 This is my VR setup and it's remained largely unchanged since the launch of the original HTC Vive back in 2016. My controllers and all my charging cables, my headset all kind of go in here. I mean, yeah, I guess I upgraded to the single tether rather than the triple one, and I did finally do some cable management for my lighthouse, it's actually a couple months back, but that's it. Because honestly, there hasn't been anything that I would have considered to be enough of an upgrade to actually invest more money in it. Until today. So Valve finally launched their index VR headset, and while it's not available in Canada yet, I pulled some strings and managed to get my hands on one. So time to take it for a test drive and see if it's worth a thousand US dollars. Speaking of worth it, the Marlin screwdriver set from iFixit features five specialty precision screwdrivers. Check it out today at iFixit.com forward slash Linus. Even though HTC and Valve split ways on the VR hardware side of things, for obvious reasons, a lot of my comparisons today are going to be against the original HTC Vive, which for my purposes has been the best VR headset still. I didn't find the Vive Pro to be a particularly compelling upgrade, especially at its price, and I don't know why, but I think the new HTC Vive is the best one to have. The Vive Pro to be a particularly compelling upgrade, especially at its price, and the Oculus Touch controllers with their index finger presence didn't really add enough to any of my game experiences to find them worthwhile, especially in light of the fact that to get a large play area like I have, I would need to add extra camera sensors and that sort of thing. So let's go ahead and do the definitely fresh first time ever unboxing experience. So the first thing that's new in here is of course the SteamVR Base Station 2.0. So these use their new tracking method that allows a 10 by 10 meter play area versus a 5 by 5 meter play area. Not that I have room for that necessarily, and should theoretically be more reliable and quieter because they only have one spinning motor versus two spinning like laser arrays that help track within the room. So physically compared to the old Lighthouses, the most notable things are the wider field of view, the smaller size, and of course the lack of any type of support for a synchronization cable right here. But with that said, unless you need to take advantage of the wider play space, or you want to be able to use more than just a couple of Lighthouses for like warehouse scale VR, there's actually no compelling reason as far as I've found yet to upgrade from these to these. Unless, like me, you're looking to flip your old Vive as a complete kit and upgrade entirely to the new SteamVR 2.0 compatible gear with your index headset. One really nice thing about the new Lighthouses is that they're actually a drop-in replacement. So you can use everything from your existing mounts to your existing cables to get it running. With that said, I'm probably going to have to replace this power adapter eventually because as part of the process of selling my old Vive, they're actually going to need this power brick because it's rated for about three times the power output of the new one that comes with the index. All right, now let's talk about the new headset because arguably this is where the biggest upgrade that most people will care about is happening. The Valve Index is equipped with a number of things that are a significant upgrade over the original Vive. In here is the vast majority of the tech that compelled me to upgrade. So some of the stuff I don't care about quite so much. So it's got these near-field flat panel speakers that are kind of, you can see they're adjustable this way and they can go up and down. So these are meant to sit kind of near your ears. You can tell they're at a bit of an angle. So they fire directly into your ear canal. They've got interpupillary distance adjustments right here. This is a cool one. So this knob on the back actually lets you adjust how close or how far the lenses sit from your eyes. We'll play around with that a little bit later. And oh, right here at the front, you've got a couple of cameras this time around. It's going to come down to game developers how this ends up getting used. And then behind the front here, maybe we can do this peel. Whoop! There we go. Okay, behind the front panel here, we've got an expansion bay that has a USB 3 port. So this could be used for any number of things. I don't know if it's a smell accessory, you know, maybe like a hand presence module from someone like Magic Leap, for example. The biggest thing for me though is right here. So we've got two 1600 by 1440 LCD displays that, perhaps even more importantly than their increase in resolution, run at 120Hz versus 90Hz on the original Vive, and Valve is even offering an experimental 144Hz mode. So I am expecting that to decrease motion sickness for my wife, and then I am also expecting it to improve the overall smoothness and realism of the virtual experience. Now, one other thing that I was sort of on the fence about was, of course, I mentioned it's an LCD display rather than an OLED display, but Valve is pitching this as a benefit. So they seem to think the black levels are still good enough, and you get reduced screen door effect