Virtual reality hasn’t quite taken the world by storm as many early adopters assumed it would, but the technology has grown quite a bit lately. One of the biggest barriers to entry is the high cost of VR headsets, but in recent years, we’ve seen some much more budget-friendly devices like Sony’s PSVR and our favorite, the Oculus Go, which is now on sale for even cheaper.
Until lately, the only real budget-friendly way to try VR was with a cheap headset like the Samsung Gear VR that use your phone as a display. The drawbacks with this solution were numerous: First, even a high-end phone can’t deliver the same experience as a dedicated VR headset, and secondly, this still limits you to certain (typically expensive) smartphones that are powerful enough for the job. The Oculus Go, by contrast, is a dedicated VR device with its own built-in display and doesn’t require a phone or even a connected PC to run virtual reality software.
The Oculus Go is rivaled only by the PSVR when it comes to our favorite budget-friendly headsets, but unlike Sony’s offering, the Oculus Go is not limited to the PS4 (or any external device, for that matter). It’s not as beefy or nearly expensive as something like the HTC Vive or Oculus Quest, but the Oculus Go is also less than half the price of those headsets. The Go’s main limitations are that it can only track tilt and orientation — it can’t follow you moving forward, backward, or up and down — but unless you want to dance around your living room while playing in a VR world, the Oculus Go is great for enjoying seated games and apps like virtual movie theater experiences.
The Oculus Go normally rings in at $199, which is already very reasonable for a virtual reality headset that doesn’t require another device to run VR software. It just got marked down by 20% on both Amazon and Best Buy , though, knocking the price down to just $159. If you want to dip your feet into the world of virtual reality and have been waiting for headsets to become more affordable, this is your chance to score one of the best at a nice discount.
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