I’m fairly sure the Ars review is plain wrong on this as well. Measurements in other reviews show the Quest 2 at 503g, vs the Quest 1 at 580g. That is around a 14% weight improvement, not 10%. On top of that, the headset depth has been reduced by 1-2cm from pictures which will improve things substantially due to reduced moment.

I don’t agree that selling an improved headstrap is admitting “they messed up the headstrap”. They had to reduce costs to hit $300 to appeal to the mainstream casual market. I think it’s awesome they are finally offering a premium headstrap for those of us who want comfortable VR and are willing to pay a bit extra for it.

The reduced cost and increased portability make it clearly the right choice for the product IMO. Cost and convenience are the #1 and #2 barriers keeping people out of VR. Once people see the value they can decide to spend on the headstrap for upgraded comfort.

They didn't increase portability from the Quest 1 though.

All they've done is forced the consumer to pick between portability but a bad user experience or no-portability, $50 cost, and a basically acceptable one.

At least the Quest 1's headstrap was basically passable, this isn't.

The cloth headstrap is absolutely more portable than Quest 1. The $50 upgrade cost is more than compensated by the $100 discount on the headset itself.

I'm pretty sure comfort is one of the top priority there, so I really doubt the comfort was not improved between two Quest versions, it makes no sense to me, better check other reviews.