The Oculus Quest 2’s only been around since October, but it’s quickly become the favourite VR headset for PC players, according to Steam’s February hardware survey. It accounts for 22.91% of headsets used on the platform, compared to 16% and 13% for the Valve Index and HTC Vive respectively, contributing the lion’s share as all of Oculus’ headsets combined make up more than half of the devices used on SteamVR.
It’s not hard to see why adoption of the Quest 2 has picked up so fast, being the best VR headset you can buy on a budget at $300 / £300. Despite its low price, it’s in a completely different league to something like a Google Cardboard, which is no longer on the market. Thankfully, it hasn’t suffered from the same stock issues as other PC components, and the performance in games such as Half-Life: Alyx manages to hold up against that of much more expensive headsets like Valve’s Index.
It can also be used untethered from a PC or smartphone thanks to a pretty impressive graphics chip inside, meaning you don’t need the best gaming PC to play some of the titles from our list of best VR games.
We expect the Quest 2 to become even more popular in future Steam hardware surveys, as an update increasing the headset’s refresh rate from 90Hz to 120Hz is expected this month, putting it higher than the more expensive HTC Vive Cosmos. However, to hit that updated 120Hz refresh rate in the most demanding VR games when tethered to a PC, you’ll need the best graphics card to match.
Related: The best Oculus Quest 2 games
For anyone that thought VR might’ve lost its shine, this survey shows otherwise.