14 DAY TRIAL // VR has been around for a while, but while this technology has an immense potential to become something truly big, the devices that support its adoption are more or less limited, in the end providing compromised experience that almost nobody seems to be willing to accept.
It’s not a secret that several companies tried to get a taste of VR and some have even invested aggressively in this market, such as Samsung, who in order to boost adoption of its headset decided to offer it free of charge with new flagship phone purchases.
In the meantime, however, more companies joined the VR fun, including DESTEK, a rather unknown brand that sells a headset called V4 for just $19.99 at Amazon. This is a price that’s nearly hard to beat, especially when looking at what the headset has to offer, though as we’ve learned the hard way, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get.
HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE
First of all, we need to get past the fancy words that DESTEK uses to highlight the features of its VR headset and jump straight to the spec sheet.
The most important thing is that the V4 works with every phone featuring displays between 4.5 and 6.0 inches. We’ve tried the headset with smartphones of different sizes, but the best experience was only possible with a screen that’s bigger than 5.5 inches.
In the case of the iPhone 7, while the headset indeed appears to work correctly and provide access to the VR content just like with any other phone, there are little black margins on the left and right sides created by the small display. The iPhone 7 Plus, which has a 5.5-inch display, eliminates these black lines, so the bigger the screen, the better the experience.
Fitting a phone inside the V4 is no rocket science and it takes just a few seconds to master this without even reading the manual. There are 3 points that need to be aligned with your phone, so that when you close the cover, the phone perfectly aligns with the lens.
Despite being quite cheap, the DESTEK V4 certainly doesn’t feel that way. As compared to Alcatel’s VR goggles, which were shipped with the Alcatel IDOL 4S with Windows 10 Mobile, the V4 feels a lot more solid and nicer to touch, with soft materials in the place where the nose typically comes in contact with the headset.
There are adjustable straps to help get the best position, and the one that comes over your head is quite efficient, reducing the pressure on your nose. The headset feels pretty comfortable, of course with the right adjustments to the straps. So if you feel any pressure on your head or on the nose, it means you didn’t make the correct adjustments to the straps.
The DESTEK V4 offers 103 degrees field of view, which is what you’d normally get with standard binoculars. Of course, you’ll certainly feel some visual limitations given that humans have a 210-degree arc of visual field, but it takes just a matter of time until you get used to moving your head more to observe things around you and not just the eyes.
“Don't use it for more than 20 minutes.”
DESTEK says it focused specifically on getting the lenses right, so they are made of acrylic, which according to the company, has a transmittance rate of up to 92 percent. In plain English, this refers to the amount of light that passes through the lenses directly in your eyes.
Of course, this doesn’t sound like a healthy thing since you keep the phone screen so close to your eyes, and this is why the manufacturer used anti-reflective and anti-blue light coating that are supposed to protect eyes from radiation and maintain a clear view.
In real life, despite all these technologies, we do not recommend using the headset for more than 15-20 minutes because you could otherwise experience some eye strain, mostly because of the phone screen being so close to the eyes.
The quality of the lenses is above the average given how affordable the headset is, though if you focus on the image that the phone provides, you can see the pixels on the display. We’ve experienced the best quality in 4K 360-degree videos on YouTube, as the majority of games and apps in VR right now offer just mediocre quality that honestly makes everything look awful and not so close to the immersive experience that these companies promise.
The headset also comes with a so-called conductive touch button, which is supposed to act as a controller in games and to give you some browsing options when watching videos on YouTube, such as playing or pausing. There are moments, however, when this button doesn’t work correctly, and we’ve experienced this more often with phones that have screens smaller than 5 inches.
The headset comes with an adjustable pupil distance, and make sure you give these controls a try because otherwise the image might look blurry.
One of the biggest problems with the headset is the lack of a headphone port. While there’s some space for a wire between the phone and the headset cover, a dedicated headphone slot would have been nicer, making it more convenient to enjoy a better audio experience. Wireless headphones connected to the smartphone are the better option, obviously, if you own them.
THE BOTTOM LINE
After using the DESTEK V4 headset with iPhones for several days in a row, I can’t be anything but surprised with the performance that you get at such a low price.
Of course, there are setbacks too, such as the lack of a headphone jack and the controller button that works only at certain times, but otherwise, it’s an affordable piece of technology that lets you experience the world of VR with nearly any phone out there.
I’ve tried pretty much everything that you can find online right now (yes, including X-rated movies, obviously for testing purposes), but for the moment, I’ll say the same thing I said several years ago when I tried the first VR headset: this industry has plenty of potential, and what we’re getting right now is just the beginning.
Videos are the best way to experience VR and content on YouTube is growing at a fast pace, so you can watch fireworks, airplanes taking off, roller coasters, and swim with sharks in 4K. Games, on the other hand, are just a joke for the time being, and it more or less makes sense, because investing in such content is something that not a lot of big companies plan to do given the limitations of VR tech.
But in the end, to answer your question on whether you should purchase the DESTEK V4 VR headset, for $20 there’s no doubt you should. This is one of the most affordable headsets right now and it’s fun to try it out, especially with a phone that has a high-quality screen.
