As an "early adopter" I was there on January 7, 2016 to pre-order the Oculus (online, at Oculus itself).
But after months of waiting (there were a lot of delivery problems with Oculus in the beginning) and reading a lot of online comments and reviews, I got the impression that the Vive was better, especially because of the roomscale and the controllers - Touch controllers for Oculus still existed no, it only came with an XBoxOne controller.
In May 2016 I canceled my pre-order and bought a Vive (online, at HTC itself).
After a few weeks it arrived, and a really new world opened up for me. this was so insanely cool. I had seen a first version of the GearVR on a Note5 a few years ago, but this was above & beyond.
Really, I was super satisfied with the Vive.
Fast forward a good year, and the Vive was barely used. The base stations annoy me because they make a whistling sound as long as they are powered (you can configure them in SteamVR to shut down when Steam is shut down, but then it takes too long to start up again). The controllers are also quite "clunky". Also, everything at Vive is very expensive. If a base station is broken, it will cost you 190eur to replace. So I sold the Vive and planned to wait for the "next gen" devices, or the Windows MR headset (samsung odyssey).
But the Samsung Odyssey is not (for now) coming to Belgium, and the rest of the W-MR headsets are not very appealing. The Vive 2 and Rift 2 are also not yet visible on the horizon, and I don't really trust other devices such as the Pimax.
And then I suddenly saw the "Blue Friday" deal on CoolBlue, which was also valid all weekend: 399eur for the basic package Oculus Rift + Touch controllers. No doubt, ordered on Saturday, and delivered on Sunday morning (!!).
Setup was a breeze (just make sure you have enough (3) USB ports and a free HDMI). That was a bit more work with the Vive, and you also had to drill holes in the wall to hang the base stations (or place them on a bookshelf).
The headset itself is so much nicer than the Vive. Where the Vive still looks like a "beta product", with its thick "wiring harness", heavy front weight, 3.5mm headphone connection that just looks silly, cheap plastic look,... the Oculus is much more "slick" ". The headset is covered with a soft fabric, the cable is a single relatively fine cable, and the headset itself is so much lighter and more comfortable. There are also headphones attached to the headset that sound really good. The only "disadvantage" is that it doesn't have a built-in camera, which the Vive does. But I've never really used that camera on the Vive, so it doesn't matter to me. With the vive you can also move the lenses back and forth (nooti used), this is not possible with the Oculus. The Vive also offers a little more space for people with glasses, but I wear glasses myself, and have no problems with the Oculus.
And then… the controllers. The touch controllers are SO cool, you have to try them yourself. Where you just "wave a stick" with the Vive, the touch controllers do "finger tracking". So you can grab something, point at something, give it a thumbs up... This makes such a world of difference!
Finally (and not least unimportantly) the resolution. On paper, both the Vive and the Oculus have the same resolution, but due to the shape of the pixels in the panels used, and the other fresnel lenses, the Oculus undeniably looks better. The pixellation is still very much present (and will remain so until VR with 4K per eye is out, such as the Pimax 8K) but it is significantly less severe than on the Vive
Conclusion : If you buy a headset today, it really has to be the Oculus. It's better than the Vive in almost every way, and so much cheaper. If you surf around for reviews, you'll find many reviews from 2016 in which the Vive beats the Oculus. I think this is because of the controllers and roomscale (Oculus only came with an Xbox controller initially) and the aversion to Facebook (Oculus owner).
The Touch controllers are a game changer. HTC also sees this, and will soon come with the "knuckle controllers".
