At typically more than 2x the cost. I've played Alyx on both, the Index is absolutely not a 2x better experience.

I'm no fan of their corporate parent either, but the value proposition on Quest 2 for general purpose PC VR gaming (especially prior to this price increase) was remarkable given size of subsidy Meta were prepared to make on price.

It was 3x the cost now only 2.5x.

It's a bit baffling that the Index is still as expensive as it is, it's three years old and has never gone on sale even once nevermind had a permanent price cut. In a vacuum it's worth what people are willing to pay, but Valve are a software company selling hardware to promote their ecosystem, which they're ceding to the much more affordable Oculus ecosystem by keeping the premium price.

It's still a nice headset but it's showing it's age, the Quest 2 has higher resolution screens and the ability to stream PC VR wirelessly is a killer feature which the Index doesn't support.

No only that, but it's perpetually out of stock in most regions as well.

or an HP reverb G2, or HTC vive or one of dozens of other non meta vr sets...

that said a cheap quest 2 second hand with virtual desktop makes for probably the best wireless experience / dollar you can have

To add to that: Even though the Pico brand is now owned by Bytedance (TikTok) I really enjoy their Pico Neo 3 (it's a hardware equivalent to the Quest 2, actually due to active cooling it has a bit more performance headroom).

The wireless streaming works great. There is no account setup whatsoever. Null, nada, nichts. You can just boot up the HMD and you're good to go.

I find it strange when people hail them as a more privacy-friendly alternative to Meta though.

Personally I think ByteDance (and TikTok in particular) is an even worse company than Facebook ever was. It's like they learned from Facebook and made it worse.