because instead of using a pentile matrix, you've got full RGB subpixels for each pixel. Let's see how that works out. Oh, yeah, right. There's one other big thing. The lenses. You can tell just looking at them, the manufacturer of the lenses is much more complex, and we've got much finer concentric circles going around them. I'm hoping this will result in less distortion in spite of the Index's significantly wider field of view than the original Vive. Now, Valve isn't actually quoting a specific field of view on this headset, and it seems to be because when you adjust it with the knob right here, it actually changes, but they are saying it's quite a bit wider than the original Vive. Comfort-wise, honestly, it's a bit of a mixed bag for me right out of the gate. Now, I was always a fan of the strap system of the original Vive rather than the kind of the headset system of the Rift and the Vive Pro, but I think with a certain amount of adjustment here on the top and at the back, it should be all right. A couple of other nice things comfort-wise is that if you don't manage to dial it in, Valve actually provided 3D models, so you could theoretically go ahead and print your own magnetic face shield here. Also, for smaller heads or for people who just want like a big, cushy memory foam thing at the back of their head, you can go ahead and pop this in. My five-year-old daughter was not able to play until I put this in, and then she was actually able to mostly sort of fit the headset on, at least enough to play a little bit of Fruit Ninja. Now, let's talk about the connections. Unlike the original Vive, there's no breakout box, so instead, you've just got a simple, what looks like a miniaturized display port here that's like a safety breakaway cable, and then that splits out into power-in, USB 3, which is used for the front accessory and the cameras, and then, of course, display port. Because of the higher resolution and refresh rate, HDMI is not suitable for the Vive Index, so you will need a display port graphics card. With that said, at that kind of resolution and refresh rate, you weren't going to be driving it without something that has display port on it anyway. Now, one difference that I noticed is that, unlike the Lighthouses, the headset itself actually draws considerably more power than the original Vive, so I did end up needing to use the Valve Index power adapter. Now, this new cable configuration is actually going to cause a little bit of hassle for my setup, because my PC is over on this side, and then what I've done here is I've put my breakout box over here, and then I actually anchored the bottom of my cable under my console, so that I couldn't accidentally rip it out, because I actually found that, in particular, when I first started, I used to do that a lot. So, the reason I like having it come out here is because it's closer to the center of my play space, whereas now, I just have no choice. I'm going to have to plug directly into the back of the PC. Now, one thing to note about SteamVR 2.0 is that, while it does support a much larger play space, there doesn't appear to be any sort of solid plan for actually making that experience accessible for the time being, unless you want to invest in one of those backpacks, because I haven't actually measured them side by side here, but it seems like the tethers are a very similar length, and in all likelihood, that comes down pretty much to the limitations of USB 3.0 and DisplayPort over great distances. It's a lot of data, and any reduction in the signal integrity can cause the connection to fail outright. Okay, so this is it. Time for room setup. Room scale. Next. Establish tracking. Alright. So, these are them. The legendary Knuckles controllers. So, the big exciting thing about these is this. You actually don't need to hold on to the Index controllers at all with your hands, so they've got this adjustable strap on them. You can change the angle by pushing it in like this, and then you can change the tightness of the strap with this little doodad right here, and then it uses sensors all along the grip here to detect the position of your fingers even from within VR. Now, of course, this functionality is going to count on game developers to support it, so we'll have to have a look at that, but it opens up a lot of fascinating possibilities. There's your menu button. There's your A and B. This is a touch-sensitive button. You can actually feel the haptic feedback of it right now, and then each one has a joystick. They are symmetrical. Well, this is it. Better be amazing. Wow, that text is clear. Some people have complained that it doesn't have enough granularity, but honestly, it didn't feel like a problem for me. Now, I don't know if Beat Saber is a fair measure of the performance of the integrated headphones, but I got to find out sooner or later if I'm going to have to use IEMs or over-the-ear headphones. Now, one thing I noticed immediately, actually a couple things, is that while Beat Saber technically supports the Index, there's no finger presence in the game whatsoever, so just holding like a big meat handle was just fine the way that it was. Also, the Sabers come out at sort of an unnatural angle for me, and as far as I know, there's no real way to adjust that in the game. That's actually really annoying. Now, this is