I spent an evening this week virtually hanging out with two of my closest friends as we put on some VR headsets and met up on the charming links of Walkabout Mini Golf. As much as catching up with my friends (and smoking them at mini golf) was the main focus here, as a VR headset nerd, I was also enjoying the fact that all three of us were accessing VR in different ways.
My friend Olly was playing on PSVR 2, a simple connection job to his console, which was probably the most streamlined of us all. I was playing on the new, lightweight, and ultra high-fidelity Pimax Dream Air, a direct-to-PC wired headset which I'm currently testing for review.
My friend Stewart, the newest of us to VR gaming, has had some trouble getting Steam Link to work wirelessly on his Meta Quest 2 headset, so he was using a Link Cable to plug into his PC and play via Steam.
After a good couple of hours (and some comfortable wins for me, which I definitely didn't gloat about), Stewart's headset, the oldest of the three we were using, died.
"Did you not say you got an Elite headstrap with a battery attachment?" I asked him. He had, but he explained that because the Meta Quest 2 only has one USB-C port, he wasn't able to play via the Link Cable and charge simultaneously.
Little did Stewart know that he had stumbled upon a design flaw that also plagues the much newer Meta Quest 3 and 3S, and it's a big reason a lot of folks will need to choose their Meta Quest accessories very carefully.
My mind immediately drifted to the upcoming Steam Frame. From what we know about it so far, it's not taking the same sort of accessory-ready outlook as the Quest headsets. It also, as far as we know, can only work wirelessly. It has one solitary USB-C port too, which is for power delivery/charging, maybe a few accessories, and limited data transfer through USB 2.0 speeds. You're not going to be able to hook up a link cable to play on PC.
Thankfully, it's had a true wireless outlook from the beginning. Its USB dongle will do all the linking work you want it to (supposedly), and it can also run games natively, but should the selection of accessories for it start to grow, it could run into the same issues as the Quest devices where you have multiple peripherals fighting over a single USB port.
With such a diverse selection of accessories available for the Quest 2 during its tenure, you'd think the Quest 3 headsets would have seen an expansion to two different USB-C ports. This would allow for linking up to a PC, as well as the option to keep the thing charged while you're using it, or even a separate USB-C option like latency-free earbuds and headsets.
For those wondering, a USB Link cable will supply a small amount of charge to a Quest headset while you play, but not enough to keep it alive indefinitely. The solution in recent years has been fancier wires like the Syntech Link Cable, which throw a divider into the middle of the connection so you can plug that into a wall outlet and provide super-fast charging, but this is less than ideal since you're then tethered to a secondary point in your room as you play, which could limit movement.
Even with one of the fanciest link cables, you'll still be limited in terms of the other accessories you can use. If you want to use the PrismXR earbuds, for example, or anything else that'll need a USB-C port to work, you're going to be limited.
Depending on how you use your Quest headset, this could be a minor gripe or a continual plague on your VR downtime. Either way, with rumors beginning to swirl about the Quest 4 being a larger upgrade and departure from the Quest 3, maybe we'll see expandable connectivity in the next generation.
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