Why I Chose the Oculus Quest Over the Oculus Rift S

Piotr explained his choices regarding the Oculus.

- Piotr Kohnke

Nah mate, don’t get the Rift S, get the Quest” – a buddy of mine told me over a pint at our local watering hole.

I looked at him, dazed and confused, considering if I was a little too drunk to comprehend the words that had just come out of his mouth. I asked if he understood that I’m running a 2080 Ti-powered rig with a custom water-cooling loop and that my money would be wasted on a Quest. Especially considering it’s marketed as a standalone, PC-free headset.

He continued to enlighten me on the fact that those YouTube comparisons that I made snap judgements on over a year ago were now outdated, and that the Quest was the obvious choice. Here I am, three weeks later – wholly sold on the idea (after impulsively buying a Quest based on hearsay alone).

For starters, I can prance around my 2x2 meter play space completely untethered from my PC while enjoying Half-Life: Alyx. With a little bit of homebrew tweaking from easily accessible guides on the internet, the Quest can effortlessly stream down an Ethernet cable to your router, and from your router to your Quest with a strong 5GHz Wi-Fi connection. While testing the method, a friend confirmed that I was getting no more than 10ms of latency (and an average of 4ms) while awkwardly slicing my way through a Beat Saber track. Unless you plan on making a career for yourself as a professional Beat Saber player, that’s quite alright for most people.