Review: HTC Vive Pro

The first time I wore the HTC Vive, it was like putting on a century-old metal diving suit. It was a heavy, hideous-looking 3D-printed early unit with a thick bundle of cords streaming out the back. It was so delicate that one of the developers had to hold the cables them so I could walk around without breaking it (or myself).

Looks aren’t everything, though. That prototype Vive sent me down to the bottom of the ocean to walk around for the first time and let me stare a blue whale in the eye. The visuals were far from realistic, but the movement tracking and sense of space was astounding. I felt my own fear of heights flare up in a virtual world. It made me see the new potential of virtual reality, like a Star Trek holodeck come to life.

Since it hit shelves in 2016, the Vive has earned a reputation as the most capable hardware for VR. While high-end competitors like the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR offered a standard VR headset with head tracking, HTC and its partner Valve decided to include two handheld motion controllers and two motion tracking base stations that you had to mount in your room. Instead of sitting on your chair and simply looking around VR worlds, the Vive lets you create up to a 15 x 15-foot virtual world you can walk around in using your own two legs. The Vive is one-of-a-kind and still my favorite premium VR headset, especially at its new $500 price.

The world has changed since 2016. VR was not the overnight success many manufacturers hoped it would be, but 2018 appears to mark the beginning of VR's next chapter. Facebook launched the Oculus Go this month, which doesn’t require a phone or computer to run and cost a scant $200. Lenovo’s Mirage Solo is $400, and also works without a companion PC, offering six degrees of freedom.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, HTC has doubled down. The Vive Pro is an even more premium, more amazing, more demanding, more expensive PC-based VR headset than the first Vive. It starts at $800 for the headset alone, boasts double the resolution of its predecessor (2,880 x 1,600 pixels combined with one AMOLED screen for each eye), and comes with built-in on-ear headphones and microphones. It has a bevy of small wearability upgrades that make it more comfortable to put on and wear for longer periods of time.

The Vive Pro still has a cord, but it’s a smaller one, and later this year, a wireless adapter will be available, which could be a game changer. And if you buy the full kit with the new 2.0 Base Stations, you can create a VR room that’s as large as 20 x 20 feet, bigger than the original Vive. Black is also out—the Pro comes in a pleasant, dark matte blue now.

There's no two ways about it—games look noticeably clearer when played on Vive Pro. You can still see pixels (the screen door effect), but they’re slightly smaller and less obtrusive than with the first version. It’s subtle, but noticeable if you have a high-end PC (I’ll get into that later). I had some trouble getting the fit right so nothing in my field of vision was blurry, but it was a lot easier to fiddle with the straps and tightness than the original Vive. There’s also more (and better) padding, all of which is replaceable.

I’ve also enjoyed the built-in headphones. They aren’t as special as HTC’s branding might lend you to believe, but they sound balanced and clear enough that they shouldn’t bother you. It’s a relief not to have to fiddle in the dark trying to find and put on headphones on top of the headset. These are adjustable and have a volume toggle on the left earcup. The headphones are also capable of 3D spatial audio, which will be a lot of fun as more software takes advantage of the functionality.

I never gave much thought to weak creatures like the giant cockroaches and dog-sized mole rats in Fallout 4, but on the Vive Pro they sincerely scared the hell out of me. Having to actually punch a child-sized cockroach to death and see my own virtual blood made me feel uncomfortable in a way that hitting a trigger on a controller never did. I nearly had a heart attack when a mole rat popped out behind me for the first time. Having to literally turn around, aim at it, and pull a trigger with the motion controller, which looks like a gun in the game, was much more frightening than twisting two joysticks or a mouse.

Floating around the ocean, encountering large fish and sharks in Operation Apex was also quite engrossing and benefitted from the Pro’s audio and visual enhancements. The Awake Prologue Beta attempts to turn a movie narrative into a 3D VR experienced, to mixed results, though I applaud the effort.

