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.

Ive owned the original Vive, Index, and Quest 2 and this headset has been the most disappointing.. Unboxing it and setting it up was alright, when I went to log in with my email it told me to use steam to log in which I assume it wanted me to plug into a PC which I cant so I eventually made a new account with a new email so I can download things which worked but now I cant use the built in browser since it says it needs to update and I cant open it anymore, also for a few hours on the first day I was stuck on a loading screen but could hear the menu in the background and resetting it a few times didnt help, I had to unplug and replug it in like 5 times to eventually be able to use it again. Software aside the fan on this thing is loud, like its pretty noticeable id say double maybe triple the Quest 2s fan noise. The passthrough is the only decent thing on this headset but its not perfect but so far the best ive seen on a headset, At this price point theres better options out there

Cons: Getting this to connect to your steam library is terrible. the Vive Streaming app just does not work. Making this unusable. The pass through isnt great. The 5 games it came with is a lie, cause 3 of them arent even out yet. The PC cable should be sold with this headset and what they charge for it is ludicrous. Pros: The headset is light and comfortable. The eye portion comfortable blocks all light for me.

I have been in vr since 2016 and owned most headsets. This is the worst experience Ive ever had with VR. Streaming has issues via USB or wireless (I have a dedicated wifi6e router and zero issues with Quest 2 or Vive focus 3 at ultra quality streaming). IPD constantly adjusts on its own. Unusable as a standalone or with PCVR in its current state. HTCs own forums and Reddit are filled with the same problems. Dont buy.

