PlayStation VR2 Review: A Standalone Headset with Immersive Experience

The PlayStation VR2 is a standalone headset that offers an immersive experience, despite being a few years old and not having graphics that compete with modern headsets. The headset itself is fully standalone, which means it's super fun to use even if it's not the most cutting-edge technology out there. However, it still has a really immersive experience that makes it well worth considering for those looking to upgrade their VR gaming experience.

One of the standout features of the PlayStation VR2 is its 15t cable, which is pretty good for most rooms. This allows for a more comfortable and convenient use of the headset, as it doesn't require the user to be tethered to a computer or console. However, I did find that the cable could sometimes get tangled around my shoulder, so it's essential to take care when wearing it.

Another aspect of the PlayStation VR2 is its audio capabilities. The headset includes 3D audio and has little dangling earbuds that attach over the ears, but I found the audio quality to be somewhat lacking compared to what I expected. However, if you want an extra boost in audio quality, you can use Sony's own Pulse 3D audio headset, which wirelessly connects to one of the USB ports on the front and this connects to the other, providing a great sound experience.

One thing to note is that the PlayStation VR2 does not have any built-in speakers, which means it relies on external audio sources. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as it allows for more flexibility in terms of where you can place your audio source, but also requires you to close out the real world in order to fully immerse yourself in the VR experience.

The headset's design is one of its strongest aspects, with a large rubber gasket that fits over glasses. I particularly appreciated how well it fit over my own glasses, which are some of the best glasses-friendly VR headsets available. However, it's essential to keep in mind that the PlayStation VR2 is not compatible with the Meta Quest 2, and you'll need special dedicated glasses for that headset.

Eye tracking is another feature worth mentioning, as I found it to be quite accurate once I got the headset close enough to my eyes. This aspect of the headset requires a bit more finesse to get right, but the payoff is well worth it.

The boundary setup process is also noteworthy, as it uses 3D scanning to map out your entire room and create a custom play space based on the boundaries you set. This feature is both impressive and practical, allowing for a highly personalized VR experience that's tailored to your specific needs.

One thing that might raise some eyebrows about the PlayStation VR2 is its price tag - $400 or more, depending on the games and accessories you choose. However, this is not an uncommon price point in the world of VR headsets, which have historically been among the most expensive consumer electronics on the market.

While I wouldn't say that the PlayStation VR2 is for everyone, particularly those who are accustomed to PC-based VR or other headset options, it's clear that this headset has a unique appeal and several standout features. Whether you're looking to upgrade your current gaming setup or simply want to try out VR for the first time, the PlayStation VR2 is definitely worth considering.

Another interesting aspect of the PlayStation VR2 is its potential use case as a standalone headset with a console. While some might find the idea of being tethered to a console unappealing, I think this could actually be one of the headset's greatest strengths. With the PS5 and PlayStation VR2 combo, you can sit down and play games without having to worry about setting up separate equipment or dealing with the hassle of disconnecting from your console.

