At $999 for the full headset, controllers, and base stations package, the Valve Index is an expensive PC-tethered VR system. The standalone Oculus Quest 2, another Editors’ Choice pick, is a much more affordable headset that’s simpler to use, lacks cables, and doesn’t require a PC or console to work. However, the Index lets you enjoy smoother action, much more advanced graphics, and controllers that are a huge leap ahead of what Oculus uses.
The Index itself is a fairly cookie-cutter PC-tethered VR headset, with a large, face-mounted display connected to a sturdy adjustable head harness. The headset’s underside features a utility button that launches the SteamVR overlay; a sliding switch for adjusting the lenses’ pupillary distance (PD); and two pinhole microphones. A knob on the headset’s right side, where the strut for the harness connects, lets you adjust the lenses’ distance from your face.
The plastic arcs on the back of the harness have a ratcheting dial for tightening the headset securely over your head, and Velcro fasteners let you adjust the top fabric strap’s length for better fit. If the Index feels loose on your head after making all the possible adjustments, you can use the included foam insert to add an additional layer of thick padding for a more secure fit.
Speaking of plugging things into the wall, the two base stations require their own outlets, and are necessary to track the headset’s position in a room. An additional, adjustable fabric strap runs between the handle and the plastic arc that curves over your knuckles to keep the controller comfortably in hand even when you let go with all fingers (a wriststrap is also built-in, of course).
It wasn’t enough to feel jerky or unnatural, but it made the experience fall slightly short of total and precise motor control in VR. For 2021, these aren’t insurmountable gaming PC specs, though obviously you’ll enjoy better performance if your rig has a newer or faster CPU or GPU, and more RAM.
Once SteamVR is up and running, it should automatically detect the headset, base stations, and controllers (after you turn them on by holding the system buttons for a moment). First, you set your initial position by standing in the middle of your play area, pointing a controller at your monitor, and pulling the trigger. Finally, you determine the edge of your play area by holding the trigger down and drawing the tip of the controller along where you want the boundaries to be set.
It’s an easy process, though physically moving the controller around the edges of your play area is slightly less convenient than just pointing a VR laser at the floor and drawing those boundaries, like you can with the Oculus Quest 2.
While it has a slightly lower resolution than the Oculus Quest 2 and Vive Cosmos, the Index still produces a picture that’s bright, colorful, and sharp. The Index controllers are technically impressive, and easily the most advanced we’ve seen in a consumer headset (enterprise-level and development hardware have access to much more precise and expensive motion tracking, but they’re out of reach of most users, and most games can’t take advantage of them).
Multitool puzzles also work well with the controllers, offering the same fine position and orientation tracking that let me precisely arrange holographic power lines. While the handles are large enough to accommodate even my big hands, you need to rest your index fingers over the triggers, higher up on the controllers. The cable that runs from the headset to your computer is long, flexible, and generally rests comfortably on the floor without curling upwards to make it easy to trip over. It’s still a physical cable that runs from the headset to your PC, though, and that means you need to mind where it is as you play, especially in games where you turn around a lot.
Despite a handful of frustrations, the Valve Index is the most impressive VR system we’ve seen to date thanks to its revolutionary controllers. Their individual finger-tracking tech—and the ability to use them with your hands open, as well as gripping the handles—produces a much more immersive VR experience than we’ve seen and felt with other controllers.
If you want to simply dabble in VR and don’t want to invest that much money into it, the Oculus Quest 2 remains our favorite headset for its accessibility and ease of use. The Valve Index is our new favorite tethered VR system, though, and the choice to go with if money (and cables) are no issue, for the best possible control and graphics.
Valve Index VR Kit 4.0 Editors’ Choice See It $1,499.99 at Amazon MSRP $999.00 Pros Immersive, finger-tracking controllers
Occasionally frustrating tethered design The Bottom Line The Valve Index is the most impressive consumer VR headset we’ve seen yet, entirely due to its revolutionary, finger-tracking controllers.
