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I'm a bit concerned with the Oculus Rift Reliability & High Defect Rate

TornadoHunter1
Explorer
Ok so I picked up my first Rift Friday got home tried it and it was broken. Took it back to Bestbuy geek squad tested confirmed it was bad. 

The new one works great. I told my friend about it he decided to get one today. He gets home he has the same issue. He goes back to the store gets another one same issue.   

I'm a little concerned with the reliability of the headset. Seems like the defect rate is really high and a lot of people are doing RMA. I love the experience with my rift so far but I'm wondering if I should be concerned with keeping it.  Any extended warranty options? I wonder if Square trade does anything.  What's the manufacture warranty on the headset
16 REPLIES 16

pyroth309
Visionary
What was the issue the headsets were having that are bad? 

Also you can't really go by what you read on forums as typically only people with problems will go on forums to complain. The silent majority are busy enjoying their rifts with no issues. Secondly, It's the nature of early adopter/high tech devices unfortunately. Plenty of bad Vives and PSVRs out there too. I'm not sure on warranty options from best buy purchase as I bought mine from Oculus Direct and they provide a year. Odds are if yours is working great you got a good one and won't have issues. The fact that that Best Buy has so many bad ones at the same location is interesting though. Wonder if they got a bad batch or if they're re-selling returns. 

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Reselling returns happens a lot. If you can look it over in store, it's easy to spot but ordering online you don't know till you get it. I can see it being really common with the Rift given the shortage of supply. OR has people waiting on RMA's for weeks right now due to them simply not having a replacement unit to ship. I suspect many retailers have decided to just sell knowingly broken units and let OR sort it out if they can.

TornadoHunter1
Explorer

pyroth309 said:

What was the issue the headsets were having that are bad? 

Also you can't really go by what you read on forums as typically only people with problems will go on forums to complain. The silent majority are busy enjoying their rifts with no issues. Secondly, It's the nature of early adopter/high tech devices unfortunately. Plenty of bad Vives and PSVRs out there too. I'm not sure on warranty options from best buy purchase as I bought mine from Oculus Direct and they provide a year. Odds are if yours is working great you got a good one and won't have issues. The fact that that Best Buy has so many bad ones at the same location is interesting though. Wonder if they got a bad batch or if they're re-selling returns. 




My HDMI cable was bad.  My friend has the same issue with the HDMI the picture going in and out blinking.  My first unit looked brand new so I'm going to say there's a bad batch more then likely. He purchased his from a Bestbuy in Oklahoma about 1 hour from me and got two faulty ones he's going back tomorrow.

TornadoHunter1
Explorer
The store told my buddy they had 6 returned and the store I got mine at only had 2 on top mine.

TehJumpingJawa
Expert Protege
Regardless of reliability, lack of any repair facilities (both in & out of warranty) should be a concern to all.

Anonymous
Not applicable
It's pretty standard practice to keep selling a "questionably functional" item until it finds a buyer who considers the time and effort of returning it more valuable than the amount they paid for it.

(It's disgraceful but it happens)

phoenixdigital
Heroic Explorer


Regardless of reliability, lack of any repair facilities (both in & out of warranty) should be a concern to all.


Yeah they really need to give users out of warranty some way to bring their Rifts back to life.

Even if they don't want to officially support a spare parts service the least they could do would be to "leak" parts to the grey market from some "mystery seller".

Two of the most important parts would be
  1. Full left or right lens and screen assembly
  2. Ribbon cable that goes to headstrap.
This would solve most of the issues I have seen out there.
CPU: i5 6600K (conservative overclock), GPU: Asus GTX1080Ti (not overclocked), motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming, USB Card 1: Inatek 4 Port, USB Card 2: Startek 2 Port

edmg
Trustee
Most complex devices don't get repaired these days, because it's not cost-effective. I looked at getting the power supply socket on my netbook fixed, and paying someone to do it would have cost $150.

Heck, even the transmission in my car is a $7,000 replaceable unit.

phoenixdigital
Heroic Explorer

edmg said:

Most complex devices don't get repaired these days, because it's not cost-effective.

Most complex devices are designed to last more than 3+ years. To be clear I am not saying the Rift is not designed this way but there are some people in this situation now. It is likely only a few people impacted but those out of warranty now after just over a year with a dead Rift wouldn't see much value in buying a new Rift if it could die again in a year with no chance of repair.

Sure paying someone to fix it would bring the costs up considerably. Wages obviously need to be taken into account.

DIY repair options though is a good middle ground solution. Even if the owner doesn't know how to repair it themselves their Rift still has value and can be sold to someone who does know how to repair it.
CPU: i5 6600K (conservative overclock), GPU: Asus GTX1080Ti (not overclocked), motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming, USB Card 1: Inatek 4 Port, USB Card 2: Startek 2 Port