HTC Vive Pro Headset Review: A High Bar for Premium VR
Up Close With the HTC Vive Pro Headset
HTC would have you believe that the Vive Pro is for professionals, businesses, and enthusiasts. But one glance at the box, and it’s clear that the company is really trying to capture gamers. The Vive Pro’s box is decorated like a box for a console, with images of games that work with the headset. The box is approximately the size of a game console, too.
Inside the box, you’ll find the Vive Pro HMD, which ships in a form-fitted plastic insert to keep it secured and a plastic bag to keep dust out. The first thing we noticed about the headset is the dark blue plastic that it’s made of. The color of the device isn’t exactly important, but somehow the shade of blue that HTC used gives it a premium appearance to our eyes. The contrast between the blue and black just looks sharp.
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At first glance, the Vive Pro is largely the same shape as the original Vive, though the visor is a little less bulbous. The top is slightly less round, but it’s a subtle change that you would need an eye for detail to notice. The biggest change to the front of the headset is the Vive Pro’s inclusion of a pair of chaperone cameras front and center. HTC also reworked the sensor placements, though it didn’t add additional sensors to the headset.
The Vive Pro features a rigid head strap, which is becoming a major trend with VR HMDs. The Windows Mixed Reality headsets all offer rigid straps with mechanical adjustments, as does Sony’s PlayStation VR. Even the Oculus Rift offers a semi-rigid head-strap design. HTC’s new design is quite different from other head straps that we’ve encountered, though. The head band has a curvature that wraps up and over your ears, and back down toward the lower backside of your head.
The new headset also has a fabric overhead strap with Velcro for adjustments, like the original Vive. HTC chose a nicer material for the strap this time and added a plastic tab, which makes gripping the end easier. The overhead strap weaves through a hinge on the front, which is attached to the body of the HMD, not the moveable front cover like on the HTC Vive.
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The Vive Pro includes a pair of 2.5” headphones, which are attached to arms that articulate in several directions. You can move the earpieces forward, back, up, and down, as well as pivot them to ensure the cans line up to your ears. The arms also flip outward, so you can pull the speakers away from your ears to hear the real world. The headphones feature leather-wrapped padding that is moisture-proof but not removable. The left headphone includes volume-adjustment buttons, and the right headphone includes a mute button, which cuts off the Vive Pro’s dual array microphones.
The Vive Pro headset also includes a new Link Box, which features a power button to turn the HMD off when not in use, and a proprietary plug for the headset's cable. The Link Box still requires a power source, a USB source, and a video source, but HTC updated the interfaces for the Vive Pro. The original Vive supports HDMI, mini-DisplayPort, and USB 2.0, while the new Link Box features mini-DisplayPort, but no HDMI. The new unit also requires a USB 3.0 or 3.1 Type-A USB port.
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Clever Cable Management
The Vive Pro’s tether cable connects to the left side of the HMD and wraps around the head-strap hinge, which prevents kinks in the cable when rotating the visor swivel. The cable runs through a channel along the head strap, and through a small horn-shaped loop that gently directs the cord toward the center of your back.
To remove the cable, you should adjust the lens relief to its maximum distance. Otherwise, you’ll have trouble with the cable head clearing the tight space. We managed to get ours out, but we found it impossible to put it back in without adjusting the relief. With the cable out of the headset port, unwind it from the hinge and remove it from the channel that holds it in place. The bell-shaped loop has a cut in it that allows you to pull the cable out without running the full length through the loop.
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The Vive Pro tether cable features a proprietary plug, which carries the power, video, and USB signals. The plug looks a lot like the one on the Oculus Rift’s cable, but close inspection reveals that HTC's plug is quite a bit larger.
Hidden Serial Number
Familiar Setup
Setting up the Vive Pro should be familiar to anyone who buys it, because the process is almost the same as plugging in the Vive that they likely already own. Plug in the power cord, the USB 3.0 cable, and the DisplayPort cable for the Link Box, and then plug the headset into the Link Box. With everything plugged in, press the blue power button to activate the Vive.