In conclusion, the PlayStation VR2 is a remarkable headset that offers an immersive experience unlike anything else in the market. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of newer headsets, its unique design, impressive graphics quality, and practical features make it a compelling choice for those looking to upgrade their gaming setup or simply try out VR for the first time.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enseven years ago Sony debuted the PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4 2016 it has been a long time but now the PlayStation 5 has its own VR accessory the PlayStation VR2 let's put this in perspective because VR has been here for a while and VR in 2023 is about to reinvent itself first of all a lot of the VR headsets that we see right now are Wireless look at the meta Quest 2 and the upcoming Quest 3 Apple's expected headset is going go in that direction I'm so used to wireless that it's surprising that the PlayStation VR2 has a wire a big long cable that connects to your PlayStation 5 that could seem like a turnoff but wait there's a lot of benefits that this headset has to offer you yes it's $550 which is the cost of a PlayStation 5 on its own but this headset is probably the best quality VR experience at the moment that I've had seriously and this is why first of all the PlayStation VR2 headset has a really nice display it's OLED it's HDR it's got a high resolution that feels super crisp and it makes a lot of the gaming Graphics look really Vivid everyone we've showed into the office has been really impressed it has great black levels it feels more vibrant as a result and because it's Tethered to a PlayStation 5 the graphics on this are a lot better that you're going to get on a standalone headset this thing can pump out gaming Graphics that when optimized look really fantastic there aren't that many games right now that are super optimized and that's something I'll get into in a moment but PlayStation has one horizon call the mountain and that game if you get up close and look at the details in that game it feels like you're playing a PlayStation 5 game but in VR it doesn't feel like there's any Gap in graphics anymore that's really cool the other thing this has is ey tracking which right now may feel more like a gimmick than a necessity but it does do one thing that helps those Graphics look good and it's called fiated rendering it's basically looking at where your eye is and just sending the highres graphics to that area with eye tracking to potentially bring out even more detail through a PlayStation 5 to maximize gaming Graphics there are also some ways that you can actually look around and see things and select menus or even do controls like in games like res infinite or tentacular has it too I'm sure a lot lot of games are going to play around with that it's super cool and interesting technology but it's not something I'd say you necessarily need the other thing this headset has that's fantastic are these controllers the PlayStation sense controllers are what the PlayStation VR should have had all along these are dedicated motion sensing controllers similar to other VR headsets two things make this really nice though basically the haptics and the force feedback the vibrating haptics and the Adaptive trigger in here are like the PlayStation dual sense controller they have really Advanced kind of vibrational Ripple feelings and this trigger will actually give feedback depending on what game you're playing so if you're using like a bow and arrow it'll actually have resistance that's something I haven't seen in any other VR headset and it makes an impact when I've been playing a lot of the games so to me these haptics on here blow the pants off other VR headsets that I've used they're really lightweight too the one thing is they don't have a d-pad so they're not exactly the same as a regular PlayStation controller so they work with VR games but they don't work with all of your PlayStation 5 games speaking of games the game library for the PlayStation VR2 is actually pretty large at launched it's like over 30 games and looks like more and more are being added but that doesn't mean you can play any PlayStation 5 game in VR obviously although there are some games that are getting VR modes notably Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village I played Resident Evil Village looked awesome I haven't played Gran Turismo 7 yet but I'm going to soon those are ones that you probably want to pick up I'm hoping there are going to be even more No Man's sky is also one of those on the list but you have to sort of check and seek for compatibility the other thing that's a bummer is if you've had a PlayStation VR from the past those older games are not automatically backwards compatible here in fact I tried launching them they do not play unless the company decides to Port over a specific adaptation there are some games already that offer free updates or paid updates to get those games it's a shame though because they there are a lot of great PlayStation VR games in the past a lot of exclusives and I'm thinking about astrobot astrobot is an awesome little cute robot that would be an introduction to a lot of PlayStation VR and PlayStation tech it's built into the PlayStation 5 there was an astrobot game there were two of them on Playstation VR there's no astrobot here bring us astrobot you know there is Horizon call of the mountain which is good I just expected more exclusives now this is coming out in February February is not exactly a holiday shopping time maybe this is kind of a soft launch and maybe over the course of the Year Sony will have more exclusive games maybe leading up to a fall release of even more hopefully with some sort of a bundle cuz that gets into price price on this headset it's expensive this is $550 even though it includes the controllers you're also going to need a PlayStation 5 that's a $1,000 plus bundle that is a lot of money to spend on VR something like the meta Quest 2 as much as you may not like meta or maybe you du that headset is $400 and it's all inclusive and it's pretty great that's what you're going up against and it's hard to beat that because the meta Quest 2 is fully Standalone it's super fun even if it is a few years old and the graphics don't compete it still has a really immersive experience this needs that tether this is about a 15t cable which is pretty good for most rooms but I did feel this cable wearing down on my shoulder and I had to make sure I didn't get tangled in it so it's there and there are a few other things I'm not wild about with this headset the audio needs little dangling earbuds now they are included and they're fine they offer 3D audio and they attach over here and you could put in your own but the audio to me didn't sound quite as good as I expected it to although if you want an audio boost you could use Sony's own pulse 3D audio headset that goes right over your ears that wirelessly connects to one of the USB ports on the front and this connects to the