HTC Vive Focus Vision
A top-quality headset for VR gaming on a PC, but when you’re paying this much you deserve more
HTC has focused on comfort rather than a stylish design for style’s sake
SCORE
PRICE
£833 (£999 inc VAT)
from vive.com
I really wanted to love the HTC Vive Focus Vision, especially after my first few tests with Half-Life: Alyx and VR sim racing worked out so well. But after a few weeks with the headset, the relationship grew complicated. Let me explain.
After the first handful of sessions, I felt that what I’d heard about this headset from my friends in the industry may have been overly harsh. The build quality is great, with a lovely even weight distribution that feels fine on your head for hours and hours, which makes the hot-swappable batteries even more critical and impressive here.
Pair that with 5K display tech, stellar eye tracking with minimal latency, great all-round tracking and an ergonomic set of controllers, and you’ve got a good headset tailor-made for gaming. But this is where the story of the Vive Focus Vision starts to get murky.
When you see a standalone headset for £999, you expect the standalone aspect to shine. But there are problems here that stop it from being a high-end alternative to the Meta Quest 3 (see issue 363, p64) or a cheaper rival to the Apple Vision Pro (see issue 355, p48).