Windows should automatically detect the headset and install the drivers. Open SteamVR, and the software will automatically configure itself for the Vive Pro. SteamVR will prompt you to install a new Bluetooth driver, which you must do to enable communication with your existing Vive controllers. If you switch back to the old Vive, SteamVR will reinstall the old driver automatically. In our setup, the new headset assumed the room-scale setup from the existing Vive.
If you’re running a desktop PC, you probably won’t run into a problem setting up the Vive Pro, but laptop users might have a problem. VR-Ready laptops always have HDMI ports, but not all of them offer DisplayPort. As with many aspects of cutting-edge tech, you may need an adapter.
Good news on the design improvements and resolution improvement. Shame that god rays are still an issue. Seems like we're still a generation or two on this tech before it becomes something viable for the mainstream.
It's really not a big problem unless you're trying to do things that require reading text.
As someone who's put hundreds of hours in with the Vive, I can honestly say that screen door effect is not a real problem. It's just something that people like to complain about to give them justification not to adopt VR.
I won't deny that it exists. But I don't buy for a second that it's a real hindrance.
That said, if that's the biggest problem that you perceive, then VR is doing pretty good, I'd say.
I see a lot of complaints about the price tag of the Vive Pro, but no one's forcing anyone to buy it. I'm happy to pay for the best available product on the market.
At the end of the day, the Vive pro is still a tethered plastic headset that uses an inferior Samsung pentile display (forcing your system to waste 30% of its resources rendering subpixels that don't actually exists). Is the design a little better thought-out? sure.. that's how product iteration works. You change the design over time to improve quality and to decrease cost. What has HTC actually done here to justify the fact that they've more than doubled their asking price?
At the end of the day, nobody is going to pay "Lamborghini" prices for a Nissan Leaf E; not even one with particularly nice paint comfortable seats.
Of course, that's not a perfect analogy, because a used Nissan leaf is probably less expensive than a Vive Pro if you add in a computer powerful enough to deliver 90fps to such an impractical display.
I've had a vive since launch but have used it less than 30 hours. I haven't found a game to put a lot of hours into.
Those of us (myself included) who really want VR to thrive long term do IMHO have some cause for concern with products like the Vive Pro that reinforce the fringe nature of VR and don't do a lot to entice the all-important software developers into the ecosystem.
Another threat to VR, and perhaps a bigger threat at that, is race-to-the-bottom headsets which compromise the experience. I know several people who have tried cheap, flawed VR experiences and written off VR as a whole. At least Vive is clearly marketing - and making strides to provide - a genuinely good VR experience.
I'm genuinely hoping for the day when I can pop on a wireless headset with 4K (or more) per eye and well-implemented foveated rendering and explore foreign worlds with interesting characters and complex stories. That's a platform that I would be more than willing to pay a lot of money to get access to. But getting there will require significant investment both on the hardware and software side. The Vive Pro headset is absolutely a step in the right direction from a technical hardware perspective, but is an (effectively) $1100 product right for the VR industry as a whole in the long term? I'm not so sure.
Like you said a bad VR experience is horrendous and immediately turns you away.
When I got the Vive I only had a GTX 970 and it made me very sick every time I tried to use it. I was on the verge of selling it and putting VR into the non compatible with me section.
I took a different approach and upgraded to a GTX 1080 and haven't gotten sick since.
Turns out my hopeless travel sickness body is extremely susceptible to any frame time issues and the extra GPU horsepower did the trick.
Saying "no one is forcing anyone to buy it" as an excuse for VR's high cost is like saying "no one is forcing anyone to buy a lamborghini". The difference here is that there are countless cars available for a much much lower price.
Not so for VR. A few choices maybe but not enough to make this tech go mainstream.
VR won't go mainstream in my estimation for at least another 5 years when there will be a much better selection available.
This is Gen 1.5 at best... I guess the Pimax will be the first Gen 2 if they can deliver.
