Go but with an improved screen, processor and full 6DOF tracking.
Oculus Go Standalone VR Headset Review: Convenient VR For The Masses
No matter how much or little you spent, you either needed a high-end PC or a premium smartphone to use the best VR headsets. Enter Oculus Go, a standalone VR system with its own Snapdragon 821 processor and everything else you need built-in.
The Oculus Go has a functional design language that doesn’t stand out for being either beautiful or ugly. The body of the visor has a smooth plastic finish, while the faceplate is made of a dull aluminum which acts as a heatsink for the SoC and surrounding components.
The Go borrows some design elements from the Rift (such as the shape of the faceplate and how the head strap attaches to the visor). On the top the headset, you’ll find a pair of volume adjustment buttons and power button with an LED indicator light that shows when the device is charging, paired via bluetooth or powered on.
The left side houses a micro USB port used for charging the device, and a 3.5mm audio jack to plug in a headset. Inside, a foam rubber cushion fits snugly against your cheeks and forehead to seal off light from the world around you. We suspect that the lower refresh rate is a symptom of the available processing power and not a limitation of the panel technology. To keep the costs down to a palatable level for the mass market, Oculus chose a dated Snapdragon 821 processor, which is the similar to the chip found in the two-year-old Samsung Galaxy S7. Oculus also developed features that enable it to squeeze even more performance out of the aging hardware, such as Fixed Foveated Rendering, which enables developers to push high-fidelity graphics to the sweet spot of the display and lower fidelity graphics in the periphery to reduce the GPU load. The Oculus Go features an internal 2600mAh Lithium-ion battery, which provides between 1.5-2-hours of continuous gaming, or approximately 2-2.5-hours of video content.
Similar to the Daydream platform, the menu button on the controller enables you to recenter your view at any time.
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