when the HTC Vive launched in 2016 it was the de facto VR headset But as time
has passed HTC's presence in the space is kind of faded as we see Facebook
coming in with oculus Quest and valve
coming in with their index headset but that's all about to change with HTC's
new oh my God I just forgot the name
we'll put b-roll there but that's all about to change with the HTC's Vive XR
Elite a brand new headset that's taking HTC's consumer VR to the next level and
look at the size difference and we haven't even talked about the fact that this has to be connected to a whole
computer this is a standalone VR headset that's competing with meta's Quest 2.
what does that mean it's Standalone VR which means it makes use of stuff like
inside out tracking using the four cameras on the front that allows you to
have complete mobility and enabling you to use this in any room that you want
and it might actually make sense for traveling because this comes with a
incredible battery life you can expect to use this for up to two hours at a
time which is impressive considering it's using qualcomm's powerful new xr2
processor now why not the xr2 plus well the xr2 and the xr2 plus are basically
the same chip what's Qualcomm did with the xr2 plus was that they changed the
orientation of some of the components on the chip itself to help with heat
dissipation however this has active Cooling in the form of a fan that's in
the headset that's going to prevent any sort of overheating from occurring let's
talk about the specs of the headset it comes with 128 gigs of storage and 12
gigabytes of RAM so you can hold a good amount of games on here as well but a
nice feature is that there's gonna be pass-through to your computer pretty cool it features 2K per eye
that's a 1920 by 1920 display for each eye they're calling it 4K but that's not
what 4K is it adds up to 3840 by 1920.
that's not 2160. don't lie HTC I don't
like it okay but what is true is that we have a 90 Hertz display with a 110
degree field of view which is not best in class but very very good and directly
in line with the competing Quest too but they have other enhancements that are
going to make a big impact obviously they have interpupillary distance
adjustments we have speakers in for each of the ears very slickly integrated into
the frame of the headset the audio solution that they have here is I would
say sufficient it's nowhere near as good as say the audio on the index but
obviously it's much much smaller and they do get relatively loud at least as
loud as I was comfortable having them here and this is a very loud room and
these also feature a diopter for each lens which allows you to dial it in
exactly to your prescription and these numbers here they line up with your
actual prescription so if you have a minus six then you can adjust it to six
and it should look great that's going to make a huge difference for glasses
whereas who have had a lot of issues of enjoying VR right here's a proximity
sensor so that when you take off the headset you don't have to worry about uh
it's still running and rendering your games it turns the displays off and
pauses everything but it's not just an all-in-one device you can actually take
off the battery pack and swap out for a lighter headband while you use this with
your desktop computer and what's great is that you're not going to be locked into the Oculus ecosystem and have to
use a hacky workaround to play your steam VR games this has steamvr support
just like the HTC Vive so everything that you have on Steam for all of the
best VR games are I mean now I will say this kind of Disconnect feels a little
bit flimsy it's a very Plasky headset and they did that in the name of weight
reduction which helps make it super comfortable but as you can see and this
is pre-production It's a demo unit but you can kind of see there's a there's a
little bit of stress that's caused these buckles to kind of come out a little bit
I don't know if that's gonna be fixed in the final version right now this
connection is hard to pull out and feels a little flimsy the headset by itself
weighs about 250 grams give or take a
few with the battery attached it's only just around 650. when compared to the
HTC Vive which weighs 555 grams now you might be thinking hey wait a second
that's like less than this combined but
because the batteries at the back of your head it kind of counterbalances the headset whereas with the HTC Vive it's
all at the front and like an inch and a half away from your face so it's kind of
constantly pulling onto the front of your face this makes a really big
difference this all sounds really good and I'm very excited to try it out but
first let's talk about dbrand so our sponsor for CES 2023 actually dropped
out but dbrand footed the bill the only catch is they want me to come out onto
the streets and offer Tech tips to
random people for free it's I I'm not
optimistic do you want a tech tip
on what on anything any kind of tech
any ever ever have any questions about technology no I don't think you don't
need any Tech tips no I'm not very techy you know how to use Google perfectly
yeah was that an iPhone yeah do you like iPhones
but you don't want any Tech tips about how to use it no thanks your master I
think so yeah okay can you do one thing for me what go to shortliness.com
this is for a YouTube video the headset also comes with a set of these Vive
controllers they're a little bit different than the ones that you're used to with the Vive Pro or the original
Vive they're a lot more like the quest Pros again they use Inside Out tracking
you have a analog trigger up here with a
hard press at the bottom instead of using proximity for grip sensing there's
a single button so you'd hold it indexing on the trigger you want to
squeeze with your hand you just kind of grip there that button A and A B button
and some joysticks that are not really that comfortable I'm not a huge fan of
them but they track really well speaking of tracking really well I was really
Blown Away by how good the finger tracking was it was very very responsive
and the range was much further than the tracking on The Meta Quest where if you
go full arms out if you're a tall person like me it just loses track of them my
full range of motion was totally usable for me and the only way I could break
the hand tracking was when you were doing stuff like hiding your fingers I was really impressed with it and it
makes a big difference in terms of how immersive things feels being able to
like actually you know pinch away guitar pick and like finger the guitar
it was really really impressive on the back of the headband you have this soft
rubber that keeps a good grip with the back of your head and for the gasket
it's a very nice nylon kind of texture it feels really good it's very soft and
I found that it did a great job of alleviating the pressure of the mask on
my head despite the fact that it's so thin and small and I'm very pleased to
be your Guide to the metavera today I'm really excited are you I'm excited I'm a
huge classical music fan uh-huh you got Bach Mozart Beethoven all the big ones
today we're gonna conduct Verdi
will be in your right hand okay that's
it finger on the trigger as we say here in the U.S
and you're gonna see me I see it yes you
see me in real life and now you see me digitally about the power of Maestro and
the middle name I think it's incredible I'm glad that culture is finally coming
to Tech look at it
so I've spent some time playing a couple of games we played like this Maestro
demo where I was controlling an orchestra and this air guitar demo where
I was about as good as air guitar as I was at real guitar and I have some
thoughts one it is a supremely comfortable headset it's very light it's
really easy to use but there are some
issues for one the gasket it's a magnetic attachment for the pressure
that you want on your face to make sure it's secure especially if you're playing
like an active game here here's a demonstration look at how easy like I
barely had to touch that it has an RGB camera in the front for pass-through so
you can see what's in front of you and a depth sensor to help make sure that what
you're actually seeing kind of reflects what the physical space is showing and it's a really good looking camera you
can like use your phone with it you can type a message out it's a very very good
camera you're buying into an ecosystem and Facebook has had a lot of time to
develop their ecosystem filling it with great exclusives and a ton of Community
Support thanks to being the most popular
option out there whereas the metaquest 2 is 400 this comes in at 1100 which is
pricey especially considering that you know the valve index is a thing which a
valve index has higher resolution but you require base stations so this allows
for the convenience of the metaquest 2 but with some quality improvements in terms of the specs as well as
accessibility improvements like just the glasses and the die-opters makes a huge
difference to how many people can finally get around to experiencing VR assuming they have the cash this is
going to come out in February 2023 so keep an eye out and it's really cool to finally see HTC back in the consumer
space again in a real big way if you like this video why don't you check out
some of our other CES coverage there's been a ton of cool stuff with the show
this year and we've covered a lot of it go go watch other thing