Which VR headsets should we buy with our school? That’s a question people often email us about. We understand the question very well, as you need hardware to experience VR, right? However, we do think that the question often comes too early in the process. To make a good decision about which headset to go for, you first need to find out what you want to use it for.
Last update: December 2020.
We wrote a blog about the Oculus Go when it just came out. The angle of the post was how we usually don’t recommend the Oculus Go as the sole device for schools. A controversial statement, as it’s quite an amazing device. Affordable, very comfortable, and the remote offers quite a lot of interactive functionalities. Why wouldn’t we recommend it then? Because it’s quite a closed-off system. When choosing a VR headset, you also choose the app store where you can find applications, it’s an entire ecosystem.
Sometimes that’s no problem because you’re going to create your own 360 videos. Or you’re going to use apps that are available on Oculus Home. But as a school, you often want to have more flexibility.
Quite unexpectedly, this post turned into one of our most viewed posts of the year. Apparently, this is a problem many people are struggling with. That’s why we decided to create a VR Buying Guide for Schools to help schools and teachers. This guide is included in our VR Learning HUB, a learning platform for everyone excited about Virtual Reality for education.
Which Virtual Reality headset for your school?
What do we recommend then? That’s quite a tricky question; we have noticed that we advise schools and companies different things based on their specific situation. Some general advice:
- Don’t spend all of your money at once, VR hardware tends to develop very fast
- Realize that choosing for a VR headset usually also means choosing for an ecosystem
- Focus on the content: what do you want to do with the hardware
Want to learn more? Access the VR Learning HUB, our platform for everyone involved in VR and education. Our course on the technology behind VR includes an overview of the pros and cons of all popular VR hardware sets for schools.
