Aero is a tethered PC VR headset that launched in 2021 with the highest angular resolution on the consumer market, a position it solely held until Pimax Crystal started shipping this year. All Varjo’s previous headsets were for businesses only – Aero was a new direction in selling to consumers.

It features 2880×2720 per eye LCD displays, aspheric lenses with up to 115° horizontal field of view, and eye tracking enabling automatic IPD adjustment and foveated rendering in supported software.

Like Bigscreen Beyond though, Varjo Aero requires SteamVR Tracking base stations which aren’t included, and nor are any controllers.

Aspheric lenses have sharper clarity than the fresnel lenses used in most VR headsets until recently, but they also introduce geometric distortion.

In our review of Varjo Aero we praised the headset’s stunning visual clarity, relatively wide field of view, precise eye tracking, and the comfort delivered by its hybrid halo strap design.

However, we criticized the distracting warping distortion and the unnatural shape of the field of view, which has a rigid horizontal cutoff at the bottom, as well as the lack of a built-in microphone.

A Varjo Aero with Valve base stations and Index controllers will now set you back just under $1600, the same price as Pimax Crystal which has inside-out tracking and comes with controllers. The Aero setup should give you better tracking quality, but Crystal promises local dimming and a wireless mode, and Pimax claims its lenses don’t suffer from the same distortion as Varjo’s – though we have yet to verify that claim.