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Valve Index review
At $999 / £919 (about AU$1,425) for the full package, Valve’s high-powered headset is an expensive portal to the future – and one that we’ll use almost exclusively going forward – but it’s powered by decades-old software. At $999 / £919 (about AU$1,425) for the full package, Valve’s high-powered headset is an expensive portal to the future – and one that we’ll use almost exclusively going forward – but it’s powered by decades-old software.
Valve has played a huge and important part in pushing virtual reality forwards over the years with its tracking system and SteamVR platform. It has an ultra-crisp display that runs fairly well even with older GPUs, a wide field of view, a high refresh rate and Valve’s ‘knuckle’ controllers, which can track the movement of each and everyone one of your fingers.
On the front, there’s a glossy plastic faceplate above two front-facing cameras that can be used for passthrough video and, potentially, AR applications. To keep it that way, there are two dials you’ll need to use – one on the left side that changes the physical distance from the lens to your eyes, and the one on that back that makes the headband tighter or looser.
The problem here is that, for folks who wear glasses, you won’t be able to get the lenses right up to your eyes – and that means you’ll see a similar field of view to what you’d get with the other headsets out there. For comparison, the more-expensive Vive Pro has a lower refresh rate and smaller field of view, so this actually feels like a big upgrade.
Amazingly, while all these features would seem to require extra horsepower under the hood of your PC, they actually worked fine with our much older Nvidia GTX 980 GPU. That last bit is important, because as more people adopt VR, more developers will see a business case for making VR games – right now, Steam’s VR selection is a bit bare compared to the ever-expanding main store, and even the top titles selected by Valve to show off the new hardware are really just a lot of old titles that play better with the Knuckle controllers (see: Space Pirate Trainer, Fruit Ninja, Beat Saber and Arizona Sunshine).
Not only do the games look great on the high-resolution screen, and play without any hitches even on our less-than-ideal hardware, but they feel more interactive with the Index Controller. It also feels a bit more hygienic when it comes time to pass the headset to another person – as your ears never make contact with the pads, although that’s a fairly minor detail.
Friends and readers have also complained about the original Vive’s lengthy and unwieldy setup process, only to find a number of errors the next time they go to play it. But there’s still the problem that if anything in the room changes – the base stations get moved because you’re cleaning the shelf, for example – you’ll need to recalibrate and go through the whole setup process again.
Its higher-resolution screen and better refresh rate allowed us to use it for longer periods of time without discomfort compared to most other VR headsets, and the Index Controllers are a real step up from the ones that ship with the Vive.
Valve Index review
At present, it’s the best VR headset on the market, with best-in-class display resolution and refresh rate. The Index display boasts a 1440×1600 per-eye resolution and refresh rate of 120 Hz, which together offer the best visual experience I’ve had in VR to date. The strap materials feel quality too—more like a padded extra-soft t-shirt than standard foam padding—never bothering me during extended play sessions. What this means is the Index’s speakers offer outstanding three-dimensional surround sound, somehow also delivering a level of aural isolation without shutting yourself off completely to external noises. The best use so far is the Aperture Hand Labs tech demo, which has you waving to, high-fiving, and playing rock-paper-scissors with a collection of quirky Portal-style robots. The brief experience has all the charm of other Portal games, but the finger tracking felt more like a proof of concept than a groundbreaking gameplay innovation. The action you use most often in current VR games with touch controls is grip—that is, picking up and dropping objects—and that’s already simulated just fine with regular triggers. It’s the sort of tech that will rely on cool implementations to make it worth pursuing—not just slightly enhanced gripping mechanics, but situations that truly take advantage (without feeling like a gimmick) of individual finger tracking.
With the Rift S, the headset’s cameras give you digital view of your surroundings wherein you simply draw your play area on the ground. It only takes a few seconds, which is nice if you’ve moved furniture around or accumulated some floor clutter since the last time you stepped into VR. After calculating floor height, you click the trigger at four corners of your available space, which Steam then measures in order to determine your best play area.