nice. Having the menu button recessed like that, man, the number of times I've accidentally hit the menu button on the old controllers, countless, especially in this game, it's really frustrating. That is a nice upgrade. So, my initial impressions of the comfort of the device were actually not that great. I ended up with some pressure points on my nose. The first night I tried it, but having played around with the adjustment a little more, trying to get the weight off the front of the unit, actually right now it's pretty good. I still do wish that it was more of a strap-on experience, but credit to the speakers. Now, depending what you're doing in VR, they do leak a fair bit of sound, so you might not want to use them. You might want to stick with your IEMs or closed-back headphones, but if you don't mind people around you being able to hear what's going on, they actually sound shockingly good. Like, I don't think I would bother grabbing IEMs. There is actually a headphone jack. It's super hidden away in there somewhere. It's like deep inside that hole there, but, you know, I just don't think I'd bother. So, this is interesting. Gorin doesn't specifically have support for the index, but you can actually see they're actually using my middle finger. Oh, okay. Well, that works, but you actually don't have to put down these ones. And you can see there's... It'd be nice if you could actually adjust the zones. What made it a peace sign? Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Cat! Did you just knock over my switch? Oh, Cat! Oh, man, he's so bad. Shadow! Look, I know, I know, you're only doing what daddy taught you, but that is not what we do. Other than the weird middle finger to clench control, I'd say everything is pretty intuitive. Man, you can really tell looking at things up close how much better this display is. Like, there is hardly any screen door effect on these at all. I mean, it's there. Trust me, it's there. And as things get further away, you do see the aliasing and the shimmering, but this is a legitimate generational step forward compared to something like the Vibe. It's huge. I mean, the whole idea behind the index is hand presence, right? So you don't have to grab onto anything, but the thing is, like, if I have to press a button here to move around, or I have to use a joystick to move around or whatever else, the instinct is to hold on to whatever's in your hands, but let's see how this goes. Oh, see, I let go of my spear, dang it. That's never a good idea when you're in a gladiator fight. I really need a better weapon. All right. Oh, bow and arrow. I want that bow. Don't waste my arrows. Shhh. My arrows. Oh. Oh, right, because the middle finger, okay. It's hard to say how much of this is me not being used to it and how much of this is bad game control mapping, but I do not find the hands as intuitive to operate as I did with the original Vive controllers in this particular title. Let's try something else. So, Arizona Sunshine is a game that happens to be specifically listed as index compatible, index ready, and check this out, guys. Oh, what the? Right there. Full individual finger control. So, one of the things I'm going to be looking at here is the performance with the Valve Index, because my setup is only using a 980 Ti, which I have found to be perfectly suitable for my VR gaming needs, but I suspect that I might run into some hiccups. See, there's little things like, you see that? I'm moving away from the screen. I'm moving away from the screen. I'm moving away from the screen. It doesn't move my thumb on the gun. It doesn't move my pinky on the gun. So the game is supported, but it's also— it's not like it's like, oh, this is so immersive and different. I don't have any issues with the angle of the stuff I'm holding in this game, which is nice. Okay, so this is great. I was poking around at a couple of things. One, I found the wrist traps, And two, I was checking some performance diagnostic stuff from within SteamVR, and I don't even have 120 Hertz on yet. So the image clarity benefits that I've been observing have actually all been down to the better pixel response time, so the lower persistence of the image. Like there's almost no traces behind objects. So you get that increase in clarity. It's not running at a higher frame rate yet. So I got to restart SteamVR and give this another shot. So this is one that I found really frustrating to play on the Vive because I'm a badminton player, not a tennis player. And so my natural tendency when I'm holding a racket is to flick with my wrist as opposed to swing my arm. So the issue with that is that when you swing your arm, look how many tracking points it has to figure out, you know, where your racket was. When you flick your wrist, it only has a handful and it has to kind of guess. So what I had really hoped was that the increased refresh rate would, I don't know, and I had hoped that the trackers were better. I actually hadn't done a ton of research into this thing before I started playing with it. So I'd hoped it would make this game playable for me. So I guess we'll find out. Yeah, same thing. Whoops, that's not what I meant to do. Yeah, see, I swing at it and I just miss. You know, I know it's typical gamer things, blame the game, not the player, but like, yeah, you just, you have to swing like this. You