HTC Vive Base Station

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Brandon Augustine - Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2018

I love spending money!

So one of my base stations died and I had to buy 2 of these because the base station I had before was ver.1.0 so I got to spend another $150. I am so glad i had the opportunity to give this company another $300 on top of the $300 for the trackers on top of the $500 for the headset. I mean man this is great. :)

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Sugarcube101 - Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019

Before you jump to the conclusion your base station has gone bad...

So, as for what I received, it works great, as advertised. An excellent version 2 replacement. The conditions that led me to ordering this were kind of silly, though. One of my base stations was no longer tracking correctly, and debugging the hardware, fiddling with the mounts and angles, and removing other light sources from the room did nothing to help. So I sent it to the HTC repair center, but now I don't know when to expect it back, so ended up just ordering another one from here to keep things moving. Kind of annoyed by that, but whatever. Imagine my surprise when hooking up the replacement, it was having the same tracking issues. I eventually figured out that there was an environmental factor I hadn't been considering: some framed pictures were put on the wall near the play area recently, and their reflective plexiglass was seriously messing with the invisible lasers that the base stations use. After they were removed from the area, everything worked fine. If you're having tracking issues, consider looking for potentially reflective surfaces rather than jumping to the wrong conclusion like I did, and that includes anything, not just mirrors.

3.0 out of 5 stars

By logan - Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2018

Rotor failure.

Unfortunately, this is now my third base station I've had for my Vive. I've had the included 2 since launch and one day one has a rotor failure that would not be covered by warranty, and repairing it would cost about as much as buying a new one. So I bought one here. Less than a month after I bought the base station, it had the same failure as the first. So I had to return it and get a new one. And that was the only good part about the base station really, the amazon return service. If you have a vive I do recommend buying your replacement equipment here to keep from going through the hassle that is the Htc customer support.

3.0 out of 5 stars

By J.Foster - Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2020

I absolutely loathe these things.

So I honestly don't know how to rate these. The things aren't cheap, you obviously need them for tracking, and when they work they just work, but when they die it's a hassle. The only thing can be said about their regular normal use is they can be slightly annoying. They have two spinning motors in them which hum and buzz, and can seem to be loud and annoying at certain times and almost inaudible at others. If you have them attached to lighthouse poles in your room or have them hard-mounted on a wall or something similar they can make some noise and vibrate. However, these lighthouses seem to have an unknown probability value. I personally had one die after less than 2 years of light use (less than 72 hours run time/in-game time), I had one replacement arrive DOA with the same issue as I was needing to replace the dead one (bad laser diode), and you'll find countless threads online of these things kicking the bucket at seemingly random times and without warning, along with horror stories from HTC's customer service. You'll also find people saying they've used theirs pretty heavily for years and they're still going strong, or someone who's had one for commercial use that's had the thing running nonstop for years and it still works. So it's sort of playing Russian Roulette with these things. Is yours going to die one week after the warranty expires on it? Is it going to die after 3 months and you're forced to deal with the legendarily horrible HTC support? Will it last 10 years and you never have a problem? Flip a coin and find out. Another problem that may or may not appear over time with failure rates on these is that the original Vive which has now been discontinued cannot use the version 2.0 tracking base stations, it's only compatible with these 1.0 versions. There are no real 3rd party options for these things, so if the production of these is stopped and failure rates remain unknown but a definite eventuality due to moving parts, you may be forced into upgrading sooner than you planned to, or replacement parts may continue to rise in price if production is stopped due to the discontinuation of the original Vive.

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Andrew S. Giovannini - Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2019

New Version works PERFECTLY with OLD Base Station...

I'm not sure why some reviews are claiming the new light houses with different LED Array don't work with an older base station... I just bought this to replace an older failing unit and paired with an older base station and it syncs up and works perfectly fine, despite both having different LED Layouts. This fixed all my issues. You DO NOT need to buy a "matching" base station... If you are still having tracking issues... it's likely another reason...

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Dove Family - Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2020

Replacement for Original Lighthouse 1.0

If you want to prolong the life of this device please enable the option to turn it off when not in use. Steam VR Settings -> Devices -> Base Station -> Enable Power Saver The device has many mechanical parts and spinning devices. The less it is on the longer it will last. I ordered this when my original lighthouse kicked the bucket. This is an exact replacement of Lighthouse V1.0. This is NOT v2.0 for the Index or Vive Pro. These are used with the OG Vive. Hope it helps!

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Kyle Biggs - Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2017

Works with a Vive Pre base station

One of my Vive Pre base stations failed. These were the earliest versions, so they don't automatically turn off. It had been running continuously for almost a year, and likely succumbed to vibration induced damage. It had spent some time attached to one of those extending floor to ceiling poles a lot of people have been recommending, but the outer housing of that pole wasn't snug against the inside part, allowing a bit of rattle. Anyway, even though they are vastly different versions, they seem to be working fine. I have them in Wireless mode right now, with no tracking issues after a week of testing.