Feeling flush? HTC hopes the price of its headset doesn’t put people off, as the battle for virtual reality dominance heats up

HTC’s Vive virtual reality headset finally has a UK price: a hefty £689.

So, what do you get if you splash out a month’s rent (in London at least)? There’s the headset itself, co-created by gaming company Valve, which has two 1080 x 1200 screens offering a 110-degree viewing area, as well as a front-facing camera for augmented reality features and a plethora of other sensors for head- and motion-tracking.

The headset also comes with three apps: the tongue-in-cheek “Job Simulator”; Northway Games’ Fantastic Contraption, a 3D VR update of an old Flash-based physics game; and the Google-developed Tilt Brush, which lets you paint in 3D space.

Unlike the Facebook-owned Oculus, which retails for $600 (without a specific UK price), the Vive will also ship with two wireless VR controllers, and “room-scale” movement sensors, capable of tracking an area 5 sq m. The Oculus, with its more stripped-back offering, comes with an Xbox One controller – although the Oculus Touch controllers will be arriving later this year – and a movement set-up that can handle a 1.5m by 3m area. The Oculus does, however, include built-in audio while the Vive will require a separate pair of headphones.

Despite the eye-watering price, ownership of a VR headset alone is not enough to play around in virtual worlds. Both the Oculus and Vive require a top-end gaming PC to run, with graphics cards (GeForce GTX 970 or higher) and CPUs (an Intel i5-4590 or better). The Vive can slink by on slightly less RAM than the Oculus (4GB compared to 8GB required by the latter) and only monopolises one USB 2.0 port rather than three USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0, but those minimum specs are a hard minimum. In practice, most will end up buying or building a dedicated PC for VR, which will add another £750-£1,000 on the price.

And next month, the final contender in the three-way bout for VR dominance will be arriving, as Sony lifts the lid on its Playstation VR system. A very different proposition, the VR will work with the company’s PS4 console, rather than requiring a gaming PC.

HTC being HTC, there’s one final bonus to having a Vive: the ability to make phone calls, read text messages and check calendar events without taking off the headset. Which seems unlikely to sway many, to be honest.

The Vive is available to pre-order from Monday 29 February, and will be arriving in homes from 5 April.