other and it sounded great but you have to get that Pulse headset separately the other thing is this doesn't have any built-in speakers so on The Meta quest Quest 2 you can actually hear the world around you and also hear the audio near you you have to put these buds in your ears and then you're going to close out the real world which maybe you want but you're not going to be able to hear people nearby these do fit over my glasses which I love these are the best glasses friendly VR headset design that I've seen there's a large rubber gasket and these wide glasses do not fit into the Quest 2 I need special dedicated glasses for that these are no problem for eye tracking I need to push the headset really close to get the eye tracking to work keep aware of that glasses owners but I did feel the experience was great one thing that's a little weird are the buttons on the bottom which are your basic interface controls power button this shows you the real world when you press it using the pass through cameras which is something that's common on VR like the Quest 2 I found it a little hard to Fumble for this but once you do the black and white cameras offer a nice crisp look of what's around you and that's something that you also use when you first set up the headset the boundary setup for this it can scan your entire room mesh it out with polygons and then you set up a little play Space by sort of pushing in at the boundaries and crafting it to the space that you want really nice design and actually it's a little bit better than what meta has on the Quest 2 so would I buy this interesting question I think it's a lot of money to spend I think if you already have a PlayStation 5 and you have the money to spend on VR and you're thinking about spending what's going to be at least $600 or more if you're buying the games and everything else I think this is the most cinematic Vivid VR Gaming experience that's out there that's a really high price bar I mean even in PC VR Gaming you could find more affordable headsets and be able to connect them to a PC the question is $400 I'm not even going to include the quest Pro because that's not really meant for everyday use but this price is high although the upcoming landscape of VR headsets are also going to have high prices everything that we've seen so far has been pushing into that thousand territory maybe this gets bundled in the future maybe it's more affordable also do you like the idea of sitting at home Tethered to a VR headset with a game console as opposed to moving around that's something you need to solve although I will say one nice thing about this headset being all self-contained something the original PlayStation VR was not is that all of the equipment needed to run this is all here it doesn't need an external camera you don't need some weird breakout box you just need a USBC cable and so if you plug that into your PlayStation 5 once you've set it up you don't even need a TV you could sit down and play games on this and kind of use it to off playay games when somebody else is watching television or maybe you don't have a TV in the room at all that's kind of an interesting use case for this because I found that the OLED display is definitely good enough for playing games on although for watching TV and movies I would prefer still a regular television so that's PlayStation VR2 right now and here's the thing it's going to keep changing right there are going to be a lot more games really curious to see what comes out how this continues to raise the bar and I think the graphics quality of this the ability for it to push those boundaries is potentially going to change what VR becomes but I would also wait because there are probably going to be a lot more headsets to come this year tooseven years ago Sony debuted the PlayStation VR on PlayStation 4 2016 it has been a long time but now the PlayStation 5 has its own VR accessory the PlayStation VR2 let's put this in perspective because VR has been here for a while and VR in 2023 is about to reinvent itself first of all a lot of the VR headsets that we see right now are Wireless look at the meta Quest 2 and the upcoming Quest 3 Apple's expected headset is going go in that direction I'm so used to wireless that it's surprising that the PlayStation VR2 has a wire a big long cable that connects to your PlayStation 5 that could seem like a turnoff but wait there's a lot of benefits that this headset has to offer you yes it's $550 which is the cost of a PlayStation 5 on its own but this headset is probably the best quality VR experience at the moment that I've had seriously and this is why first of all the PlayStation VR2 headset has a really nice display it's OLED it's HDR it's got a high resolution that feels super crisp and it makes a lot of the gaming Graphics look really Vivid everyone we've showed into the office has been really impressed it has great black levels it feels more vibrant as a result and because it's Tethered to a PlayStation 5 the graphics on this are a lot better that you're going to get on a standalone headset this thing can pump out gaming Graphics that when optimized look really fantastic there aren't that many games right now that are super optimized and that's something I'll get into in a moment but PlayStation has one horizon call the mountain and that game if you get up close and look at the details in that game it feels like you're playing a PlayStation 5 game but in VR it doesn't feel like there's any Gap in graphics anymore that's really cool the other thing this has is ey tracking which right now may feel more like a gimmick than a necessity but it does do one thing that helps those Graphics look good and it's called fiated rendering it's basically looking at where your eye is and just sending the highres graphics to that area with eye tracking to potentially bring out even more detail through a PlayStation 5 to maximize gaming Graphics there are also some ways that you can actually look around and see things and select menus or even do controls like in games like res infinite or tentacular has it too I'm sure a lot lot of games are going to play around with that it's super cool and interesting technology but it's not something I'd say you necessarily need the other thing this headset has that's fantastic are these controllers the PlayStation sense controllers are what the PlayStation VR should have had all along these are dedicated motion sensing controllers similar to other VR headsets two things make this really nice though basically the haptics and the force feedback the vibrating haptics and the Adaptive trigger in here are like the PlayStation dual sense controller they have really Advanced kind of vibrational Ripple feelings and this trigger will actually give feedback depending on what game you're playing so if you're using like a bow and arrow it'll actually have resistance that's something I haven't seen in any other VR headset and it makes an impact when I've been playing a lot of the games so to me these haptics on here blow the pants off other VR headsets