UPDATE: This deal has now ended. Go has returned to its Black Friday weekend sale price of $149.
Facebook’s Oculus Go budget VR headset is just $120 right now on Amazon USA for Cyber Monday’s VR Lightning Sale.
The Oculus Go is a low end standalone headset designed with affordability as its core goal. It launched in May 2018 for $200. Standalone means it doesn’t require a PC or phone to operate (however you do need a phone for first time setup).
According to Facebook, Go is typically used for media consumption, such as watching Netflix on a virtual big TV or viewing immersive 360 degree videos from platforms such as YouTube.
Go was also marketed as a social VR device when it launched, but in October Facebook retired Go’s social features and has no plans to replace them. However, third party social apps such as Bigscreen, AltspaceVR and vTime are still available.
A Very Limited Form Of VR
The Oculus Go has a major limitation that no other major VR headset has; it can only track the rotation of your head, not the position. This means the world feels locked to your head when you lean forward, backward, or to the side. This isn’t particularly comfortable and can make some people feel sick.
The controller (and there is only one, not two) also has the same limitation. This means it acts as more of a laser pointer than actually having your hands in VR.
These limitations mean that Go cannot play the kinds of games and apps that Facebook’s higher end Oculus Quest standalone headset, which has positional tracking and Touch controllers, can play. Unlike Quest, you can’t play Beat Saber, or Job Simulator, or SUPERHOT, or Tilt Brush, or Vader Immortal, on Oculus Go.
Additionally, we have reason to believe that Facebook may be planning a successor to Go in the future, though we don’t expect this would arrive until around 2021.
So while $120 is the lowest we’ve ever seen the Oculus Go sold for, we don’t recommend it unless you’re aware that this is more of a portable personal cinema and 360 degree video viewer than a “true” VR headset.
But if a media viewer is what you’re looking for, there’s arguably no better headset at no better price than Go at $120.
