Genuine Oculus Link Cable Feedback

[Kung-Foo-Kamel]

Just received my official Oculus Link cable.

Firstly, I still think 5 meters is a little, short, needs to be at least 7, but 10 would have been much better, specially for the price.

I have an Asrock Mini Itx X370 Fatality with USB-C 3.1 Port, I'm happy to say, I just played about an hour of Pavlov, maybe longer, and battery has held at 100%, so confirmed, this motherboard has enough juice to charge the headset.

Now for the bad, the cable is not soft and flexible, and ends up like a 3 leaf clover tangle continuously, its actually worse than the thick active extension cable and the 2 meter USB C to USB A cable I have been using, I ended up about a meter from PC with huge friggen knot strung between us.

The cable is thicker than I expected, and certainly less flexible than I was expecting, I have a set of V2 Kiwi pro retractors coming in a few days, so I will string it up in the air and see how it performs there.

It feels like the cable is braided internally as it wont twist at all, only coils and loops up, basically its stiff, way stiffer than my Alogic cable.

I'm hoping it will work with a 1 or 2 meter soft extension on it and still charge, otherwise, if it tangles when suspended above me, I wont be using it, Id rather string up the active cable and have the soft 2m cable connected to that, as that one doesn't tangle.

After some further messing about:

Saving grace, if anyone is interested, I have a 2mtr cheap as hell ebay special USB C extension cable, and it works perfect with the offical link cable, this is great, I dont know if it will charge the headset properly, but once I play for a few hours I will post the results back here....(Played an hour or so again, no it doesn't keep charge, still slowly discharges with extension on the end.)

The cheap cable can be twisted with ease, but the link cable cant, it will only rotate about 25 to 45 degrees before getting rigid, where all the other cables I have can twist 360 degrees before starting to build resistance, I would rather flog out a cheap section at the end, vs the link cable any way.

So these are my options:

Option 1: 5m Active USB Extension with 2m USB A to USB C 3.1 Cable: Doesnt charge properly, but performs perfect, the extension is stiff and tangles up pretty bad, but the 2m part is very flexable and reduces the tangle

Option 2: 5m Oculus Link cable with 2m USB-C extension: Doesnt charge properly, but performs perfect, the Oculus Cable is stiff and tangles up pretty bad, but the 2m part is very flexable and reduces the tangle

Option 3: 5m Oculus Link cable: Charges the headset, is a little short, and tangles up fast, and becomes even shorter very quickly due to tangles and knots.

if you dont play for any longer than say 5 to 6hrs at a time, then save your money and go with option 1, Option 3 is for those who dont need as much cable length, who dont play games that involve a lot of running about and want there headset to remain fully charged.

Not real sure who option 2 is for, cant see any benefits at all??? I suppose those like me that have purchased it and want to make use of it, but at this point, its about as good as what I had already.

Once I have my Kiwi retractable system setup on the ceiling I will test all three options and provide feedback.

For reference, my play space is a little bigger than 3m x 3m (thats 9x9 foot for you guys in the US) and I loose .5m of cable from back to front of the PC, so a 5m cable is a bit of a struggle, specially with it knotting up continuously

Additional Info:

After the first test run at playing Pavlov for around an hour, I have actually damaged the cable, its got a kink or two in it already from being twisted up so badly, there not bad, but it looks like the braiding under the outer insulation layer has kinked a little, I was able to work out, but you can see a little bump, this also never happened with the cheap active cable i have.

[Maxxgold]

Thank you for this post :smiley:

Good info about the cable itself, but we want to know what the quality of the video produced to the Quest while linked. Just the 80 dollar link cable, with no extension cables connected. 

[Eastcoast78]

Thanks for the review, ordered the OME cable last night. Hoping to play plane with a higher rez cockpit, using the wifi on the quest wasn't so great lol..

