Best VR headsets for immersive virtual reality gaming

The Meta Quest 3 is an astounding virtual reality (now mixed reality) headset, and is arguably the best consumer device currently out there. With full-colour passthrough, a faster processor, a more comfortable and ergonomic fit, as well as better hand-tracking and, of course, those pancake lenses that make everything so much more stable, this is the VR headset to beat.

The third-generation VR headset is a lot slimmer than the Meta Quest 2, and it’s all thanks to those new lenses. While it’s roughly the same weight as the Meta Quest 2, it has a smaller, less bulky profile overall, and we found the weight was more evenly distributed closer to our head (read: no slipping down your face if you don’t tighten the straps just right).

It’s a sleeker, more streamlined headset with plenty of adjustable elements, which helped us get the right fit, the perfect distance from our eyes and adjust the interpupillary distance (IPD) of the device.

Read our full Meta Quest 3 review

A well-balanced standalone VR headset, the Pico 4 was a great alternative to the Meta Quest 2 when it launched. Since then, the Meta Quest 3 has come along and matched it in terms of resolution and full-colour passthrough, but the Pico 4 still stands out as a cheaper alternative to the leading headset.

It offers excellent tracking with its pair of handheld controllers, and while Pico’s library of games isn’t as large as Meta’s, you can connect to a PC to access a fuller selection of SteamVR titles.

Valve’s betting the house on the future of gaming being virtual, producing its very own VR headset to power its ambitious SteamVR games and experiences. The Valve Index is one of the most expensive gaming VR headsets around, and, like the HTC Vive Pro 2, it requires tethering to a gaming PC to work.

It also requires you to mount a pair of base stations in either corner of the room, to track your position in real-time, though these are the same base stations found in the HTC Vive range. That means if you’ve already got an HTC device, you can continue using your base stations and upgrade your headset, your controllers, or both, without overspending.

The display is sharp and responsive at 120Hz, but the controllers are what really set the Valve Index apart from other VR headsets in this list. They can track the movement of your individual fingers with unnerving precision, which not only allows for a greater degree of control within virtual worlds, but creates an unbeatable sense of immersion. As ridiculous as it sounds, simply wiggling the fingers of our virtual hand in front of our virtual face dupes our monkey brain into thinking we’re somewhere we’re not.

The HTC Vive Pro 2 requires considerably more setup than the self-contained Meta Quest. Firstly, the headset needs to be tethered to a powerful gaming PC or laptop. You also need to mount a pair of Rubik’s Cube-sized sensors in opposite corners of your room, which scan the play area continuously to track your location in 3D space.

For premium VR gaming, the benefits of this type of setup outweigh the inconvenience. The HTC Vive Pro 2 provides an incredibly realistic experience, with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and the highest resolution-per-eye of any of the headsets we’ve tested. Lower-resolution VR headsets produce a “screen door effect”, which happens when your eyes can make out individual pixels in the display. At higher resolutions, this effect is diminished, and in the Vive Pro 2 the effect is barely noticeable.

In games, the impact is impressive. In Half-Life: Alyx, you can make out more detail in the world around you. Distant objects have more definition, and the world feels more real. Hold a tin of virtual food up to your face and you can make out the ingredients list. The sense of immersion is boosted even further by the accuracy of hand and body tracking and the wide field of view, which all lead to a substantially less janky gaming experience.

The full Vive Pro 2 kit doesn’t come cheap, but with access to a rich and growing library of PC VR games behind it, this is the headset of choice for those who want the most immersive gaming experience possible.

The Meta Quest 2 is not the most technically advanced virtual reality headset out there, but it was the first genuinely user-friendly one. You don’t need an expensive gaming PC to plug it into (though you’ve got the option), and there are no snaking cables to trip over. Instead, you just slip it on, grab hold of the controllers, and are immediately immersed in a believable 3D space.

A tutorial teaches you the basics of picking up and interacting with virtual objects, using your virtual hands, while sensors and cameras embedded in the headset can track your physical location in the room and translate your movements at a 1:1 scale in the game world. That is to say: when you take a step forward in real life, you take a step forward in the virtual world, cementing the illusion that you exist within the virtual space. The Guardian system is particularly clever, too, prompting you to trace out your playing area with the controllers beforehand, then warning you in-game if you’re about to accidentally walk face-first into your living room wall.

The Meta Quest 2 no longer needs a Facebook account to work, which was one of our biggest problems with the device at launch. A VR experience without the fuss.

Read the full Meta Quest 2 versus PS VR2 review

The PlayStation VR2 is Sony’s second-generation VR headset and follows 2016’s far clunkier and more cumbersome PS VR, which needed half a dozen cables, separate controllers and an external camera accessory before you could use it. This version is a vast improvement. It’s streamlined and plugs into a PS5 with a single USB-C cable, making it easier to pick up and play on a whim.

It uses two bright and high-contrast OLED displays running at 120 frames per second for a highly realistic VR experience, while the included sense controllers allow you to reach out and grab objects, push buttons, shoot guns and interact with the world using your hands. Haptic feedback in the controllers and the headset push the immersion even further, while eye-tracking tech means games can tell where you’re looking (and when your eyes are closed) at any given moment.

The main downside is that it needs a PlayStation 5 console to work, making it more than twice as expensive as some standalone headsets. There are also too few unique and exclusive games at launch. But for gamers already invested in the latest Sony console, and eager to be part of the company’s latest VR experiment, there’s no better choice of headset.

Read the full PS VR2 review