The world of virtual reality headsets is becoming increasingly broad and competitive. There are high-end products, such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and products instead designed for ordinary people, which offer certainly more limited visual experiences, but capable of making users passionate about what was totally unthinkable until a few years ago: virtual reality. Today we are going to review Oculus GO, the economic viewer produced by the famous Chinese company Xiaomi that is suitable for all those who want to try a new experience without having the clutter of wires, but above all, without spending a lot of money. Let’s go and find out!

Packaging

Oculus GO is contained inside a nice very compact box, which however allows you to contain the viewer for Virtual Reality in an adequately safe way, thus protecting it from any damage due to accidental bumps. Inside we also find a controller to be used together with the viewer (very similar to the one proposed by Samsung for its Samsung Gear VR) and a small cardboard box containing a USB charger and its cable , an additional support to be placed on the viewer to allow the use of the same with eyeglasses, an AA battery to be used to power the controller and a safety lanyard to apply to the controller to prevent it from accidentally falling during our VR experiences.

Design

Oculus GO has a very simple, but at the same time captivating line. Composed of good quality materials and externally very similar to its direct rival, Samsung Gear VR, this however has a Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 microprocessor and a screen with WQHD resolution , thus allowing the user to use their smartphone for more. The padding and the straps that keep the visor firmly fixed to the head are comfortable and never annoying and, thanks to the additional support, even people who wear eyeglasses can use this object without any kind of problem and hassle. The controller is small, but very comfortable and responds well to commands , but unlike the Samsung viewer, the one produced by Xiaomiit does not have any type of controller directly on the viewer , thus forcing the user to always have a spare battery in order not to get stuck during their experience.

Specifications

Performance

Although the processor integrated into the viewer is not exactly of the latest generation, we are talking about a hardware mounted in some high-end smartphones of a few years ago, the films and films performed on Oculus GO do not give problems , always appearing fluid and pleasant. However, we must compromise with the speed of the uploads when starting the applications , which sometimes leave us for a few seconds with a completely black screen or almost. The image quality is good and comparable to that of other viewersfor Virtual Reality currently on the market. On the other hand, the refresh rate is almost always sufficient to provide you with a pleasant and inconvenience-free experience, but in the more animated scenes a few more Hz would certainly have mitigated the phenomenon of motion sickness.

The real Achilles heel of this viewer, however, is its autonomy : if you watch a film in fact you will have about two hours of autonomy, this will drastically drop to just over an hour and a quarter using virtual reality video games. Unfortunately, the recharging of the headset is not particularly fast, therefore forcing the user to short gaming or binge watching sessions.

Price

The price for Oculus GO is more than affordable for those who want to start their first experience in the world of Virtual Reality. True, it certainly costs more than the Samsung Gear VR, its direct rival, but we must consider that to use the viewer of the South Korean company you need a high-end smartphone, significantly increasing the overall cost compared to the object we reviewed. Oculus GO can in fact be purchased from a starting price of 219 euros for the 32 GB viewer (version we reviewed), but there is also a 64GB version on the market that costs 269 euros.