Vest 3 - Really Neat, Too Finicky, Too Expensive
Pros:
- The experience is undeniably interesting. It definitely adds a missing element if you’re interested in the full experience of movies, games, etc.
- Latency adjustability is really helpful
- well made and comfortable and pretty easy to operate once you understand it.
Cons:
-Does not currently support directional haptic simulation, every vibration happens at the same intensity over the whole vest. What is the point of a multi-motor system if they all do the same thing at the same time?
- haptic quality is degraded (input levels too low) with certain connections.
- without the ability to tune it, it has issues isolating certain frequencies so there is a point where it just feels like it is vibrating sporadically with no connection to the audio.
- headphone and mic audio is often poor when linked through the vest
- the motors are pretty loud at higher intensities (but I’m not sure how that could even be avoided so it’s hardly a fault, it just is what it is)
Overall:
It is really cool, but it is just too expensive for what it is. This is going to be one of those products that has updates rolled out overtime and may be worth it a year or so from now but as it is currently I just cannot justify spending that much and getting such an unfinished product. You spend more time trying to get all set up properly than actually enjoying it. Using a headset with a microphone through the vest wasn’t the greatest experience. I used multiple headsets and multiple methods to connect to try and get eliminate variables but no matter what you did audio was always degraded, and I never really got the microphone to work properly. I really wanted this to be worth it, but it just isn’t right now.
The biggest issue that I have is that you have a 30 day moneyback guarantee that if you are not satisfied with the product you Can return it no questions asked. This would be amazing if it didn’t feel like this was a half-finished product. The vest is really nice and the quality of the build is great but that’s where it ends. allegedly there are more updates in the future to include directional haptic feedback, but we would be required to purchase additional hardware on top of the $500 vest. So not only do I have to spend more money to get it to do what it should’ve done when I bought it but it’s going to happen sometime after the return window is closed. regrettably I asked to return it and customer service was more than happy to extend my return window if I was willing to sleep on it. I still ended up wanting to return it and once I got my return information to send it back it has been radio silence for over a week. FedEx has confirmed it was delivered but no one will answer my existing support ticket or any new ones I have submitted to see if/when I will be refunded.
I really wanted to like this product and maybe it will truly be what I hoped it would be in the future but unfortunately there’s still too much left to be desired for $500.