the past couple years have seen a lot of virtual reality companies pivot to the metaverse and today we aren't going to talk about any of that later this month Sony is releasing its PlayStation VR2 headset a follow-up to the first psvr from 2016. the psvr 2 is the first VR system we've reviewed for a while that's pitched as almost entirely a gaming device if you want a plug and play headset that supports graphically intensive Virtual Worlds with Cutting Edge features like eye tracking and something called face Rumble there's not really anything quite like it but at launch we're still waiting for Sony to take advantage of what it's got Sony's original psvr was an odd gamble the gaming giant was going up against the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive a pair of expensive high-end VR headsets that often required buying a whole new pc its strategy was to go low where they went High the psvr paired a just good enough headset with a lot of Hardware Sony already made like the PlayStation camera and the move controllers it plugged into the PlayStation 4 a console lots of people already owned its promise was in its relative accessibility and ecosystem backed by a major publisher and the fact that it was surprisingly comfortable the psvr 2 is a very different device it's a completely new package of Hardware built for the PlayStation 5.
Launching February 22nd it includes custom designed motion controllers head mounted Inside Out tracking cameras and internal eye tracking cameras a feature that's not yet standard on all VR headsets it has a vivid OLED screen with 110 degree Field View and 2000 by 2040 pixels per eye and a 90 or 120hz refresh rate and at 549 dollars plus the cost of a PS5 it costs a lot more than the Standalone metaquest 2 its biggest competitor in the field of VR games here at The Verge we've had three people checking out the psvr too me senior editor Tom Warren and Senior editor Sean Hollister our experience so far is that the headset gets a lot of things right but that we're still figuring out how much Sony will give people to do with it Sony's first headset required setting up a complicated cable box and an external tracking camera as well as deciding whether you were going to buy its optional Move Motion controllers there's none of that with this headset when you unbox the psvr2 you'll get a headset with four built-in front-facing tracking cameras and a single usb-c cable that you plug into the PS5 the setup process requires starting on a TV or Monitor and then switching over to the headset but other than that it's nicely seamless at this point better than the experience on meta's Quest thanks to a feature that Maps your walls and automatically suggests a play Space instead of making you draw one out Sony is Apparently one of the only headset makers in the world that thinks you might want to play a video game without everyone in a 10 foot radius hearing you shoot zombies so the headset comes with a set of Snap-on earbuds instead of the current Convention of little speakers near your ears that can introduce problems if the buds don't fit you but there's a standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack if you want to substitute your own headphones the sense controllers use a layout roughly similar to meta's touch controllers each chant gets two triggers Two Face buttons an analog stick a menu button and a PlayStation button it goes without saying that they're vastly superior to the 13 year old PlayStation Move but they also feel a little more solid than metas controllers they charge over a USBC like the PlayStation 5 controller and we had five to six hours of play time between charges not as long as controllers powered by double a batteries but not bad for a VR Gaming session also like the psvr some games can still use a standard Gamepad we found a few pain points in our time with the psvr too the headset's easy to put on just like its predecessor and it's actually lighter than the original psvr at 560 grams compared to 600 but although it's relatively comfortable it's not as dramatically uniquely good as the psvr seemed back in 2016.
