HTC Vive XR Elite Virtual Reality Headset + Controllers

I bought this headset mainly for the form factor. I wanted something that was portable. I was already using base stations with my Vive Pro. I dont like Meta so a Quest 2 or Pro wasnt for me. The display is ok. There is some white glare on black backgrounds, I dont like that much (the reason for 3 stars). But I like the idea I can be in VR in any room in my house. The other day I was in my bedroom watching a movie in glasses mode barely noticing the headset. To those who find the headset uncomfortable. I did too until I wore the battery cradle a little higher than I was used to with my Vive Pro. It seems to fix the problem of the face cover pressing too hard on my forehead. Im pleased with my purchase.

Not sure about the histrionics of the current reviews, this is not a push the boundaries headset but is is the most versatile out there at the moment and capable. There is much to refine but I am pleased with the XR Elite and encouraged that many issues I have read from others have been sorted as I had absolutely no issues with streaming PCVR wired, mirroring phone(Samsung S22+), Immersed worked flawlessly, store is adding titles So it is always important to preface what I was looking for here in a VR headset. I am not telling you the headset is better than any other, that is always going to come down to your desired usage. For me, I already have an Index and Reverb G2 and firmly entrenched in PCVR. No interest in console and after those headsets couldnt downgrade visual and sound quality to consider Q2. QP was too uncomfortable and awkward for me, better visuals than Q2 but l wasnt impressed for the money, I was looking for a headset that could fit the following: PCVR wired PCVR wireless Mobile Mirroring VR Standalone VR Compact for Travel/Flight Movie Watching VR workspace in a pinch that was Viable Viable Passthrough That said the XR Elite was the closest from my estimation that fit the bill for me. Since I was entrenched in PCVR the Facebook Meta library is a non factor for me and I have no doubt the library will fill for HTC. For some critical categories for me: Comfort: It is light and once dialed in more comfortable than either of my other headsets but it took some effort to dial it in. While not horrible for me, expect third party face gaskets will improve this. I do find the full headset with pack much more comfortable. The glasses arms are not long enough for me and, while tolerable, is not comfortable. Also, the arms should rotate a bit to allow you to adjust the fit to your face better, especially in glasses mode. Visual Clarity: As expected it is not as good as the Reverb G2 though not far off, but much better than index. For my eyes, noticeably better than the Q2, and on par with QP though to my eyes XR is touch more clear. The one thing I did notice is light bleed of white text on dark backgrounds, this has been mentioned by others and can be bad in some cases. FOV: Seems roughly the same as QP, better than Q2, and definitely less than the G2 and Index, but honestly given the ease of use, lightness, and connection and overall performance with comparable (G2) or better visuals (Index) I feel for casual/social gaming use it will likely be my daily driver despite less FOV. To get more clarity/resolution with large FOV it will require ridiculous hardware (like a $1.5-2k 4090) to run it so dont expect affordable rigs anytime soon. No scuba mask effect for me that others have suggested. Sound: It is better than I expected here. Coming from Index and G2 it is no where near that but definitely better to my ears than Q2 and QP. I did notice that at lower to mid volumes it sounds pretty decent but at higher volumes you start to notice an imbalance with bass lacking. I was able to use BT headphones (Nuratrue Pros) to watch movies with no sync issues, worked beautifully. I have not tried it with games yet though. If there were sync issues, I wonder if BT 5.3 would help, dont know enough here to speak to this...maybe someone out there has more insight. For those complaining about no headphone jack, there is a very simple solution, a USB C to 3.5mm Headphone and