I'm the quality and compliance manager at a VR hardware distributor. I check roughly 200 headsets a year before they ship to enterprise clients—and over the last four years, I've rejected about 6% of first deliveries for things like miscalibrated lenses, dead pixels, and audio imbalance.
So when I say the HP Reverb G2 is still one of the headsets I recommend most, it's not because I read a spec sheet and got excited. It's because I've handled a ton of these units, set up a ton of training stations, and watched a lot of trainees use them without thinking about the hardware at all.
But here's the thing: the Reverb G2 is not for everyone. In 2025, with HP having officially retired the product line, recommending it might sound like nostalgia. It isn't. It's a narrow recommendation—and I'll tell you exactly how narrow.
Why the display still punches above its weight
According to HP's product documentation (hp.com, accessed January 2025), the Reverb G2 uses dual LCD displays at 2160×2160 per eye, running at 90Hz. In 2020, that made it the sharpest mainstream headset on the market. In 2025, newer headsets have caught up on paper. But in practice, the G2 still wins in one specific situation: reading small text in a fixed-position simulation.
In our Q3 2024 evaluation, we ran the same text-heavy training module on a G2 and on a newer standalone headset. Seven out of ten evaluators picked the G2 for readability—and they didn't know which headset was which. Small text, instrument dials, and fine UI details were simply easier to resolve. That matters more than people think. A trainee who has to read a pressure gauge inside a simulator doesn't care about the headset's ecosystem. They care about not squinting.
Our procurement team pushed back on this once, back in 2021. The spreadsheet said a cheaper headset was the better deal—30% lower cost, similar resolution on paper. But something felt off when I tested it: the text looked softer, and the image had a slight wobble when moving your head. We ran a blind evaluation anyway. The cheaper headset lost 8 of 10 readability tests. We bought more G2 units, and I still stand by that decision.
The spec everyone ignores: audio
Here's the counterintuitive part. People obsess over resolution, refresh rate, and field of view. But in my line of work, audio is the spec that quietly decides whether a headset actually gets used in a training room.
Everything I read about VR spec sheets says resolution is king. In practice, I've seen more training programs fail because of audio and comfort than because of pixels.
The Reverb G2's speakers were co-developed with Valve. They sit off-ear in the headstrap, meaning nothing touches the trainee's ears. That sounds minor until you run a VR lab where twelve headsets are shared across three shifts. Earbuds get lost, swapped, and honestly, they get unsanitary fast. Off-ear speakers eliminate that whole category of maintenance.
The off-ear design also means trainees can still hear what's happening around them. That's a safety feature, not a drawback. If someone starts feeling simulator sickness, you want the trainer to notice and react quickly—not to have both people sealed off in earbuds.
And the audio quality itself is genuinely good. In a blind test we ran in 2023, 80% of our project managers rated the G2's built-in audio as “professional-grade” without knowing which headset they were listening to. That's way more than I can say for most headsets in its price range.
People sometimes ask whether they should also buy a dedicated gaming headset—an Astro, or a PlayStation wireless headset—for their VR stations. My answer is usually no. Adding an over-ear headset on top of a VR headset adds weight, cables, and batteries to manage. The G2 already has the audio figured out. Use it.
And no, I don't mean conference-room headsets. I've reset enough Plantronics headsets for one lifetime—different category, different review.
The honest list of limitations
Now the part that doesn't make me popular with sales teams: the Reverb G2 has real weaknesses, and if any of them is a deal-breaker for you, you should not buy it.
Tracking has blind spots. The G2 uses four internal cameras for inside-out tracking. When your hands are in front of you, it works fine. Reach behind your back or drop a controller low at your hip, and tracking can stutter or lose the controller briefly. In seated and steady scenarios—flight sims, machinery training, inspection tasks—this rarely comes up. If your training involves full-body movement or fast room-scale action, this headset will frustrate you.
The cable is an ongoing maintenance item. The Reverb G2 is tethered, and that cable is thick. Without overhead cable guidance, it will get stepped on, kinked, and eventually damaged. I learned that the hard way in 2022 when we set up a demo without cable management and someone caught their foot in it. That was my fault, and it cost us a unit. For permanent installations, I now specify overhead pulley kits for every G2 setup. At least, every one where the customer doesn't insist on trying it “cheap” first and learning the same lesson.
The software platform has an expiration risk. This is the big one. Microsoft announced the deprecation of Windows Mixed Reality in December 2023. The G2 runs on WMR, and while it still works with SteamVR today—and that's where most enterprise VR content lives—the platform won't see meaningful updates going forward. If your company needs a guaranteed software roadmap and a multi-year support window, the G2 is not a safe purchase.
Also, the field of view is narrower than some newer headsets. You notice a mild “goggles” effect around the edges. It's not enough to bother most people in focused work, but it exists.
What the skeptics say
I hear the obvious objections. “The Reverb G2 is discontinued. Why would we buy dead hardware?” That's a fair question, and here's my honest answer: enterprise VR projects aren't about having the newest hardware. They're about having a validated setup that works with your software, your space, and your trainees. We've had G2 units in active service for over three years now, and their failure rate is lower than most of the newer headsets we've tested. Discontinued doesn't mean broken.
But it also doesn't mean “safe.” If your procurement rules require five years of hardware warranty and guaranteed firmware updates, you should absolutely skip the Reverb G2. That's not me being diplomatic—that's the real answer.
As for the Quest 3: yes, it's a great headset with better tracking, a massive software library, and a lower price than the G2 launched at. For consumer use, I'd probably tell you to buy one. But the comparison doesn't quite hold for B2B. The Quest 3 is a standalone, room-scale device. The G2 is a high-resolution display instrument for a fixed PC workstation. Different tools for different jobs.
The bottom line
Here's my recommendation, and I'm going to make it specific.
The HP Reverb G2 is still worth buying in 2025 for businesses running fixed training and simulation stations—especially when display detail, long-session comfort, and clean built-in audio matter, and when a tethered PC headset is acceptable.
It's not worth buying if you need:
- Room-scale mobility or full-body tracking
- A multi-year software support commitment
- Comprehensive warranties on new hardware
In four years of reviewing headsets for enterprise use, the most expensive lesson I've learned is this: no headset does everything. The ones that try to please everyone usually end up average at the details. The Reverb G2 has a specific job, and it does that job really well.
That's why I recommend it—and that's exactly why I tell some people not to buy it. Honesty about limitations is what makes a recommendation worth anything.