While it was instructive to compare Quest 2 specifications with my other VR headsets, the biggest reason I wanted to try a Quest 2 is its standalone capability. After spending some time I've decided I'm a fan. It's much easier to enjoy a virtual environment when I'm not constantly kicking away the cable tethering me to my gaming PC. All else being equal, a wireless experience is superior. Unfortunately, all else are not equal. The cell phone level hardware in a Quest 2 renders a decidedly lower fidelity world relative to what a modern gaming PC can render. It's a nonissue for something simple and abstract like Beat Saber, but anything even slightly ambitious looks like a PC game from at least ten years ago.

One way to have the best of both worlds is wireless streaming from a gaming PC to my Quest over home WiFi. I tried Steam Link on Quest and was impressed by how well it worked. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite well enough just yet. When I'm playing games on a monitor, a few milliseconds of latency plus an occasional (about once per minute) stutter of one or two frames is fine. But on a VR headset, it quickly gives me motion sickness and a headache. Supposedly this can be improved with a WiFi 6 router, but I'm not willing to replace my home WiFi infrastructure for this feature. For the immediate future, I'm happy using my Valve Index for SteamVR experiences.

Mixed Reality

And finally, Meta's push for Mixed Reality is still a question mark. All three of my VR headsets let me use their cameras to see real-world surroundings. But Quest is the only one of the three to do the work to map that camera footage into a convincingly realistic spatial layout around me. The HP WMR and Valve Index camera views can give me a rough idea if I'm about to run into a wall, but neither are properly mapped enough for me to, say, reach out and grab something.

To support mixed reality scenarios, Quest advertises hand-tracking capabilities for controller-free experiences. Supposedly this works well on the Quest 3, which has additional color cameras for the purpose. My house has beige walls and carpet so my hand has poor contrast for Quest 2's black-and-white cameras to pick out. It's pretty unreliable today.

Both of these capabilities show promise, but they're both relatively new and I will have to wait for novel usage to emerge in mixed reality experiences yet to come. Apple's Vision Pro is all-in on mixed reality, though, and offers to solve a problem that the Quest 2 does not.