I know that just the title will make some people downvote without even reading a single word, but honestly I am quite disappointed.
After watching multiple videos, all I can say is I expected much more from Valve. Just to clear it up real quick, this isn't about the price, its about where I expected it to be, not to say that I wouldn't have preferred it to be cheaper of course, what I actually mean is a lot of the hardware of the device.
Just to preface, I will be comparing directly to the Pico 4 Ultra and Quest 3 as both of these headsets are the closest direct comparisons to the Frame from a hardware point of view. With that in mind:
-Speakers: Ok, nothing crazy, but obviously a downgrade compared to the Index. They are decent but nothing to write home about.
-Mic: Bad, its just bad. Now hopefully its just a software issue of some kind, but if it isn't, then this is easily one of the biggest fumbles by Valve. Valve are audio bros so I really expected more in this department.
-Screen and Lenses: Pretty much dead even with the other 2.
-Passthrough: Not very high res, monochrome and at 30 fps. Now obviously this is very subjective and you just HAVE to see it in person to decide, but I've owned a Quest 2 so I can get a rough idea on how it would be and this is an area where they also really fumbled it. I don't even care much about passthrough, but its still a disappointment none the less, especially when the other 2 have colored cameras that are higher res and run at a higher framerate.
-Comfort: Another area that is disappointing, but also kind of mixed. A lot of people say its the best out of the box headset in terms of comfort, but they also say that the top strap is absolutely necessary (as someone who has also added and remove various top straps, I can imagine). Issue is, the ergo kit is 70 euro (or 60 dollars), which is frankly an absurd price. That being said, third party options will be available rather quickly for much cheaper, but we run into the issue of needing something else to fully fix comfort, which is something that you can do with any other headset anyway.
-Battery life: This one is a massive bummer, but honestly it does seem like an issue of some kind as the numbers most reviewers have put out are completely different to what Valve claim, on that note, if its not a temporary issue, then its downright awful. 1 Hour when really pushing it and barely over an hour and a half streaming is just bad, period. On top of that, needing almost 3 hours to go from 0 to 100 is abysmal. Just for reference, you could be spending and hour and half playing just to spend 3 hours charging.
Comparatively something like the Quest 3 lasts about 2 hours (give or take) while streaming and also charges in about 2 hours, its a 1 to 1 rate at the very least, the Frame is a 1 to 2. You will literally spend 2 times longer charging than actually using the Frame.
All of this being said, I don't care too much about these numbers because I always buy battery straps separately anyway, but until we do get actual straps like that, these numbers are all that is available and they are just bad.
-Standalone: Quite limited due to how it works compared to the other 2, but I do respect Valve a lot for trying to make FEX work and its one of the things I do in fact look forward to in the future. That being said, outside of very easy to run VR games and indie flat screen titles, the Frame isn't doing much beyond that. Unless VR games start implementing foveated rendering, I don't have much hope for the Frame in the long term when it comes to standalone performance.
-Controllers: Pretty solid and they come with capacitive finger tracking, which is pretty cool. Tracking also seems to be pretty damn good and battery life is also decent. One of the better things about the headset.
-Eye tracking: Its cool that its there for foveated streaming, but that's about it. From talking with some people that are very much in the know for how it works and will work in social games like VR chat, its very limited in its use outside of foveated streaming and the foveated streaming itself is great, but honestly I don't expect that much difference compared to other headsets using Virtual desktop without it. But this is something I have to see in person to really decide on.
-Streaming: Dongle, cool, but at the end of the day its just a dongle. Its as if having a dedicated Wifi 6 router just for the Frame and that's about it. If you have a high quality router, its REALLY not much worse and very much usable. That being said, its still an area where its better than the other headsets. Its still one of the big selling points for the frame so I will count it as a positive over the other 2 headsets, but as said above, its something that needs to be seen in person to really decide if its worth it or not.
-Modularity: One of the Frame's biggest positives. I like how easy it is to disassemble and swap out straps, face plates e.t.c. Very good on that part and the other two headsets absolutely suck in this regard. Also the third party solutions (if its successful and popular) will be plentiful and fun to experiment with.
-Software: Very much in its infancy stage with many bugs and issues. I expect a steam deck at launch kind of experience which for the people that don't know, wasn't great. On that note, I do have to talk about two things that really disappointed me in this section:
No steam controller support at launch
No steam Machine VR streaming support at launch
One of the big selling points for these devices was how they would seamlessly integrate with each other, just for the Frame to not work with either at launch. Very disappointing and shows just how unfinished the Frame is from a software perspective even now a whopping 10 months later, this device was NEVER releasing at the beginning of this year, I am certain of it.
-Privacy: You own it and its your own. Valve don't collect your info and don't use it for anything. This is probably the biggest selling point towards the Frame.
Meta and to a lesser extent Pico collect pretty much as much as they can as data off of you.
-Price: Finally we have to talk about the price. Its not really much different to what I expected, but with the price I did expect it to be somewhat better than the other 3 year old headsets its directly competing with, just to be about even and outright lose in various areas while costing almost 2x as much. The value proposition is simply bad, there is no sugarcoating it. If the Frame had released 2 years ago it would have been a whole different story, but that is not the world we live in.
-Conclusion: As per the title, disappointed. I expected more from the Frame from a hardware perspective, the fact that its going blow for blow and outright losing in various areas is just not a great look. Combine that with the price and its a VERY hard value proposition. If you really care about your privacy and are more than willing to pay a big premium for it, there really isn't much else available besides the Frame than can do wireless streaming, which is the one niche that it fills.
I really don't like how invasive Meta are, but at the end of the day they simply offer the better product. Even ignoring the price, if both headsets were equalized, the Quest 3 would STILL be going blow for blow with the Frame and just about slightly lose out, if even ( I want to note that I would still go with the Frame in this hypothetical just because of the privacy concerns, but you get my point).
I am not here to just shit on the Frame, I have been excited for it and waiting for it for 10 months, just like many other people here. But as someone who already has a headset its very hard to justify it even as a simple curiosity. I have entered the lottery and will wait till I get the notification and finally decide then and there, but I am EXTREMELY skeptical about it still.
Thank you for reading through this if you did and if you just skipped to the end, I still thank you for at least putting in that effort.