Charger Adapter ($14). This allows you to provide power (up to 60w) and plug in wired headphones in either glasses or with the battery cradle mode. So ignore the whining on that! Passthrough: This was a bit more disappointing, clearer than any other but still not workable. If you look at a screen with text that has white background from a distance looks just white until you move it very close to the headset. Additionally everything looks oddly flat...depth sensor is still not enabled so we will see how it is in future. Resolution is still not great but passthrough is better than any I have tried to date. Hand Tracking: Work in progress. It is workable with some gnashing of teeth along the way. Also mostly available for menus and mirroring, not for many games at moment. The menu mouthing worked great for me, the pinching to click/select often selected when I didnt pinch. Likely due to angle of camera to my hand so may take some learning on my part. So how did XR Elite fare in each of my uses above? PCVR Wired: Downloaded the vive streaming app to PC, plugged in and up came my steam home and away I went into my library. Demeo, Walkabout Minigolf, Alex and others all worked without issue or hitch. PCVR Wireless: I did not get to try this properly, leaving for a trip, but was able to actually connect and start to play Walkabout with my PC wireless and the headset wireless on heavily shared wifi 5 but did get choppy quickly. If I wired the PC to router expect this would have resolved this so very promising, sorry cant offer more here. Mobile Mirroring: For me this was easy to set up, download the manage, connected to same wifi, selected mirroring and it paired and just worked with my Samsung S22+. It was clear and responsive with no issues. In landscape it really crunches your view and portrait seems unusually tall and thin but overall workable and watching movies was great in a non-noisy environment. Standalone VR: Worked great, visuals were better than I expected, but did not do much more that immersed, Cosmic Flow, and some other free options as leaving for a trip so didnt have much time. Others will undoubtedly be able to provide further insight here. PCVR is my main use so not as vital for me. Travel/ Flight Movies: Used a MS Surface with streaming cable and worked just spectacularly. Cant tell you how good this experience was especially with BT headphones...dont bother with just headset speakers on a plane or other noisy environment as even at full volume you could barely hear the movie. Also, movies via phone mirroring was not smooth, to stuttery/lurchy, though sound with BT was good too. Virtual Workspaces: Used Immerse for this and it is workable for sure. Will not be as efficient as working with multiple screens in IRL yet to me but still investigating. Need to figure out if can do virtual screens in passthrough to use actual keyboard and mouse and simply have screens fixed in your space. The resolution is not quite as sharp as I would like but working on the road it is definitely a viable option and could work for hours if I can sort out using actual mouse and keyboard. Passthrough: Discussed above, helpful but hope it improves with enabling of the depth sensor. Resolution while better than any I have tried to date is still not great. If AR is your thing there are better options. There it is, hope it is helpful to some out there considering this headset. This headset is not breaking any new ground in terms of FOV and resolution. For me this is the only one that ticked all the boxes for me to play my PCVR library but also be useful for Travel and have standalone with phone mirroring (compatible phones only). HTC achieved a good balance with this headset and for someone new to VR who travels for work this will be the best option out there at the moment in my opinion. Hopefully they can improve on the glasses mode with longer arms and for future versions adjustable arms at the headset connection to allow for a better fit and placement of in built speaker to your ears. I am looking forward to seeing how the software improves seeing they are actively addressing many of issues people who had it early have reported.

