Price

First, the HTC Vive's $800 retail price is going to hurt your wallet a lot more, compared with the $600 Oculus Rift. But really, if you're already willing to spend that much, you probably won't feel the price difference. Oculus users should squirrel away some money for its motion controllers, which are set to debut later this year, as well as additional sensors for room-scale VR.

Of course, those numbers don't take into account the price of a powerful gaming PC. Oculus has partnered with the likes of Dell, Alienware and ASUS to offer rigs starting at $1,000, and if you were to build your own computer from scratch, it would probably cost around $700 to $800. Both VR solutions recommend an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD R9 290 video card, and at least an Intel Core i5 4590 or equivalent processor.

Ergonomics and comfort

Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are lighter than the prototypes, thank goodness. The Vive is heavier than the Rift, though, and it's also a lot bulkier thanks to a plethora of cables coming out of the headset. The Vive is also a bit more front-heavy, which leads to additional strain on your face.

Both devices give you a decent amount of flexibility with adjustable headstraps, but no matter what I did the Vive just wouldn't sit as comfortably as the Rift, and its cables would also get in the way far more often.

I'll admit, comfort is a very subjective thing. But while I managed to have the Oculus on for hours without much of an issue, the Vive always made its presence known, either by pressing down on my nose or forehead a bit too much. I'd also have to constantly readjust its cables. That's the price you pay for room-scale VR today.

Graphics and immersion

Both the Rift and Vive feature two OLED displays running at 1200 by 1080 pixels each, so you won't notice a resolution difference between them. The Vive's displays appeared a bit sharper to my eyes, but not by a huge margin. For the most part, the quality of what you see will depend on your graphics card and CPU.

The headsets handle head tracking in completely different ways: The Vive uses two base stations and a plethora of sensors on its front, whereas the Rift relies on a single sensor that sits on your desk. I didn't have any trouble with head tracking for either device. The Vive's method allows for room-scale VR, while the Rift at most lets you stand up from your chair and look around.

Of course, the Vive's motion controllers help quite a bit when it comes to immersion. They effectively let you reach out and touch the virtual world. It doesn't take long for you to get the hang of grabbing objects, or using realistic gestures to interact with games. In comparison, the Rift relies on its bundled Xbox One controller to interact with games and VR demos.

Ultimately, the Vive simply has more "wow" factor when it comes to showing off the benefits of virtual reality.

Ecosystem

Unlike game-console launches, you've got a rich selection of VR titles to play on the Rift and Vive. Many titles, like Elite Dangerous, work across both platforms. Games that rely heavily on motion controls can only work on the Vive for now, but I'd bet many of them will also support Oculus once its new controllers land. There are only a few exclusive games at the moment, such as Lucky's Tale, an Oculus Studios title that's bundled with every Rift, but we'll definitely see more of those over the next few years.