[Kung-Foo-Kamel]

The cable does not make any difference to the image quality, either Link works or doesn't, its about the practical use of the cable.
I'm perfectly happy with image produced through Link with any cable that works, its just a matter of Link working + keeping headset charged + being long enough + being flexible enough, the Oculus cable ticks 2 of these.

[Eastcoast78]

ive seen vids of people using rifts on xplane and and the cockpit text is good, im guessing wheres its over wifi on a 2.4ghz router dont help. Have you played xplane?

[Kung-Foo-Kamel]

I did a long time ago, when I had an Oculus DK2 headset, Wireless will only work with 5ghz on the Quest, 2.4 doesnt have the bandwidth required, and I found when I last used it (ALVR), that image quality was okay (Not as good as Link) when selecting higher res but latency is a huge issue, so its useless for real gaming, but with a flight sim, it would probably be fine, but saying that, the Oculus Link cable would also be perfect as your not really running about you cockpit, and the Link cable will provide the best visual and the lowest latency, and keep your headset fully charged, you also have the ability to ramp up the resolution, video encoding level and reduce the foveated curvature.

Text is perfectly readable with the Quest using Link, I play Rift titles and I have over 100 VR titles in Steam, the Quest has brilliant image quality over Link, with both genuine cable and any working third party cable, there are youtube videos demonstrating this, and in some cases it out performs the Rift S in image quality.

The image quality will have nothing to do with the brand of cable your using, Link either works, or it doesn't period.

Image quality is bound to the hardware you have inside your PC and the Quest's limitations.

[DaftnDirect]

I think people will need to decide what is the priority, untethered VR or access to Rift games in their Quest.

My view is that there will always be compromises if using one headset to do both things.

Link is a great addition to the functionality of the Quest but I don’t think it will ever quite match the capabilities of having headsets designed specifically for either PC or for untethered. Flexibility of the cable is one of many many factors.

I hope people manage their expectations accordingly.

Thanks for the review by the way!

[hideinlight]

I think I got lucky with my cable selection. 5m Cable Creations active cable and 3m Ivoler, my headset seems to keep it's charge when plugged in. 

I kind of like the flexibility and overall feel of the Ivoler cable. I think a two cable solution is probably the best choice atm.

[Kung-Foo-Kamel]

@hideinlight I agree, If one is looking to purchase a cable for link and has USB-C, then grab the Official cable, if you only have USB 3, then go for an active cable + 1 to 3 meter additional cable.

If one has a working active cable setup, purchasing the Official cable is probably not a good solution and is probably a wast of money, specially in AU where it costs $129, my 5m active cable was $30 and the 2m USB-C 3.1 cable was around $20.

@DaftnDirect Your correct, and for me, the compromise is the charging side, I will sacrifice this to have better cable comfort.

To be honest, I would purchase a Rift S, as 99.9% of my VR use is PC, but I just dont like the specs, it was not a real upgrade from my WMR headset, and offered no major advantages, if the Rift S had the same OLED panels as the Quest but had 90hz refresh rate, I would have purchased one by now.

There just isn't anything else compelling on the market, Vive and Index are stupidly priced, and I dont want external sensors either, the Cosmos is way over priced and terrible software support, way behind Oculus, WMR is a total flop due to lack any real support, so you are left with Oculus being the only real solution of being very aggressively priced, brilliant support, some the best games in the industry, but just a little lacking on the specs front, and out of the two choices Oculus have, only one is really compelling and ground breaking.

If the day comes where Oculus can offer a wireless solution to Link, like UnLink via a stand alone wireless USB dongle for the PC and it has similar visual quality as what we get now, they will most likely see their sales double or even triple, as this is what everyone really wants, and is why I will keep supporting the product.

I made this post here and similar on Reddit as I would like people to manage their expectations, if they already have a good setup, then maybe think twice about this solution, as fo myself, if the official cable is not long enough on its own, and I need to run an extension on it, then its pointless to me, as I gained exactly nothing from it.

[BlackEagleGermany]

You forgot the Price of the cable and the different about cable/price