Valve Index review: high-powered VR at a high-end price
Gaming company Valve pioneered VR as we know it today, creating a sophisticated tracking system and prototyping several headsets. The Index uses the same “Lighthouse” tracking system as the Vive, so it ships with two laser-emitting base stations that you’ll need to mount in opposite corners of your play space. These are second-generation base stations, and Valve promises a few benefits over the Vive’s 1.0 beacons — primarily, an expanded diagonal range of up to 10 by 10 meters if you use four of them. I’ve had fewer syncing problems with the 2.0 base stations than the 1.0 models, but they’re still frustrating to set up, especially as Microsoft and Oculus have moved to more convenient front-mounted cameras, completely eliminating that setup.
Valve has spent a long time fine-tuning its base station design, and the Index is aimed at people who have used these awkward systems for years, so it makes sense to stick with Lighthouse for them. The front includes a little compartment (officially dubbed the “frunk”) with a Type-A USB port, so tinkerers can plug in other devices.
It features a comfortably padded, helmet-like headband that tightens with a dial on the back, similar to HTC’s alternative Vive head strap. You can adjust the distance between lenses to find the best focus, which is an excellent feature that Oculus controversially removed from the Rift. Some people won’t need these features — I’m usually fine with less versatile headsets — but they help fulfill the Vive’s promise of offering the best experience to the biggest number of users.
The Index features two speakers that look a lot like headphones, but they sit about an inch away from your ears, projecting sound without actually pressing against your head.
That’s very comfortable in long VR sessions, and it sounds richer and more realistically ambient than the Oculus Rift or Quest’s strap-based speakers. But since the Index is a top-of-the-line system aimed at people who want loud, intense gaming experiences or who work in professional settings, I wish Valve had looked for a slightly more discreet solution.
It’s not my favorite aesthetic, and with its two cameras, it shares the “sad robot with giant forehead” look of the Rift S. But Valve more than justifies its bulkiness. The Index controllers (previously called “Knuckles”) are strapped around your hands instead of held, and they look more like a sci-fi weapon than a remote or gamepad.
A central stock detects individual finger motion and squeeze pressure, and its sensors can even tell when your hands are close to — but not quite touching — the controller. Fortunately, Vive and Rift games can be translated pretty well to the Index based on titles I’ve tried with official support.
But as Road to VR has pointed out, the Reverb isn’t a consumer-focused headset, and it uses clunky Windows Mixed Reality controllers. Unless the price drops in the future, it’s a product for people who play VR games very heavily, use headsets for professional work, or have a very large disposable income.
SteamVR on Steam
SteamVR supports the Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and others. Use additional wearables and props you find by completing quests in other SteamVR Home environments to customize your own avatar.
Valve Index review
Bucking the trend of wireless VR pushed by headsets like the Oculus Quest 2 , the Index is a wired head-mounted display that needs to connect to a powerful PC in order to function. There is no walled garden trapping you in a specific ecosystem either, so you are encouraged to tinker with the Index and use it with your PC in a variety of interesting ways straight out of the box. The Valve Index’s system seller came in March 2020 with Half-Life: Alyx, a remarkable follow-up to one of the most revered game series of all time. The slightly shiny plastic finish is nice to look at, with the front-mounted glass panel giving it the appearance of a futuristic astronaut’s helmet.
The Valve Index is covered in a generous amount of super-soft fabric that helps it sit comfortably on your face and head without your skin touching any hard plastic or sharp edges. This makes the Valve Index easy to wear for long periods of time due to its solid weight distribution, which is perfect if you’re clubbing in VRChat at LONER Online or powering through the campaign in Boneworks. Even as a glasses wearer, the roomy gasket makes the Valve Index very comfortable, although it can get annoying… so, like us, you may eventually decide to purchase prescription lenses to dial up the immersion. It may seem like this is a drawback when it comes to immersion, but I’d argue the opposite – the speakers manage to provide booming, deeply-engrossing sound, more so than any of the other VR headsets we’ve used.
It also means nothing is touching your ears when you’re moving around, which is another boon for immersion and a safety precaution, so you can hear some audio in the room while deep in the trenches of VR. Of course, this is an expensive endeavor in itself, as the Valve Index product page recommends an NVIDIA 1070 graphics card and a Quad Core processor. Beyond that, it’s just a case of using Bluetooth to sync up your controllers, downloading Steam VR, and booting it up, where you’ll be led through a Portal-themed room set-up. Getting up close with assets and character animations in Half-Life: Alyx is a stunning, singular experience, especially if you’ve got a PC powerful enough to crank up the hertz, graphics options, and framerate.
