Welcome back to VR Porn Bro and today we hope to offer advice on the type of VR headset you should buy to enjoy VR porn. As more and more people join in with this new revolution in porn, they will sometimes feel overwhelmed by which VR headset to choose for VR porn. We hope that this simple guide will help.
Table of Contents
Types of VR Headset
The first thing to do is go over the different types of VR headsets available on the market right now. The VR headset market is growing all the time, so the selection we have is greater than ever.
Standalone Headsets
When we say standalone headsets we are talking about those that don’t need to be connected to anything else (like a computer) to operate. These are convenient because they offer the ability to move around freely.
Smartphone Headsets
When we are talking about smartphone headsets, we are talking about headsets that provide a shell for you to place your smartphone into. This smartphone then becomes your VR headset screen and (after installing some Vr players) can be used to play VR content.
The price of the smartphone VR headset greatly effects the quality of the experience. All of these smartphone headsets offer head tracking only. This means they can track your head movements and translate them into a game or app, but not your body movements in a room.
The quality of the head tracking and the resolution of the porn you can watch will all depend on the quality of smartphone that you own.
Cheap Smartphone Headset
The most famous cheap smartphone headset would be something like the Google Cardboard, the most simple VR headset that looks like this.
These cardboard style of VR headsets are so cheap that a lot of VR porn studios will give them away for free.
Mid Range Smartphone Headset
When you go for something a little more expensive you will replace your cardboard headset for a simple plastic one. It follows the same premise, being a VR headset that you strap a smartphone into, but it comes with a few more features. The main one being that the clamp holding the smartphone into the headset is more sturdy and will have more protection for your phone. These type of headsets often look like this.
These headsets are a step up from the cardboard ones, but still offer much cheaper built quality and components than more expensive headsets.
Expensive Smartphone Headsets
For smartphone headsets, this is as good as it gets, with much better build quality, better lenses and something often made for specific phones in mind. This often means that the VR experience is better, as the unit has been more tailored to the phone inside. These are usually made by the phone manufacturers themselves. The most famous being the Samsung Gear VR, which looks something like this.
Dedicated Headsets
In more recent times, we have seen some dedicated standalone headsets that have been released. This means that the device is only used as a VR headset, so there is no swapping in and out of screens needed. Think of it as the tech from a smartphone being used to make a permanent standalone VR headset. The advantage here is that the screen is fixed, so the VR viewing experience can be dialed in much more.
The most famous standalone dedicated headsets at the time of writing are the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest. I have an Oculus Go, so here’s a blurry picture of it 🙂
The Oculus Quest is a bit more powerful than the Go, has the ability to be connected to a PC using the Oculus Link (for more power) and also uses room scale tracking. This means that the Quest can track your movements in a space and translate that to a game or VR app. The Go only has the ability to track your head movements. Recently, the Quest implemented hand tracking so you can use your hands instead of the controller you see pictured above. Very cool.
One of the more interesting standalone headsets is the Playstation VR headset or PSVR. When connected to a Playstation 4 Gaming console it can offer decent VR video viewing ability and some decent gaming too. I don’t rate it that highly for VR porn as it is hard work managing large VR porn files on a gaming console (in my opinion). Comment in the comments section if you have a different experience 🙂
Connected Headsets
These are VR headsets that must be connected up to something else (usually a computer) to work. The difference here is that usually the power of the graphics card in your PC will decide the quality and frame rate of the VR content output. This adds an extra cost to owning one of these connected headsets.
Room Scale VR Conected Headsets
The most recent connected VR headset to be released is the Valve Index from Steam. This is the best quality and most expensive VR headset ever, with very high resolution screens for VR use. It will set you back around $1000 plus the cost of a good graphics card to drive it. This beast of a VR headset looks like this.
Most of these VR headsets come with room scale tracking, meaning they can track your movements in a room and translate this into your VR environment. However, this often comes with extra setup with base stations and sensors needing to be positioned in the room.
Head Tracking Headsets
These days, most connected VR headsets will have room scale tracking included. There are a few exceptions, like the OSVR HDK2 headset that I used to own, that only had head tracking technology included. So, if you want room scale tracking, you need to check that the VR headset you buy has it.
Which VR Headset is Best for VR Porn?
So after all of this, the million dollar question is which headset works best for VR porn? To get to the bottom of this for each individual, we need to answer a few simple questions.
Do you want to do gaming or only watch VR videos (such as porn)?
This is a major consideration for the type of headset you will buy, as if you want to do gaming as well you will need a headset that is more powerful. If you are just watching VR videos such as porn, the general requirements are usually lower. This will also decide whether you need to go for a headset with room scale or only head tracking abilities.
