My previous headsets were the Vive and the HP Reverb G2. I had used the Beyond for about a week in total when I first wrote this. Now I’ve had the Bigscreen Beyond for about 9 months and I bought the audio head strap a couple of months ago.
I usually play slow, single-player games in VR, for example, Subnautica and Skyrim. Half-Life 2 is probably the most active one I’ve played.
The resolution is noticeably better than the already-good Reverb G2. The Reverb felt like VR had reached the equivalent of 1080p or maybe 1440p 2D displays–this feels like something more. Probably 4K, but my eyes are old enough that it just looks very smooth and sharp. Notably, text and 2D UI is looks really good, which was definitely not the case with the Vive and was just “good” with the G2.
The visuals are good enough that Half-Life Alyx’s impossibly realistic environments now look slightly artificial. Video game geometry is detectible unlike on the Vive or the Reverb. And Half-Life 2 finally looks quite dated – still pretty, but obviously designed for a highly constrained graphics budget. Games that don’t go for realism, like Superhot and Compound, look better than ever.
The focus is quite clear in the sweet spot, solid just outside it, but the sweet spot is extremely small. That’s because, unlike my other two headsets, there’s a linear falloff of clarity, instead of a “good region” and “fuzzy region”. The lenses are tiny and called “pancake lenses”, so that’s probably why.
Combined, that means the precise centre looks amazing and the bit around it is very good. But, even though the field of view is technically about the same as the G2 and the Vive, everything else is quite fuzzy. Focussing on things means turning your head. If I were an owl this would be the perfect headset (for peripheral vision, the fuzziness is fine, of course.)
Another trick this headset uses to improve field of view is to cant the screens outward a bit. However, this makes vergence on near things harder—I notice it about less than 30 cm or so, such as when subtitles are mistakenly set too close to the camera. I like this tradeoff because you don’t commonly focus on things less than 30 cm away in VR (and, again, I’m middle-aged, so my eyes also have to work extra hard on close things because of focus, not just vergence).
Because the sweet spot is so small, getting the right IPD is important. Fortunately, this is based on your face scan. For example, I got two optometrist IPD measurements, one some years ago at 56.5mm (a machine) and one this year at 58mm (a trusted human optometrist), so I got a 57mm headset, based on advice from Bigscreen. Although the default strap is more comfortable (see below), the tighter fit of the audio headstrap improves the sweet spot a bit. It also improves glare a lot: another drawback of the lenses is that light-on-dark produces smeary glare around the edges. It’s much softer than the similar glare of the Vive’s fresnel lenses, but also bigger. In practise, it’s not bad, for a couple of reasons.
The audio strap also reduces the glare, for the same reason as it improves the sweet spot: tighter fit. However, the glare and small sweet spot would make using the Bigscreen for work annoying, especially if you’re tied to dark mode. White text on black background looks amazing, but when it’s outside exact centre of the lens, it bounces glare around.
Due to Displayport 1.4 bandwidth limits, the Beyond runs at 75hz at full resolution; 90 hz with some upscaling. I think 75hz is the right default, because the high resolution is so impressive, and a lot of VR isn’t fast-moving. I’ve tried 90hz for VR mods of flat games, which tend to move faster, and also have performance problems so they can’t run at high resolution anyway.
The brightness is fine at 100%; it’s a little dim when you first put on and take off the headset, but not during usage. If I didn’t block out the fan sound with earbuds I’d be tempted to try even dimmer.
I hardly ever play games for more than an hour, so I shouldn’t comment on long-term comfort. Putting on the Beyond feels like swim goggles where the Reverb felt like a hat with a small helmet attached. After an hour of playing, it still feels quite comfortable, almost always beating the Reverb. (The Vive felt like a hat with a helmet that was cinched really tight with a band and felt uncomfortable within minutes.) However, my face sweats more easily underneath the gasket. And without the audio strap it leaves me with two wicked marks, darker than I’ve gotten from my other two headsets. This despite it being more comfortable than those two: I think it’s because there’s less pressure overall, it’s just concentrated in two small spots.
A perk of the tiny size is that I can easily flip the headset up with one hand. And the fit is solid enough that it goes right back in the exact correct place. I haven’t had too much trouble with the soft strap, despite my long, thick hair. But it does need to be tightened every time I put the headset on.
Combined with the tiny sweet spot and tiny size of the headset, my normal headphones jostle it out of place. I ordered some bluetooth earbuds and when they worked they were fine, but Bluetooth shenanigans like connectivity, lag and bad noise cancellation made it an unreliable experience. But I’m going to order the audio strap if/when it’s available, because I like the G2’s Index-inspired strap so much.
Update: Now that I’ve used the audio strap for a couple of months, it’s a mixed bag for comfort. A properly set up audio strap is just as comfortable as the soft strap, while also fitting tighter and providing better visuals. You can flip up the headset even more easily as well. But it takes a several seconds to put on and take off, which are seconds I really resent when I need to pause a game to help my family. And those aren’t comfortable seconds either! My hair catches in the back and my head is too wide for the headphones at their widest spread.
The headphones’ audio is solid (though I’m not an expert), but they are extremely flimsy. The earpads can be popped in and out, and I did this by mistake once when take the headset off fast early on. I was afraid I’d broken them irreparably. On the other hand, the headphones are normal wired connection so work 100% of the time.
Overall, the solid audio, improved visuals and equal comfort make the audio strap an improvement. It’s enough of a tradeoff that I think Bigscreen can just barely justify not including it as part of the base package.
It is good to be back on SteamVR-only. Windows MR + SteamVR was a dumpster fire, and now discontinued to boot. The only complaint I have is that SteamVR now uses the Steam Deck interface but doesn’t support controller nagivation.
[Updated for Windows 11]
I’ve tried to replace my old-ish 1080p/60hz TV with the Beyond and it works in some cases. It’s best used as to approximate a seated VR experience in a 3rd-person game that isn’t amenable to VR modding.
For 2D games, the tiny sweet spot just makes tracking movement across the whole screen nearly impossible. For 3D games, you will lose resolution even compared to a 1080p screen unless you blow up the screen until it takes up nearly your entire field of view. Once you do that, though, you need to play a game that concentrates the action in the centre of the screen – and you should crank up the in-game field of view to around 90 degrees. Fortunately that works for 3rd-person games. Things at the edge of the field of view are visible, but very fuzzy, so I still have to swivel my head around to focus on them. For 3rd-person shooters, though, a good deal of the game is noticing movement on the edges and bringing it to the centre, so in practise it’s a combination of head movement and controller movement.
To make this work in Windows 11, you need a virtual screen that you can set to 75hz or 90hz and run at a decently high resolution. I use 2880x2160 because it’s the 4:3 equivalent of 4k, and there’s little point in expanding the screen beyond the field of view.
Slightly off-topic, but: if you’re playing a non-VR game with a VR mod or VR injector, and you’re using a controller, Steam Input still works. That means you can rebind controls to make more sense in VR. For me, that especially means switching the right stick to use Flick Stick, because smooth turning in VR makes me slightly sick, and also because the right stick isn’t doing very much if you can aim with your face.
The Bigscreen Beyond feels like a beta of an amazing 3rd-gen headset, where the G2 felt like the polished tail of the 2nd-gen headsets. There are a lot of minor omissions and mistakes that make this feel unpolished, but it’s clearly better than what I’ve used before.
Still, it’s good enough that I’ve ordered the Bigscreen Beyond 2, which ought to be the non-beta version of this headset. If you have SteamVR equipment already, it’s well worth it.