HTC Vive XR Elite initial review: Next-gen XR experience

HTC, best known for designing the latest Android phone landscape in the early 2010s, is now focusing most of its energy on VR headsets. Having been one of the leading players in premium VR with the original HTC Vive, its device family has expanded over the years.

The HTC Vive XR Elite steps into new territory, evolving HTC’s previous mobile solution to get rid of the wires and create a versatile, lightweight headset. We got our hands on it at CES 2023 to see if HTC’s latest headset kicks off a new chapter in its VR story.

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The HTC Vive XR Elite takes Vive Flow as its base design and adapts it to a standalone solution. The previous Vive Flow required a wired connection to your mobile device and was worn like a pair of glasses. The Vive XR Elite resembles a compact goggle-style form, but rather than glasses-like arms, the rear battery with padding for the back of the head connects to his pack.

The back of the Vive XR Elite has a dial for adjusting tension and a strap that you wear over your head so it’s level with your ears. Considering the Vive XR Elite’s light weight, it’s surprisingly stable and comfortable to wear.

Integral to this is the front padding, which is a baffle that blocks light around the eyes while providing comfortable touch points on the face. This baffle is actually removable so it can be easily replaced or removed for cleaning or other reasons.

However, the Vive XR Eilte is actually a modular design, and while you can remove the battery and swap out the arms to make it look like the Vive Flow, we weren’t able to test this aspect of the device. Hot-swappable means it’s versatile.

The HTC Vive XR Elite uses the same controllers as the Vive Focus 3, providing plenty of support for a full range of motion and control while tracking with the headset.

Technical specifications

Inside the Vive XR Elite is an adjuster that allows you to adjust to your vision and focus the display’s lens. This should mean eyeglass wearers don’t have to worry about special lenses, but check the Vive XR Elite’s features to see if the diopter adjustment meets your requirements. recommend to.

It has two displays of 1920 x 1920 pixels per eye and offers a 90Hz refresh rate to keep things smooth and keep your field of view up to 110 degrees.

The headset is powered by Snapdragon XR2, the same Qualcomm platform as the Meta Quest 2 and Pico 4. You can use it standalone or connect it to your PC to access more content. Only tested as a standalone device, running content locally from its own storage.

It has 128GB of storage and 12GB of RAM, but my first hands-on time wasn’t enough to navigate the device to experience how the interface and day-to-day use really work together.

An internal sensor provides 6 DoF (degrees of freedom) and an external camera provides full-color pass-through vision so you can see the real world around you and enhance mixed or augmented reality experiences. Hence the name XR.

The headset also supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for connectivity, and has built-in speakers, but I haven’t had a chance to fully test the sound.

HTC Vive XR Elite performance and battery life

In our short time with the Vive XR Elite at CES 2023, we went through different use cases to cover the different features it offers. First, the battery life is claimed to be 2 hours, which I haven’t had a chance to test, but it’s hot-swappable so you can extend your sessions. Or you don’t have to worry about always fully charging it before starting.

Our first encounter was exploring mixed reality. This uses her RGB camera on the front of the headset to display the real world in stunning colors. This is not so common as to think that many headsets only offer black and white passthrough as a basic feature. improves to

The demo was great, but a very standard XR demo where I painted on a virtual easel and switched to creating 3D aspects, completely abandoning the original painting task and creating a virtual hellscape instead. Other than that, it shows how good the passthrough experience is.

A representative from HTC offered to take a photo of us wearing the headset. I was able to pick up the camera, change all the settings, see them on the back display, and give instructions without having to remove the headset.

Appropriately impressed with the XR experience, HTC wanted to introduce Viverse. In particular, I wanted to showcase some of the shared spaces that could one day replace the office. There’s still a bit of a warped feel to this kind of experience of creating real things in a virtual world. Sure, the view from the window was nice, but it’s still a bit of a strange concept for us.

However, when I opened a bunch of files to view the live data, making it look as if it were spread across three giant displays, the clarity was again very good. I had no problem reading the information. This suggests that in a virtual working environment there is no problem when the data comes. to this kind of content.

My final experience was playing Hubris, a VR title available on Steam, PSVR, and Oculus/Meta Quest. It was a kind of interactive gaming environment and a better showcase for the controls that were supported.While Hubris is graphically impressive, you can also take advantage of these controllers to do things like swim and climb within the environment. Free movement is great.

First impression

The HTC Vive XR Elite impressed us with its range of lightweight hardware offerings and controls. This seems like a versatile and flexible headset. As with all such devices, it largely depends on the content you have access to and your non-gaming requirements.

It’s certainly nice to be wearing a headset that doesn’t feel like you’re trying to consume your entire head.The pass-through experience from the front-facing RGB camera is really impressive.But the $1099 / 1299 for this headset The £1399 price tag is impressive. HTC Vive XR Elite has to offer his pipeline of content to appeal to consumers at that price.