Oculus Rift vs HTC Vive, which should you buy?

1. Introduction2. The headset3. Controllers, Tracking4. Games, Final Thoughts5. View All Pages

Balance, fit, comfort

Winner: Oculus Rift

As much as I like the Vive's fit, its head strap and the single, thick cable that runs right down its centre, one clear area where the Oculus Rift is better is in the way it fits to your head. The mixture of elastic strapping, the lighter weight of the overall design and the fact that it sits more securely on your head than the Vive, makes it far more comfortable to wear over longer periods.

It is also more sturdy than the Vive. If you look down, it doesn't slip up your face like the Vive does, which is something I ran into quite often when testing the HTC headset.

I preferred the Vive's face cushion, as I found the Rift's edging could scratch at times. It could also cause those annoying red marks on your face, which the Vive's did not.

Overall though, with the Rift's more sturdy fit it required less adjustment, never impeded my action in-game by slipping out of line and the weighting is much improved over the Vive.

What you see: visuals, optics

Winner: HTC Vive

This is perhaps the closest race between the two headsets, despite the fact that they do things quite differently. Because of that there is some measure of personal preference, but there are a number of reasons that I chose the Vive on this one.

Although the display technology behind what you see in either headset is much the same (two OLED panels with a combined resolution of 2,160 x 1,200), there are some very real and obvious differences. The Rift uses bespoke lenses, which give you a slightly fuzzier, darker image, but that makes everything look that bit more smooth.

However The lenses do lead to quite significant glare when there is a bright object in a dark environment.

It's the Vive's concentric rings that provide the strange glare in some scenes, but it's far better than the Rift's auras

In contrast, the Vive's visuals are brighter and crisper, but that means the screen door effect is more pronounced. It also suffers from glare, but its is less god-ray and more concentric rings. Again mostly apparent when bright elements appear on dark backgrounds, but I found those less offensive to my eye than the Rift's.

I also preferred the crisper, if slightly more obviously-artificial visuals of the Vive. On top of that, it deserves a mention for having a slightly larger field of view than the Rift.

The Oculus headset almost comes back and clinches this category because of its wider ‘sweet-spot,' which keeps things in focus further from the centre of the lens than the Vive. If there is one major complaint about the Vive it's that maintaining that sweet spot is not easy (though purportedly shrinking the face cushion helps a lot).

But it's not enough to give the Rift the victory. In this writer's opinion, what you see inside the headsets looks better on the Vive.

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