Outside of games, I noticed a substantial number of professional business apps. There is no shortage of games to try, but it’s telling that many of the free games on HTC’s Viveport game subscription service and in Steam are actually training apps. I played one demo called Lockout/Tagout that taught me how to put locks and hazard tags on heavy machinery valves. Another attempted to school me on the dos and don’ts of high voltage electric substations.

HTC made a big point to emphasize the Vive Pro’s usefulness for business training applications at CES this year, and given the Vive Pro’s high price and feature set, it may have its eyes on businesses more than you or me. The high resolution and built-in audio makes these demos more engrossing and easier to use than they’d be on a standard Vive.

HTC knows this isn’t a VR headset for everyone. That’s why it’s sold primarily as an $800 standalone headset upgrade. The optimal buyer for Pro will already own the original Vive, complete with base stations and motion controllers. The optimal buyer who doesn’t already have a Vive is someone who won’t feel the sting of the all-in $1,400 Vive Pro kit, which comes with new, upgraded base stations. (Earlier this year, HTC said it would have cheaper old base stations for sale, but they’re currently sold out on its website.)

That $800 - $1,400 price does not include the high-end Windows PC you’ll need to run it. The Vive Pro requires far more power than its predecessor. Technically, the minimum spec requirements are the same, requiring a GeForce GTX 970 or above, but you can toss that out a virtual window. Despite having an Alienware 13 OLED VR-ready laptop with an Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (previously the “recommended” graphics card), I experienced an unbearable amount of lag, poor tracking, and ineffective anti-aliasing that made some games so jaggy that they negated anything Pro about this Vive.

That lag trouble came after my living nightmare of trying to get the Vive Pro to work at all. Unlike the HDMI-friendly Vive, the Pro has quietly changed its port requirements. HTC now demands a full-sized DisplayPort, which my gaming/VR laptop didn’t have. I frantically bought a bunch of cables and adapters, trying to see if I could get the Mini DisplayPort connection to work with USB, USB-C, and HDMI—to no avail. The only thing that worked was a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable, but that solution came with some mirroring issues to overcome because the Vive Pro is really meant for a fancy desktop PC with a full DisplayPort.

Today's VR-ready laptops and PCs may not be ready for this Vive. Some of your rooms may not be ready, either. The new Base Station sensors didn’t seem to like my living room, and I couldn’t figure out why. They seem more sensitive than the 1.0 Base Stations. In my office, which is a very similar room, they worked fine.

The Vive Pro has operated swimmingly since I upgraded to a decked out, super expensive Alienware Aurora desktop with an 8th-generation Intel Core i7, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (which includes four DisplayPorts). Whether you can justfy spending $2,500 on a PC is another story.

My advice: Don’t bother trying to use the Vive Pro without a desktop PC with DisplayPort and the equivalent of a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. If you can afford something more potent, do it.

Once I switched my PC (and room), the setup of the Vive Pro was identical to the original Vive. Both times, it took several hours to get it up and running, which entails troubleshooting Base Station placement, retrieving a lot of software, and downloading drivers. Unless something goes wrong, the process isn't too difficult, though HTC's Vive Pro instructions sometimes included original Vive imagery, which might confuse you. Also prepare to shake your sensors, controllers, or headset every day to get them to register as ready in Steam VR, which is still a clunky experience.

If you already own a big home with a dedicated VR room powered by a beast of a desktop PC, the $800 Vive Pro is a sound investment. Your games will look sharper and the headset is more comfortable to wear and use. The built-in headphones are convenient, too. Hell, if you have a dedicated room for VR, you’ll probably want to buy the whole Vive Pro system with upgraded base stations, which gives you more virtual space and options for multiplayer.

Or maybe you’re a corporate bigwig considering VR as a way to improve employee training. In this scenario, Vive Pro is the right tool for the job, and the price probably doesn’t sound all that bad. But, the Pro is not what 99% of VR shoppers should buy. For everyone else, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the original HTC Vive. It’s $500 all-in, works with a wide variety of cheaper PCs, and gives you a very similar experience. The Vive Pro may be the new pinnacle for home VR, but it’s an expensive trek to reach this virtual summit.