Do you want to be pushing the resolution limits?
You will need to think to yourself if you are happy with high quality porn or if you want to be pushing the limits to the realms of super high quality. If you look at an example download section from BadoinkVR, you will see the range in the file sizes from 1.8GB all the way to 11.4GB. This reflects the range of resolutions and quality standards that we have in paid VR porn. If you want to be at the top of that you will still need a higher specification VR headset.
How much are you looking to spend?
The range of headsets here is massive, from a $20 plastic smartphone based VR headset to around $1000 for the latest greatest connected headset. You need to think about what you are willing to spend and take it from there.
Standalone or Wired?
Do you want a clean wireless experience for you VR porn use, or are you happy to have wires attached to your headset at these times. More often than not, wired headsets are higher powered. Also, wired headsets don’t have the problem of running out of batteries.
Which headset should I buy for VR porn?
There are way too many combinations of the different questions above to provide an answer to every possible combination. Therefore, I am going to detail my recommendations for the main ones here. If what you want is not here you will have to seek out appropriately specced VR headsets yourself!
Before I start any of that I would like to say simply don’t bother with the Google Cardboard and cheap plastic smartphone headsets. They are not worth it, as the stability of the thing on your head is not great and leads to wobbling around. Also, the smartphone has a tendency to move around and take time to line up well for your viewing pleasure. The minimum quality headset you should go for would be a Gear VR equivalent. Something at least $70 dollars in price that is well made and matches well with your smartphone.
If you have never tried VR porn and your VR porn studio of choice is offering a free Google cardboard then go for it! But expect to want to upgrade soon 🙂
I just want to watch good quality VR porn on a budget!!
For people in this camp, they just want to be able to watch good quality VR porn but are not really bothered about watching the absolute highest quality the industry has to offer. They just want enough clarity for it to be realistic and immersive and don’t want to spend too much.
Without a doubt, the best headset here is the Oculus Go. At the time of writing, you can pick up an Oculus Go for as little as $130-150 when on sale. This is a true bargain, as you still have the ability to watch 4K quality VR porn scenes which still look great. The slight downside is the mobile technology and battery saving measures will mean that the resolution and FPS may be reduced at times. You can read my full review of the Oculus Go here, but the short story is I didn’t really notice any serious drops in quality.
The Oculus Go also has the added boon of it being a standalone and portable device, giving you freedom to watch VR porn anywhere. However, it is only powerful enough for simple and light gaming. If you want full on VR gaming too, you will need to look somewhere else.
I want to watch the highest resolution VR porn currently available!
The answer here is different depending on whether you already own a gaming PC or not. If you do not have a gaming computer, then the obvious answer is the…..
Oculus Quest
I am amazed at how close Oculus were able to get to the performance of a full powered PC connected VR headset in a standalone product. It is basically a beefed up version of the Oculus Go. It has the ability to have room scale tracking without using any external sensors or base stations. These days, they have even implemented hand tracking so you can use your hands to control the Quest without controllers. As you can see from the BadoinkVR download list earlier in the article, the Quest can support very high quality resolution porn files very close to what the highest powered PC connected headsets can. And it can play a selection of games with more power than the Oculus Go.
However, the ace up the Oculus Quest’ sleeve is the ability to upgrade. If you decide at a later date that you do want more grunt from the headset, you can simply buy an Oculus Link that will link your Quest to a gaming PC. This flexibility makes it a great choice.
If you already have a gaming computer, I would recommend the….
Pimax 5k and 8k VR Headsets.
Pimax have been the driving force between raising the resolutions of VR headsets, and have been offering those with the best for some years. There are a couple of caveats here. Firstly, you will need a powerful PC with a strong graphics card to get the most out of this headset (especially the 8K version). Secondly, if you want to play games with the need for room scale tracking, this is not the headset for you. You need to buy the sensors and base stations separately, and it’s a nightmare to set up. In this case, go for the Valve Index mentioned earlier in the article.
The high resolution screen of the Pimax VR headset makes it ideal for VR porn. This is literally the best quality that you will get. The only downside is it is made by an obscure brand that is not supported by most VR porn websites. This just means you need to work out the setup yourself. If you own a gaming PC, I assume this shouldn’t too hard for you.
Happy VR Headset Buying
Well all there is left to say is happy VR headset buying. If you buy any of the headsets mentioned here, I am sure you will be blown away by the VR porn experiences on offer right now. Just a few short years ago we were stuck in a world with much lower resolutions. I can imagine it will be crazy to think what the quality will be like in another 5 years!
If you have any experiences of your own with VR headsets and porn, we would love to hear all about it in the comments section below.
