What is the Best VR Headset for Beat Saber?

In short: it depends on your purpose.

Do you want to play Beat Saber for competitiveness? Or do you want to play casually?

Do you want full body tracking?

Important Features to Consider:

Everyone has their own reasons for playing Beat Saber. The main reasons are:

• Competitive Beat Saber: You want to climb the leaderboards and be the best player out there. Headsets with good tracking are what you’re looking for.
• Fitness: You want to use VR for your exercise routine. Wireless and comfortable headsets are your best bet.
• Streamers/Youtubers: you want to stream/record yourself playing Beat Saber. A headset with full-body tracking support is what you need. 

Best Headsets For Competitive Beat Saber

If you want to be the best Beat Saber player – the headset’s tracking should be your top priority. You want the headset to track where your sabers are with extreme accuracy!

Normally I’m a huge advocate for the Quest 2, but unfortunately it’s one of the worst headsets for competitive Beat Saber. It’s tracking is not good enough to play Beat Saber competitively:

In the top 50 leaderboard players, there is only one player who uses the Quest 2. Considering how popular the Quest 2 is compared to other headsets, those are not good odds.

The best Beat Saber players are currently using an Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest 1 or Valve Index.

If you care about leaderboard rankings, I recommend you avoid the Quest 2 and get one of these headsets instead.

As you can see, the Quest 2’s tracking is a bit off. I noticed this when transitioning from the Quest 1 to Quest 2. My performance suffered noticeably – instead of getting S ranks, I was getting A ranks.

At first, I thought this happened because I wasn’t used to the new tracking style, but after a year of using the Quest 2, I realized it wasn’t my fault. As soon as I put on the Quest 1, my performance improved, even though I haven’t touched it in a year.

The Quest 2 is still the best headset for gaming, and ideal for casual Beat Saber players who don’t care about being the best. But for those who want to play Beat Saber competitively, you need to pick one of the other three headsets.

Oculus Rift

The number #1 player in the world uses an Oculus Rift.

It’s the best headset in terms of cost-benefit ratio.

The top Beat Saber leaderboards are also dominated by Oculus Rift users!

Even though the tracking is slightly worse than the Valve Index, the price point makes this the more popular option.

Oculus Quest 1

This is the one that I use personally. The are several players in the top 50 leaderboards who use a Quest 1.

It’s tracking is noticeably better than the Quest 2’s, but not as good as the Rift or Valve Index.

The best part about the Quest 1 is it’s completely standalone and wireless.

• You don’t need a gaming PC to play Beat Saber on the Quest 1.
• Not having wires dangling from your head whilst your swinging your arms around is a huge selling point

Me personally, I’ll happily sacrifice a bit of tracking accuracy to have wireless capabilities.

Valve Index

The Valve Index uses Lighthouse tracking, which is the most accurate tracking on the market. Unfortunately this headset costs a pretty penny.

I’ve spoken to top 100 Beat Saber players who own both a Valve Index and Oculus Rift and they say they prefer the Valve Index.

It’s not worth paying such a high price just for the slight improvement in tracking, but if you want to use the headset for other things then it could be worth it:

The Valve Index offers superior resolution, FOV, refresh rate and sound quality than these other headsets. It’s the most immersive headset here. You won’t notice this whilst playing Beat Saber, but other games like Half-Life: Alyx feel more real.

Best For Fitness & Casual Players

Some people just want to get fit and have fun. Beat Saber is one of the best ways to do that, as there are frequent reports of people losing over 100 lbs playing Beat Saber.

There are also other fitness games you may want to try including other rhythm games, boxing, cycling and more!

I recommend either:

Meta Quest 1

Has better tracking than the Quest 2, but worse resolution. This matters if you plan on doing things other than Beat Saber.

For instance, if you want to play immersive games like Half-Life: Alyx, the clarity will be worse on this headset.

Meta Quest 2

The tracking isn’t the best, but casual players won’t even notice it. You’ll only really notice it when you reach a high skill ceiling. The benefit of having the Quest 2 is it uses more powerful hardware – allowing you to play more games and having a higher resolution.

AVOID wired headsets. They require setting up by connecting wires to your PC and starting up some programs. This minor inconvenience can deter you from getting any exercise done.

In short: Get the Quest 1 if you care about the competitive side of Beat Saber as well. Otherwise, get the Quest 2.

Best for Streamers/Youtubers: Valve Index

Want to appear as an anime character in Beat Saber? Want to try out feet saber? Then grab the Valve Index!

Make sure to pick up at least two VIVE trackers as well, as they are required for full-body tracking. You need one for each body part you want to track.

The headset already tracks your head and hand movements, but you’ll need two for your feet.

Additionally, you can also choose to track your knees, elbows and waist as well.

If you like the appeal of playing VRChat as well, a good alternative is the HTC Vive Pro + Valve Index controllers + Eye tracking. Read more about the best VR headsets for VRChat here.

Comfort Ratings

If you plan on spending 1000+ hours into Beat Saber like me, then you’ll probably want to know how comfortable each headset is.

There are comfort mods you can buy to make each headset more comfortable, so I’ll include those in the ratings: