Review: HTC Vive Focus Vision

Virtual reality has been fighting a constant battle of “almost there” for over a decade. We finally have inexpensive VR headsets that are powerful enough to stand on their own without being attached to an overpowered gaming rig. But if you want the highest-quality experience, you’re still looking at a tethered experience. That’s the focal point of HTC's Vive Focus Vision.

This is the latest in HTC’s line of high-end VR headsets for PC gaming (or PCVR for short, not to be confused with Sony’s PSVR 2 headset, which is now kind of a PCVR headset). The Vive Focus Vision touts eye tracking, full-color passthrough vision for mixed reality apps—or just seeing where your coffee table is without taking the headset off—and even automatic alignment with your eyes.

It’s an impressive list of features, but it also means this headset starts at $1,000—before you even get to the connection kit you’ll likely need to get lossless video from your desktop. Where (most) other headsets are moving down the price chain toward affordability, HTC still thinks there’s room for luxury headsets. I’m not sure I’m sold yet.

Comfort First

The Vive Focus Vision wants to be a unique blend of stand-alone headset and PCVR accessory. You can technically use it wirefree, without connecting it to a desktop PC. That flexibility is a benefit but also a design challenge. For a headset to operate independently, it needs to pack more hardware onto your head.

HTC cleverly tackles this problem by putting the battery at the back of the headrest. The front holds the displays, lenses, and cameras, while two rigid plastic brackets connect it to a rear cushion that houses a swappable battery. This isn’t the first HTC headset to take this approach, but it’s a welcome design choice. The brackets also house small speakers, so you don’t have to plug earbuds in while using the headset.

The battery on the rear helps balance out the weight, so you don’t feel like it’s pressing entirely on your face. The rear module also houses a dial, similar to the one on the PSVR 2, which tightens the headset on your face. A button on the bottom of the module releases the headset.

It’s easy to put on, comfy to wear, and easy to take off. That already puts it ahead of most other headsets. The Apple Vision Pro, for example, forces you to awkwardly carry its battery in your pocket.

Vision Problems

The Vive Focus Vision uses fresnel lenses, which is disappointing for a headset at this price. Fresnel lenses use concentric circles to magnify light to a central focal point (say, your eyes) while keeping the lens relatively thin. The problem is that there's a better way: pancake lenses, like the kind found in the Meta Quest 3, which is half the price. HTC went out of its way to include motors to adjust the lenses to fit your interpupillary distance (more on that below) but skimped on the lenses, and I can't quite figure out why.

Fresnel lenses were a decent stopgap solution in VR headsets in the past, but in my opinion they introduce too many problems. Unless your eyes are just the right distance away, the rings create distortions and artifacts that make it very difficult to see clearly. Worse, there's surprisingly little space in the center of the lens where the image can be viewed clearly. I was excited to use eye tracking to navigate menus, but if I used my eyes (as opposed to turning my head) to look anywhere but the center of the screen, I started getting disoriented.

Every time you put on the headset, it adjusts to match your interpupillary distance. Anyone who's ever gotten a prescription for glasses is familiar with this process. If the lenses aren't aligned with the distance between your eyes, you can end up looking through the edges of the lenses and getting a much more distorted view. HTC combats this with motorized lenses and internal eye-tracking that detects how far apart your eyes are and physically moves the lenses to the appropriate distance.

It's a handy feature, I wish it didn't do this every single time I put on the headset. Fortunately, you can turn this off in the system settings, but I quickly found it irritating if I took my headset off for just a second—usually to deal with some setup process detail for some app or another—only for the headset to completely forget where my eyes are the second I slip it back on. I get that the idea is to adjust for different users, but maybe a good middle ground would be to ask users if they want to readjust each time or offer a shortcut button.

I was also annoyed at how quickly the lenses would fog up. The foam on the headset wasn't particularly breathable, and the lenses would fog up within seconds. Eventually, it would even out as the headset warmed up, but it's still annoying. These are the kinds of minor flaws I'd be tempted to overlook on a more accessible headset, but for a device that starts at $1,000, it's tough to overlook.

Immersion and Control

In keeping with competitors like the Meta Quest 3S, and Apple Vision Pro, the Vive Focus Vision is designed to be a mixed-reality headset. The passthrough view is solid enough to see your surroundings and not bump into anything, though the video is still grainy and washed out. I also tried walking a few steps to my fridge and, while I made it, there’s just enough lag to make it feel disorienting.

HTC’s controllers are similar to the ones for the Meta Quest 3, with a few buttons, a couple of triggers, and full motion tracking. It also supports hand tracking, which worked pretty well in my experience, though at times it could be a bit frustrating to get my cursor to click on the right buttons with my fingers alone.

The headset works best when used with a PC because, well, there’s not much to it on its own. There are some games, though none that I recognize—I couldn’t even find Beat Saber—and a few cursory apps like a web browser, but you’ll want to bring your library of apps from elsewhere.

As a PCVR headset, the Vive Focus Vision is solid … when it works. The headset supports wireless streaming from a PC, but in my testing, it was laggy most of the time. I tried using the Vive Desk app to wirelessly stream my desktop into the headset, and even playing a single YouTube video in the Chrome browser caused the stream to lag so hard that the audio became a broken cacophony of noise.

Using a wired connection was a different story. I hooked up my gaming desktop to the Focus Vision using HTC’s new Wired Streaming Kit (another $150 expense), which touts lossless video over a DisplayPort connection. It can deliver up to 120 frames per second to the headset's combined 5K display. Make sure you’re packing a hefty graphics card.

I played Half-Life: Alyx in crystal-clear, super-smooth motion. I’ve tried this game a couple of times on other headsets and while the game itself is designed beautifully, I’ve never felt like the performance was quite there until now. With the Vive Focus Vision, I finally found myself getting sucked into the game.

Yet my excitement was tempered by the issues I mentioned earlier: the foggy lenses, the concentric circle distortions, the not-quite-perfect iris alignment. It felt like I was watching a top-tier TV through a frosted window at times. A high-end experience shouldn't feel bothersome.

I could get used to some of these issues—the fogging in particular eases up as the headset warms to match your body’s temperature, though that obviously means you’ve got a warmer headset strapped to your face. But it’s hard to say whether I can recommend the experience to anyone else. If you want a powerful headset with crystal-clear displays and the ability for lossless, high-frame-rate streaming from a PC, and you don’t mind futzing about with suboptimal lenses, then this might be the one for you.

Everyone else should just get a Meta Quest 3S instead.