Quick Little Lenovo Explorer Review
I recently bought a Lenovo Explorer, which only cost me $99 from B&H (without controllers), and that price for VR and for what the VR experience is, is absolutely incredible value for money. I did have an issue with my first one, and had to RMA it, but no issues with the replacement. Overall, it's amazing, though not perfect, and this is my priority list of what I wish was better:
- Sweet spot. It's fairly small, and you have to have the headset sitting just right on your head. Up down adjustments are what you need to get spot on, and I find myself adjusting this countless times per play session. Left right is usually ok (at least if your nose is in the middle of your face), and the tilt of the visor as well as the tightness of the strap doesn't have much impact either. Up/down is tough though, and to get it focused I've found that looking at the hexagonal pattern on the floor of my Type-6 is the best way to get the sweet spot just right.
- Resolution. Granted, it's better than the Rift and the original Vive, but I'd be curious to see how Pikmax 5k or 8k experience is compared to this. I think this is where the biggest improvement can come from, not just for this headset, but for any.
- FOV. It's not distracting in anyway, but if you look for it, you can see that you're looking through a circle, rather than having your full field of view filled.
- IPD. There's no hardware IPD adjustment, and I'd be curious to see if this would have improved my experience at all. There is a software adjustment in the Mixed Reality Portal settings, but I can try either extreme, and it seems to make little to no difference to the sharpness of anything. Meanwhile, my son can barely even find the sweet spot, so it seems a hardware IPD adjustment is important.
Other than that, I have no real complaints. Before buying this, my biggest concern was the Screen Door Effect (SDE), but you can't even see that unless you're looking for it. I was super excited about the release of the Odyssey+, which claims to almost eliminate the SDE, but after that being a non-issue with this, I'd be much more interested in trying a Pikmax 5k or 8k for the resolution improvement if I ever upgrade. Other than that, for Elite Dangerous, I can't see that there's anything significantly better on the market. Yes, the Odyssey & Odyssey+ have a marginally better resolution, but that's a big jump up in cost, and then the Vive Pro has the same resolution as the Odyssey's, but is an even bigger jump in cost. That's not worth it for me.
It's maybe worth mentioning that I haven't really tried to tweak anything in terms of VR settings. I tried the Med VR preset in ED, and everything was fine, then I tried the Ultra VR preset, and everything was still fine. There's maybe some fine tuning I could do which improves my experience ever further. Running on an i7-2600k @ 4.8 Ghz, 16GB RAM, and GTX 980 Ti. Is there a guide anywhere for optimal settings/tweaks?
Side note: I'll also add that I suffer from fairly bad motion sickness in a lot of aspects of life, and I bought this thinking that I was going to have to slowly build up a tolerance. Can't look down in a car for even 20 seconds, and can't go on any fairground ride that goes in circles or back and forth, boats are bad, etc etc. I bought the Rift on day 1, and I sold it on eBay two days later because of how nauseous I was from everything I had tried on it (though I never tried Elite back then beyond sitting in the cockpit). Amazingly, I have not felt this way playing Elite Dangerous since I got this headset. Occasionally, I feel a tiny bit unsettled when things are in close proximity to me; stations, mining etc, and I have so far stayed away from combat, but overall, it's been nearly a non issue. No idea if that's attributed to the headset, or just the game. I want to get into sim racing with it, but that just scares me right now. One step at a time.
So right now, yes, if you don't currently have a VR headset, but can get the Lenovo Explorer for $99, I 100% recommend it!
![[VR] Muskoka](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/169/169786.jpg?1622467095){kind=avatar}