The XR Elite is a wonderful product that is horrifically painful to wear. There are a lot of good things about it but ultimately the pain was what made me get rid of it. The optics are really, really good. Edge to edge its super clear. Even when the HMD jiggles around and loses centering everything is still clear. You can truly look with your eyes. In complete blackness you notice the screen isnt as black as it could be. When a high contrast object shows up in the darkness it will tend to glow a little bit. It doesnt look like light shafts but instead multiple instances in a line losing definition. They have individual Diopters as well but I left them both at zero. There is IPD Adjustment using a very coarse slider instead of the usual dial on other HMDs. Its kind of difficult to get it dialed in to the exact sub millimeter but the lenses are very forgiving so precision wasnt needed. The IPD adjustment did jiggle itself loose once when moving a lot in VR. The screens are pretty good minus the blackest of blacks, though coming from a Vive Pro 2 there isnt much difference. Resolution is dense and not much more could be stuffed in without the battery suffering. When used fully standalone the battery life is somewhere between bad to okay. For a quick XR adventure its no problem which is what I think HTC is aiming for, not multi-hour adventures into the mist. I dunno if it was atypical but without the rear battery cradle the HMD would power on for about a second then shut off. With the battery cradle fully charged it lasted a little under 2 hours. When plugged into a computer it would charge but the drain would be larger than the supply. From full it would last around 3 hours when plugged into a PC. The controllers battery life is a totally different story. They would drain passively over the week and every time I went to use them they would be zeroed out completely. They automatically wake up from the tiniest of movements and theyd randomly wake up in the middle of the night from a 2.0 earthquake or something. I eventually left them on the charger for days on end until they would be needed to circumvent their drain. When fully charged I think they are supposed to last 6 some hours. Other than the controllers battery lives there isnt much to say about them. They feel comfortable in the hand and the buttons are in logical places. The thumb stick is kind of hard to push down but thats really about it for the main controls. They are kind of hard to differentiate left from right from feel alone if you dont have pass through mode enabled. They tracked well enough for the games I played but it got a little annoying when they got out of tracking space like above the head. They would track for about one second using only gyro and accelerometer when out of visual range then theyd go rotation only, no position. One second is enough if youre just tapping your back or putting a hat on but anything further and its a mess. The HMDs self tracking is pretty good and it never really bugged out. In complete darkness it would complain but even some ambient lights like monitors it worked well enough. Pass through mode must have some crazy noise reduction because I can still make out shapes in darkness. Upon startup it asks to create a playspace that you draw on the ground. Usually thats just a room minus some furniture. If for any reason you completely leave that playspace while wearing the HMD, like in passthrough mode, it will completely lose the original playspace and ask you to create a new playspace. If you agree to make a new playspace itll kick you out of whatever content you were looking at to do the setup. To get around this you can probably just draw a playspace that includes every room you think youll be in. I really wish it was less dependent on defined playspaces than it currently is. The XR Elite is basically bound to one area, despite being standalone and portable. AR content is basically non existent on the XR Elite. Its primarily VR stuff with passthrough visuals in case you step out of bounds. There built in hand tracking which is cool but limited to only a gimmick because the entire UI is built like a VR interface. You dont reach out and touch any buttons or wave for gestures or anything like that. You vaguely point your wrist at a button then pinch your fingers to simulate a click. There is some content that uses the hand tracking a little better but not the home UI. There is an option to allow the hand tracking to pass through to SteamVR as a controller emulator. You can pinch your fingers to pull the trigger. You can also flip your right hand over and pinch to open the XR menu. Thats about it. The built in speakers are actually decent. The Quest 2 internal speakers arent quite as good and the PiMax 8KX strap speakers were a joke. Your ears are fully unobstructed so you can still hear your environment which is useful when activating passthrough. Youll notice an extreme lack of sub and bass through the speakers. They are fine for music like jazz and is particularly suited for human voices. If the environment outside the XR Elite is noisy things get progressively worse but thats the nature of off-ear solutions. For discussion between 10 some people I kept the volume at about 90% most of the time. The ergonomics SEEMED good at first but quickly devolved once positioned. The gasket around the face was really soft and pliant around the sides but at the top there is a plastic bridge that goes over the eyebrows. When using the battery cradle to crank down that plastic bridge gave me a headache after about an hour and I kept loosening the battery cradle until it just fell off. 100% of the tension is placed right on that forehead bridge. Since there is no top strap to keep the XR Elite elevated it only relies on squeezing around the head to stay up. The battery cradle side was comfortable but the effects at the front are unforgivable. There is also the alternate Glasses Mode which takes the battery cradle completely off and turns it into what looks like super techy glasses. The temples grab on ULTRA hard and the sides of my head were immediately aware of something trying to reduce the width of my skull. I wear medium-large motorcycle helmets and anyone with a wider head would be worse off. That being said, it was more comfortable than having my forehead be in pain though anything is more comfortable than being stabbed. There is a TINY amount of cushion in the temple ends that have about 1mm of squish. Problematically, it places all that squeeze on what feels like less than one square inch per side so you really feel it. Surprisingly even though there is no back strap to keep the XR Elite held on it manages to stay on my face, fully planted, through a bunch of action games I played. You might ask, how did I power the XR Elite without the battery cradle? You can use any power bank that outputs 12v like QC3.0/4.0 or variable voltage stuff. Generally, if it can charge a laptop it can definitely power the XR Elite. I put the power bank in my pocket and ran a 3 foot cable up to the cable holding pinch at the right temple and into the power slot. My power banks are decently large, two being 50wh and another at 100wh, and last way longer than the included battery cradle. You can also push the power banks through the battery cradle and get all the extra charge associated. With a quick charging power bank itll push the battery cradle to 100%. As soon as the power bank dies itll go back to using the battery cradles charge and in this time you can plug in another one or ride the remaining energy to the end. Additional note, the battery Cradle can be used for USB tethering. I thought it was just a charge port but it pushed data through just fine. I plugged it into a USB 3.2g2 port but Im not sure how fast the batter cradles port is, might be 3.2g1 or it might even be 2.0. The cabled port on the side of the XR Elite obviously has full USB capabilities but without a power source it wont do much. There is also an additional USB-C port to the right of the right eye and to the left of the temple thats hidden. I didnt manage to try that port out but I believe its a host port. Tethering is great on the XR Elite. Just install the app on both a PC and the XR Elite, make sure Wi-Fi is working OR the USB is tethered, and in the XR just click Streaming App. That kind of convenience made me really, really like the XR Elite. There was a few times when the Wi-Fi streaming would get a bit overcompressed possibly from environmental issues. Upping the SteamVR resolution had ZERO effect on visual quality since it must pass through the Streaming Hub compression in the end. Upping the resolution just made more pixels have to fit through the same bitrate through Wi-Fi which had negative effects scaling up. There seemed like some of the gradients would lose a bit of smoothness, especially in light greys to slightly darker greys, while using the Streaming Hub. The convenience factor was just too good though. Ultimately, the Wi-Fi on the XR Elite stopped working. That combined with the extremely painful mounting systems brought me to the final crossroad. I returned it.

Setup was ok, main usage was PC VR. The usb cable didn’t work despite working fine with quest 2. I had to use pc streaming. Not the best. The weight is light but there is noticeable pressure on the forehead. With the sunglass mode, it squeezes hard on the head. I found it to be an issue. It hard to recommend it at this price. AR is a feature no one, yet, asked for it and yet we are paying for it. The price is steep.

Late adopter to VR. If this is your first foray into VR, its a solid place to start. My other experience is HTC Vive Pro 2. So the inside out tracking coupled with AR capability is a freedom from base stations and wires. But you do get a downgrade in definition, which is understandable given how light the unit is. The FOV is much less than its Vive Pro 2 sibling. But if youre playing casual VR games like Beat Saber or just getting your feet wet in VR and utterly refuse to be involved with anything Mark Zuckerberg then HTC is the set for you.

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

Great for pcvr ; No login hassles; Compact; Accurate tracking; Great pass thru implementation; Bad: Don’t buy it for iPhone mirroring; Don’t buy it if not for pcvr; USB links external storage devices but may not show files in software; Don’t buy it for hand gestures;

Maybe been able to use 2 or 3 times since it came in last week, it keeps resetting boundaries and non stop loading. Its almost like it cant handle head movements which is dumb since its a vr head set. YOu move your head and it starts the spinning vive symbol. Its starting to look like a waste of money