Oculus GO review: The most convenient way to watch VR porn

There’s no shortage of ways to watch VR porn already, but a standalone headset that doesn’t require any cables or slotting in a smartphone adds a new level of convenience to enjoying adult VR content.

The Oculus GO is by no means the only option available, but it’s the most mainstream one going, so we’ve put together a full Oculus GO for VR porn review just for you.

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Oculus GO Review: Hardware & Design

We’ve tested a fair few different type of VR headsets over the years, – with the exception of the Oculus Rift – but the Oculus GO represents the most no-nonsense, simple way to get started with a whole variety of different content.

It’s a neat integrated package that comes with a pointer-style (rather than gamepad style) controller, which takes a single AA battery.

If you’ve used a smartphone-based VR headset before – particularly a GearVR-based one that uses Oculus software – then you’ll be pretty familiar with the rudimentary options on offer. Most notably, there’s no dials or knobs to adjust focal length, as can be found on smartphone headsets, but there is a spacer to enable it to work for people that wear glasses. I don’t wear glasses so can’t comment on this aspect.

On the top-center, you have the power button. Just hold it down for a few seconds to switch the device on or off, or if it’s already switched on just tapping it will pause whatever you’re doing and put it to sleep temporarily.
Just next to the power button, you have a volume rocker, which is crucial to know if you’re about to start watching VR porn but don’t have any headphones around to plug in to the 3.5mm jack on the side.

Officially, the Oculus GO measures up at 190mm x 105mm x 115mm and weighs 468 grams. In use, this doesn’t feel particularly heavy, and works out lighter than using something like a GearVR with a smartphone inside it. It’s also the same weight as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets too.

How to Watch Virtual Reality Porn on the Oculus GO

To get started with VR porn on Oculus GO, there are a few different options: you can either stream it directly in the browser from a VR site that supports streaming, or from local storage via an app like Plex.

If you want the highest image quality, you can download VR porn videos and watch them in the pre-loaded Oculus Player or SkyBox Video Player app, which is available to download for free in the Oculus store.

How to stream VR porn on the Oculus GO

One of the real benefits of the Oculus GO versus a smartphone-based headset is that it has been built for just one purpose, which means all the pre-loaded apps and services actually work pretty solidly.
In the case of streaming VR porn directly from sites that offer it, you mostly follow the same series of steps.

Open the Oculus browser > Navigate and log in to your chosen VR porn site > Choose a video > Hit Play

We tested the browser with four different sites (VRBangers, BaDoinkVR, DDFVR (review coming soon), VRTeenrs, and Naughty America VR), of which BaDoinkVR and VRBangers worked the best for streaming directly. The point of this isn’t really to say exactly which sites work best on the Oculus GO though, because we haven’t tested them all on the device.

The Oculus browser, on a site that has streaming enabled, pretty much replicates the effect of BaDoinkVR’s virtual theater mode (which, incidentally, also works fine on the Oculus GO), which is a great thing. The reason we like that feature so much is that it adds a level of convenience and ease of use to what can otherwise be a bit of a faff.

That said, streaming directly isn’t ever going to get you the best possible immersive experience, and the same is true on the Oculus GO. It’s certainly convenient, but only after you’ve tested which resolution video works best for you on each site, as there are slight differences.

How to watch downloaded VR porn on the Oculus GO

Watching downloaded VR porn on the Oculus GO is a simple enough task, for which you can use the pre-loaded video player, or download the SkyBox VR player app from the Oculus Store. We’d recommend trying both video players at first to see which works best for your chosen site, but generally in our testing SkyBox was far more reliable for high-quality playback.

Open the Oculus Browser > Navigate and Log-in to your Chosen VR Porn Site > Choose a Video > Select a Resolution to Download (more on this below) > Open via SkyBox or Oculus Video Player 

There’s a bit of a debate about the best possible resolution to download for playback on the Oculus GO, but in our testing the difference between downloading a 1080p version vs 4K or higher was easily noticeable – you definitely want to go for a 4K option if you have it. Arguably, opting for a 6K one on a site like VRBangers shouldn’t stop the video from working altogether, but it’d likely play at a slower frame rate than intended (making it jerky).

If you want to stream from a local DLNA media server via an app like Plex, you just need to select a different video source in the SkyBox app when you’re opening it.

Oculus GO for VR Porn: In Use

As you’ve probably gathered by now, it’s the sheer convenience of the Oculus GO that makes it so appealing – and this is true whether you’re watching VR porn or just playing some VR games.

That convenience comes at a bit of a premium, as you might expect, but the GO also forces you to make a couple of compromises too. For example, the screen resolution is 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, which is good, but not 4K. (It’s Quad-HD, officially).

Likewise, the Oculus GO has only three degrees of freedom (3DOF) rather than the six offered by a room-scale VR system. For VR porn viewing, this makes no difference. For gaming, it means your controller is more of a pointer and you can’t move about within the environment.

One minor gripe is that it’d also be nice if downloads continued in the browser when you switched to the video player app – this means that you can’t watch one while another downloads, unless you stream one directly in the browser while another downloads.

In terms of charging, you’ll need to plug it in for about an hour to get about an hour of use, which isn’t so bad. The company claims a full charge should give around 2.5 hours of use. What’s more annoying is when the headset repeatedly displays a popup telling you it’s overheating and that you should take a break for a while. This only really happened within the first couple of days of having the headset when actively installing and downloading lots of apps and content.

For the privacy-minded, it’s also good that the Facebook-owned Oculus service doesn’t force you to sign in with a Facebook account – you can just register using your email address instead.

Is the Oculus GO Worth Buying for VR Porn?

Absolutely. Or probably not. It really depends what your current setup is like – we’ve currently got the choice between smartphone headsets, the Oculus GO or the PlayStation VR – and the Oculus GO is getting the most use by far.
If you’ve already got a high-end Samsung smartphone and a GearVR headset, then it’s not worth upgrading to the Oculus GO simply for VR porn, or really for anything.

If, however, you don’t have a high-end phone and are using a Cardboard or Daydream viewer, then it’s a huge step up in terms of convenience and quality. Whether or not that step can justify $200 is down to you, but for us, the simplicity of it all is entirely worth it.

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