I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised with this headset so far. It really is as small and light as you would expect, and I don’t get a headache wearing it like I do with other headsets. The hand tracking is fun, but I’ve found I like using the controllers more. Biggest thing for me though is the passthrough. I thought I didn’t care about AR, but it’s really neat being able to look around your room and make drawings, sculpt objects, whatever. Now I just gotta decide what other games to get for it.

so satisfied so I returned it. no worth the money. DONT BUY!

The only thing enjoyable about this was the unboxing. I cant get it to stream anything for longer than a few seconds without drops outs. Wired or wireless with a wifi6e made no difference. The only smooth operation I had with this was the initial setup. Then it told me to update my streaming drivers, but wouldnt allow me to do so. I have built every computer I have owned from parts. I have soldered together devices with 100s of components. I have coded software. I have created websites. I have linked analog and digital audio and video together at a professional level, but I couldnt after 8hrs of troubleshooting get this to work for more than 5 seconds in a game without a drop out. The worst part was when it randomly stopped being connected to my PC and insisted I connect to my Google Pixel. WHY?! what are you doing?! I was in game on STEAMVR?! 3 full charges and 8 hrs later, I am done. I am throwing in the towel. I cant waste another minute of my life with something so incredible unreliable as this piece of garbage.

PROS - Built in speakers. They are simple but they do the job. I dont care too much about audio quality, so I cant speak for those who do. For me its good. - Form factor. Being able to lie back is a game changer for me. I love how compact and lightweight the device is. The design is great and it looks super cool and futuristic on your face if thats important to you. I really dont see myself going back to bigger headsets. - Diopters. Diopters worked well. I just adjusted each eye to my prescription and thats it. So nice not needing my glasses, but if you have a prescription higher than -6 (or have astigmatism), youre out of luck. - Passthrough. This is my first time experiencing passthrough in VR and I found it very useful being able to see my surroundings just by double tapping a button on the controller. The passthrough is not in 3D, but I think theres definitely something going on to simulate depth. Its a bit wonky at times. CONS - Software. Its basic and broken. The pre-installed apps crash, the brightness setting is completely non-working, hand tracking is simply too frustrating to use, the home environment will not boot up if your room is too dark, (but they make you figure that one out for yourself), most of the pre-order bonus apps are not yet available, and almost everything else is coming soon. For the price, I expected high quality software, but this is basically alpha pre-consumer software. Users shouldnt have to find complicated workarounds just to get basic features functioning. Sorry, but software should just work without effort. As far as apps go, there are very few, but I do keep seeing new ones pop up. Still no YouTube VR, Bigscreen, or really any of the other basic ones youd expect. - Fan Noise. The fan is loud, especially in passthrough mode. It almost makes me not want to use passthrough mode. - IPD slider. I expected a clean feeling slider, but the slider is gummy and hard to move. Its not a precise slider. - Gasket. The front gasket falls off too easily, but only if youre moving around a lot. If youre a stationary user, this wont be an issue. - Comfort. Wearing the headset with the battery cradle is not very comfortable for me. Luckily, glasses mode feels much better. - FOV. I would not say FOV is bad, but I was expecting better for the price. You definitely notice a binocular-like vision but considering the form factor, its acceptable. I cant speak for PCVR, but I havent heard good things sadly. Despite its issues, I still think this is a good headset for my use case and with better software, it could easily be a great headset. VIVE, if youre reading this... Show me how magical software can be. Software makes hardware great. You have to wow people. Dont ship boring broken software. I am excited for future updates.

Bought it for my kids 16th birthday. He got super frustrated with it. Im a Microsoft Systems Engineer and I cant even get the thing to do what its supposed to do. And our PC is a top Alienware costing over 6K. We have Unifi wireless - everything in our setup is commercial grade except for this device. It is less than fun - its frustrating. If that is what you are into - go for it. But it is total junk IMO. Wait for other options TBH. Its not worth it - ESPECIALLY at this price point. So disappointed.

the face cushion had no padding along the top, where it has hard plastic pressed up against your forehead. just from completing the setup i had a painful red spot

The software is simply awful. Its certainly possible the hardware is solid, but you never do get a chance to find out. On every startup, its a mystery if the boundary will reset (nearly every time), the hand tracking will work (maybe 50% of the time), or the battery will have charged. Startup times of the headset take from 15 seconds (great!) to 2-3 minutes (and often the little startup circle spins endlessly never starting up!). This might be a fun experiment for some- but avoid the HTC Vive XR Elite like the *plague* of you are looking for even a remotely reliable family VR headset.

Im not sure this device deserves all this hate. A good buddy of mine is a quest fan, so Ive played with both the quest 2 and pro a bunch. My experience with the xr elite is without a doubt superior. For such a compact headset, the hardware specs are quite impressive: the displays are sharp, its light and comfortable, resolution in passthrough mode is so much better than quest pros, etc. Im confident that upcoming software updates will solve some of the little things people are bitching about (even iphones were glitchy when launched initially and required updates). Its a superior piece of hardware, and HTC is already rolling out software fixes.