1. Go see Tribal Instincts' review on YouTube. You won't be saying "sameish resolution" after that.
2. Pimax uses LCD screens at a lower refresh rate and isn't even on the market. Why compare? I remember going from the Galaxy Nexus (OLED) to the Nexus 5 (LCD). The vastly reduced screen quality made me miss my old phone despite the newer one having a bigger screen and higher resolution. I'm positive most reviewers will point that out once there is actually a consumer version available.
I tried for quite a time and the refresh rate didn't bother me (really couldn't tell compared to my Vive). The screen resolution and fov of the pimax was epic. It does indeed have a lot of rough edges (literally as the edge of the screen had a small reflection which pimax claims is fixed).
I genuinely hope pimax does well as that device will push VR into better experiences than it has today. I mean think about it Oculus with the Go is going literally in the opposite direction with a snapdragon 821 that is like 1% the performance of a PC.
I'm glad to hear the Pimax 8k is actually pushing VR technology forward. I agree that Oculus is hurting VR yet again, first with exclusives, and now with inferior quality headsets.
As for the Tribal Instincts video, I was referring to his official Vive Pro review where he shows the best comparisons of the screen quality between it and the original Vive. Those comparisons alone should make everyone saying that the Vive Pro is not enough of an upgrade to put their foot in their mouth.
More than doubled the price? How did you come up with that figure?
The Vive launched at $800.
The Vive Pro is now $800 + $300 for the extra controllers. That's nowhere near twice the price.
As for justification; I went into pretty significant detail about that in the review. If you don't agree, that's fine.
Every other headset maker failed to make anything reasonably close to as comfortable as the Vive Pro. I'm of the opinion that comfort is worth paying more for.
I haven't spent more than 40 hours in many single titles, but I've spent hundreds of hours combined in the various headsets that I have at my disposal.
The title that I've spent most of my time in is Space Pirate Trainer. I often use it to get a bit of exercise. Many people find the game boring, but in my experience, those people don't get very far. I like to challenge myself to try to reach to top 10 list with various weapons.
I haven't spent a lot of time racing lately, but I also put a lot of time into Project Cars. I have a couple racing wheels, so I sometimes setup race days with a friend.
You're looking at my analogy from the perspective of today's car market, but VR can't be compared to a market that's well established over decades, with all the third party pieces in place.
You have to look at it from the beginning of the automobile market for a proper comparison.
We are somewhat dealing with a chicken and egg problem, but the Vive Pro doesn't do anything to exacerbate that problem. We're now in a market with many choices. There's no reason why a luxury device shouldn't exist for those willing to pay for it.
Higher price tag usually means higher margins, which means HTC can invest more into R&D for future headsets.
Better headsets in the future will draw more people in, which in turn will draw more developers into the fold. However, to suggest that developers aren't interested in VR is silly. Many devs have quit their jobs to pursue VR development. Big studios have big bills to pay, so they can't afford to take the risk, but small studios are jumping into VR all the time, and they are growing.
It takes time to build software. Moreover, it takes time to figure out what works in VR and what doesn't. Cheaper hardware ins't going to fix that. The Vive Pro doesn't need to be cheaper and attract a ton of new people, because the software is still immature. We're still very much in early adopter territory.
When there's more than a dozen headsets on the market, a single high-priced device is not doing anything to scare of developers. If anything, they are excited for a comfortable headset that they can wear for extended periods while working. This kind of headset makes tools like the Unity and Unreal VR editors useful and practical.
No one wants to wear an uncomfortable headset for hours on end. Better hardware should help in that regard.
So, which would you rather? Cheap headsets with corners cut, or expensive headsets with innovative new design features?
The Vive Pro isn't going to be a long term solution. HTC said the original Vive would be in production through 2018. I suspect we'll see a Vive 2.0 announced later this year or around CES for release next year. That will be the true replacement for the Vive.
At that time, I would expect the Vive Pro to become the cheaper model, and the Vive phased out.
The headset that you want is pretty much the headset everyone wants. Ergo, it will happen one day.
The technology just isn't there yet.