With its mitigated screen door effect, immersive audio, haptic controllers, and crisp visuals, the Valve Index offers a definitive VR experience, and is only held back by the power of your own PC. Other devices settle for clunky wands that get in the way of the action, but the Valve Index Controllers (otherwise known as the Knuckles) afford full freedom to your fingers, tracking them individually so that you can pinch, box, squeeze, and feel the resonance of objects in your palms. In spite of some ridiculous haptics, the controllers have a solid battery life and adjustable soft straps, so they’re comfy to use and go a long way in making your hands feel totally free when you’re inside of a virtual world. The SteamVR library is gigantic and has pretty much all of the most popular virtual reality experiences on the market, like Pavlov, Beat Saber, VRChat, Blade & Sorcery, and more.
Half-Life: Alyx offers a replayable, full-length campaign and it also boasts an awesome modding scene that is constantly pushing the foundations of the game in different directions. Free games like VRChat and Rec Room offer dynamic social playgrounds for you to explore if you want to join the community and get even more immersed in the platform beyond its more structured experiences.
VR is great for fitness too, with games like The Thrill of the Fight and STRIDE allowing you to gamify your workouts and burn calories while you play. The Oculus Quest 2 is a great starting point and lets you play several of the best VR games without any of the hassle, which is why it may be a better pick for those who are curious but don’t want to commit fully.
Games-wise, you do get Half-Life: Alyx with it, and Steam’s regular sales will help you pick up the more expensive VR games with a discount during summer or Christmas. If you don’t like the look of the Valve Index, the best option on the other end of the scale is the Oculus Quest 2, which is less powerful, but a far more affordable piece of VR kit.
Valve Index review: $999 buys you the best VR experience yet — when it works
It’s a much cleaner setup than the breakout box in the original HTC Vive, but there are still a lot of cables to manage once everything is connected and ready to go. The headphones sit a few inches away from the ear — which might be annoying for other people in the room if something loud is playing — but they’re simple to adjust, and the sound is absolutely phenomenal. A high frame rate is clutch for smooth VR, and the 144 Hz mode is a thing to behold — if you have the hardware necessary to drive it. Field of view is the term we use to describe how tall and wide the image inside a virtual reality headset looks to the player.
Valve achieved it through various means — you can read about them in this exhausting blog post if you’re interested in details — but it’s mostly a matter of how much mechanical know-how went into the design of the headset. Valve estimates that the “typical user” will experience a field of view that’s about 20 degrees greater than the original Vive — a significant improvement. Having two screens also means that it’s possible to physically adjust the interpupillary distance using a slider on the bottom of the headset, to find positioning that makes everything as clear as possible. The action feels very natural once I get used to it, but at first, my brain somewhat balked at the idea of relaxing my grip; I kept thinking the controller was going to fall out of my hand. It’s a neat feature, but it’s the fit and finish of the hardware itself that still makes Knuckles my favorite means of interacting with VR, even for games that don’t take advantage of everything they can do. Steam VR crashes fairly often when using Index, and I kept getting errors saying the tether wasn’t seated in the headset correctly, despite it being firmly connected. A friend visited to try the new hardware, and our hours of fiddling couldn’t launch Steam VR, despite nearly an entire issue-free day of play. It’s currently a touchy, slightly temperamental kit, although stability in general has improved through system updates since I originally received the unit.
This situation is even more frustrating because Index makes VR feel more real through all its improvements over past headsets, but those gains disappear the moment I get dumped out of an immersive experience due to a fiddly hardware issue. Virtual reality only works when I can get lost inside a game or experience, and that’s incredibly hard when I have to spend so much time trying to figure out how to deal with crashes and error messages. But it’s an enthusiast product that’s best left to tinkerers and those who don’t mind spending the time to make everything just so, and are willing to place external sensors in the corner of their VR space.
I hope stability improves in the near future, because Index has the potential to be the most comfortable and effective virtual reality platforms on the market.
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