that I've used they're really lightweight too the one thing is they don't have a d-pad so they're not exactly the same as a regular PlayStation controller so they work with VR games but they don't work with all of your PlayStation 5 games speaking of games the game library for the PlayStation VR2 is actually pretty large at launched it's like over 30 games and looks like more and more are being added but that doesn't mean you can play any PlayStation 5 game in VR obviously although there are some games that are getting VR modes notably Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village I played Resident Evil Village looked awesome I haven't played Gran Turismo 7 yet but I'm going to soon those are ones that you probably want to pick up I'm hoping there are going to be even more No Man's sky is also one of those on the list but you have to sort of check and seek for compatibility the other thing that's a bummer is if you've had a PlayStation VR from the past those older games are not automatically backwards compatible here in fact I tried launching them they do not play unless the company decides to Port over a specific adaptation there are some games already that offer free updates or paid updates to get those games it's a shame though because they there are a lot of great PlayStation VR games in the past a lot of exclusives and I'm thinking about astrobot astrobot is an awesome little cute robot that would be an introduction to a lot of PlayStation VR and PlayStation tech it's built into the PlayStation 5 there was an astrobot game there were two of them on Playstation VR there's no astrobot here bring us astrobot you know there is Horizon call of the mountain which is good I just expected more exclusives now this is coming out in February February is not exactly a holiday shopping time maybe this is kind of a soft launch and maybe over the course of the Year Sony will have more exclusive games maybe leading up to a fall release of even more hopefully with some sort of a bundle cuz that gets into price price on this headset it's expensive this is $550 even though it includes the controllers you're also going to need a PlayStation 5 that's a $1,000 plus bundle that is a lot of money to spend on VR something like the meta Quest 2 as much as you may not like meta or maybe you du that headset is $400 and it's all inclusive and it's pretty great that's what you're going up against and it's hard to beat that because the meta Quest 2 is fully Standalone it's super fun even if it is a few years old and the graphics don't compete it still has a really immersive experience this needs that tether this is about a 15t cable which is pretty good for most rooms but I did feel this cable wearing down on my shoulder and I had to make sure I didn't get tangled in it so it's there and there are a few other things I'm not wild about with this headset the audio needs little dangling earbuds now they are included and they're fine they offer 3D audio and they attach over here and you could put in your own but the audio to me didn't sound quite as good as I expected it to although if you want an audio boost you could use Sony's own pulse 3D audio headset that goes right over your ears that wirelessly connects to one of the USB ports on the front and this connects to the other and it sounded great but you have to get that Pulse headset separately the other thing is this doesn't have any built-in speakers so on The Meta quest Quest 2 you can actually hear the world around you and also hear the audio near you you have to put these buds in your ears and then you're going to close out the real world which maybe you want but you're not going to be able to hear people nearby these do fit over my glasses which I love these are the best glasses friendly VR headset design that I've seen there's a large rubber gasket and these wide glasses do not fit into the Quest 2 I need special dedicated glasses for that these are no problem for eye tracking I need to push the headset really close to get the eye tracking to work keep aware of that glasses owners but I did feel the experience was great one thing that's a little weird are the buttons on the bottom which are your basic interface controls power button this shows you the real world when you press it using the pass through cameras which is something that's common on VR like the Quest 2 I found it a little hard to Fumble for this but once you do the black and white cameras offer a nice crisp look of what's around you and that's something that you also use when you first set up the headset the boundary setup for this it can scan your entire room mesh it out with polygons and then you set up a little play Space by sort of pushing in at the boundaries and crafting it to the space that you want really nice design and actually it's a little bit better than what meta has on the Quest 2 so would I buy this interesting question I think it's a lot of money to spend I think if you already have a PlayStation 5 and you have the money to spend on VR and you're thinking about spending what's going to be at least $600 or more if you're buying the games and everything else I think this is the most cinematic Vivid VR Gaming experience that's out there that's a really high price bar I mean even in PC VR Gaming you could find more affordable headsets and be able to connect them to a PC the question is $400 I'm not even going to include the quest Pro because that's not really meant for everyday use but this price is high although the upcoming landscape of VR headsets are also going to have high prices everything that we've seen so far has been pushing into that thousand territory maybe this gets bundled in the future maybe it's more affordable also do you like the idea of sitting at home Tethered to a VR headset with a game console as opposed to moving around that's something you need to solve although I will say one nice thing about this headset being all self-contained something the original PlayStation VR was not is that all of the equipment needed to run this is all here it doesn't need an external camera you don't need some weird breakout box you just need a USBC cable and so if you plug that into your PlayStation 5 once you've set it up you don't even need a TV you could sit down and play games on this and kind of use it to off playay games when somebody else is watching television or maybe you don't have a TV in the room at all that's kind of an interesting use case for this because I found that the OLED display is definitely good enough for playing games on although for watching TV and movies I would prefer still a regular television so that's PlayStation VR2 right now and here's the thing it's going to keep changing right there are going to be a lot more games really curious to see what comes out how this continues to raise the bar and I think the graphics quality of this the ability for it to push those boundaries is potentially going to change what VR becomes but I would also wait because there are probably going to be a lot more headsets to come this year too\n"