know, maybe it feels a little smoother. It's hard to tell if it's just cause I was playing last night too though and I hadn't played this game in a while and I'm getting back into the swing of it. Pun intended. One curious thing is that even though I didn't notice much more granular tracking, my wife did notice that she got significantly less motion sickness. She was never actually able to play games like Beat Saber before, but even running at 90 hertz, she was able to play for half an hour and came out of VR with no motion sickness whatsoever. So that is a big step forward. So one of the real trade-offs with the Index is that you've got to decide between, I would say increased comfort in some ways with the lenses further from your eyes and increased field of view. I think that's a big part of why Valve doesn't wanna quote that number. It's because it really depends heavily on how close you're able to bring the lens to your eye before it starts to actually like get in the way and like touch your eyelashes. I do have to say that I'm glad that they prioritized other aspects of the headset over just field of view, where like Pimax went for like maximum field of view and introduced a bunch of distortion. This looks really good. I haven't actually commented much on how the finer lenses have been in game and it's amazing. It's a huge contributor to the better visual fidelity. Like everything looks smoother. The less jaggies you can have on things, obviously the better in games, right? This is actually another game that I beat my all-time high score on almost immediately after upgrading to the Index. And I wasn't even like going max high score necessarily. Like I wasn't trying to snipe all the balloons in between waves and stuff. Hey, hey. There it is. I gotta say, I find the plastic of the handles actually a little bit kind of harsh to hold on to. It feels like it would have been nice if they had a bit of a soft touch to them, especially because these are things that you're gonna be wearing for a long time at a time and probably sweating onto if you're, if you play VR like me anyway. If you're a sweaty person like me. What are we at? 15, 215, 15, 695. That's my high score. I don't have much gait health. Let's see if I can kill a couple more. 120 Hertz, baby. Show me your magic. Oh, I think this is the end. This is the end. 16, 415, there it is, new high score. Oh. So then back to my original question. If you're a first gen VR headset owner, is this a legitimate worthwhile upgrade? Well, it's complicated. There are a couple of disadvantages still in my mind. One of them being that I'm not a fan of the bulkier, more plasticky headset style. I prefer the straps. And two, being the lack of availability of accessories, most notably the wireless accessory that's available for the Vive. At this time, it doesn't look like we're gonna see anything until 2020 or more likely 2021 based on the current wireless technology roadmap. However, the advantages are very clear. Now we've already got headsets with higher pixel density displays. So I'm actually not gonna give it a ton of points for that, but the upgrade in terms of the pixel persistence, the lack of screen door effect, which if you remember, does not necessarily just come down to pixel count, but also the sub pixel arrangement and the increased refresh rate. This thing will not only be a more pleasant VR experience. If my experience is anything to go on, it will actually make you a better VR gamer. Pretty much all my games across the board, I was beating scores that had held for weeks, or in some cases, in the case of Longbow in the lab, it had actually held for months. I had just like a wicked run one day and I was never able to get close again. Now twice in a row, I actually beat it and beat it again. But it's still a thousand dollars. Now that's a tough one to answer because from a sheer, is it worth a thousand dollars standpoint? I think it's hard to say that any gaming experience is worth a thousand dollars, depending on your life situation. With that said, if you're investing in a VR gaming setup, which already involves a powerful gaming PC, which is gonna cost you anywhere from a thousand to 1500, or even $2,000, is it worth the extra 500 to $600 over something from Oculus or something from HTC's current lineup? I would say that that is a clear yes. This is absolutely the king of gaming VR headsets right now. Prove me wrong. Speaking of king, I'm the king of segways. And this video is brought to you by FreshBooks, is the small business accounting software that's custom built for how you wanna work. It's a simple way if you're a freelancer or a small business owner to be more productive, more organized, and to get paid faster. With FreshBooks, you can create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. You can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks to get paid up to four days faster. And you can see when your client has seen your invoice to put an end to the guessing games. They've got fully featured apps for both Android and iOS. So go check it out today. They've got an unrestricted 30 day free trial at freshbooks.com slash tech tips. Just enter Linus Tech Tips in the how did you hear about us section. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. 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