Review: We do not recommend the $299 Oculus Quest 2 as your next VR system

Enlarge / It looks the same as its predecessor, but Oculus Quest 2 is quite different-and mostly in disappointing ways. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

The long-rumored (and recently leaked) Oculus Quest 2 is here, in my home, on my face. I received it earlier this month, along with news that this would be Oculus's cheapest "all-in-one" VR system yet: starting at $299 and shipping on October 13.

That's one hell of a price for cutting-edge VR. But it comes at a cost.

Part of that comes from Facebook's aggressive policy about making Facebook social media accounts (whose terms of service revolve around a "real name" policy) mandatory to use new Oculus VR headsets, including the Quest 2. Let me be blunt: that is a terrible idea. Attachment of a social media account and its massive Web of personally identifying data (as accumulated by everything from service log-ins to average Web-browsing cookies) to computing hardware (VR headsets, phones, computers, TVs, etc) is quite frankly an irresponsible move on Facebook's part.

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