vr box review

Review: VR BOX II

At the first glance BOX VR glasses look great. Very good quality plastic, large and adjustable lenses and soft sponge, which makes using the goggles quite comfortable. Unfortunately, these glasses are not without drawbacks. They have disadvantages so important that I can not recommend them to anyone. It’s sad, because it was close to a great device.

Virtual reality goggles named VR BOX is a great looking equipment, which was made of high quality plastic. All connections between elements are made very carefully. We have a sliding element (stand) to which we attach our phone. There is also an opening for a cable. The glasses are equipped with a sliding flap to reveal the camera at our smartphone. Thus the set may be used for applications for extended reality.

The equipment has large lenses which have about 40 mm in diameter. In addition, the lenses are adjustable sideways. This solution is very useful, because everyone has a different offset between eyes. A proper adjustment of lenses to our eyes will reduce the effect of double image, in other words, we won’t feel like cross-eyed. Moreover, not only you can regulate the lenses on the sides, but you can also adjust their depth, i.e. you can adjust the distance of the lenses from the screen of smartphone. To be honest, I’m not convinced for what the regulation serves. The focal length of lenses is always constant, so changing the focal length causes that the image becomes blurred … hmmm, maybe it serves for people with poor eyesight? I really don’t know and it’s difficult for me to judge.

The VR Box goggles have a soft padding around the border, so after putting it to on head we don’t feel unpleasant pressure, however, the material itself is quite rough and during long usage it may irritate our forehead. Nevertheless, this part of the glasses I am able to accept. On the other hand, the socket for nose is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the producer wasn’t precise and he made a socket too small, so during the usage of goggles I felt pressure on my nose. Headset has 417 g weight.

Another issue relates to the headband. To be true, it’s not bad. The bands are adjustable so virtually anyone will be able to match them to a head. A big advantage is the band at the top of goggles, which prevents glasses from slipping. Ok, that’s enough in this issue. Let’s get to the practical application…

 

Firstly, I payed my attention on a grapple which is placed on a stand to which we attach the phone. The way of mounting a phone to the stand is completely misguided. That’s because the grapple is very wide, and ex. in the case of my Motorola Moto X, it causes pressing the volume buttons. Fortunately, YouTube application blocks these buttons, so in case of this application it doesn’t matter. Because of this drawback, it is impossible to use another application or VR game. I was looking for a proper solution and the only thing I could do was putting a piece of paper. Thanks to that I got rid of the pressed key. After this operation, the phone was unstable, and every time I moved rapidly my head it also moved. In addition, inserting a piece of paper every single time you want to use the goggles is terribly annoying. So for me, this detail disqualifies VR BOX goggles.

  

Ok, I dealt with mounting my phone on the stand, now it’s high time I assessed the way  displaying the image. I turned on YouTube, I turned on the film 360, I placed the goggles on my head, and… something is wrong. At the beginning I didn’t know why, but the video material didn’t engulf me. Evidently I missed immersion into the world of VR. After all, even a simple Google Cardboard was better for me than these VR BOX. After a while, everything became clear – the producer badly designed the whole construction. A phone is placed too far from lenses, What causes that the horizon of the image is very narrow. I had an impression that I was watching a movie in the cinema. I as completely unable to feel the immersion into virtual reality. Please believe me, we will obtain much better effect with using an ordinary Cardboard. For a better understanding of the problem, I send a comparison of shown images  by VR and by Google Cardboard Box v1.

 

FOV (szerokość widzianego obrazu)

Maximum FOV for this VR goggles is 78°, but this result we will achieve with screen size qual to 5,96″. Unfortunately frame where we need to montage our smartphone will not allow to put so big smarphone. So practicaly we will never get max FOV in this VR goggles.

Summing up…

When I was buying VR BOX goggles I hoped that I would get a good equipment, but unfortunately I do not recommend it to anyone and I warn everybody against buying it. People who don’t have a comparison between different devices, may not notice the problem. Those, who have an experience with virtual reality thanks to kits such as Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR, will feel a great disappointment. Personally, I disqualify the product and I hope that the market will also perceive this disadvantages what will eliminate similar equipment to this one. Fortunately, there are producers who treat the issue professionally and do a good job, what I will mention soon.

Thank you very much for your attention and see you later 🙂