Product webpage: https://www.kiwidesign.com/en-it/products/vr-stand-for-oculus-quest-2-quest-1
Intro
This is the first of a series of articles concerning a few VR accessories by Kiwi Design. In the next articles I’m going to review the Replaceable Head Strap for Quest 2, the Pro Version Controller Grips Cover for Quest 2, the Silent VR Cables: Retractable Ceiling Cable Management System for any wired HMD.
Mr. Ryan Dong contacted me via email and kindly invited me to review a few products by Kiwi Design; he wrote: “we believe that genuine reviews from your platform can greatly assist players in gaining a better understanding of our products”.
I’m doing this for no money, I’ll just keep the products. This isn’t a new kind of business for my platform; I’m doing this just because I was kindly invited to do it. I’m happy to help the good VR companies to grow. They granted me total indipendence and freedom of thinking and writing. I’m doing it because of my nerdish passion for VR; I’m having a lot of fun to analyze and test the products! Thanks Ryan!
The products arrived from Hong Kong to my house in Italy in just 9 days and in excellent condition. They have offices in North America and Europe, I think customers are not going to receive products from Hong Kong, that’s just my package.
Unboxing
Give a look at the at the unboxing of the VR Stand.
ASSEMBLY
All the components are well manufacted, plastic material is good quality, elastic and resistant. Instructions are very clear and detailed, in the image you can see just half of the complete instructions. Instructions are in English, German, Francais, Italian, Espanol, Chinese languages. Just a note: it’s not so clear how you have to push the main vertical skeleton downward and hook it properly to the base. You can see the double arrows to suggest high strenght, but at the first attempt I was afraid of breaking the pins; so in a few images below, when I put a few headsets on, you can see it isn’t hooked properly. You’re adviced: you have to push it hard downward and slightly move left and right and forward and back the skeleton until it’s firmly hooked to the base; it’s the only delicate maneuver, the rest of the assembly is smooth as butter, just follow the detailed figures. I had just a little doubt while mounting the hooks for the controllers, but I solved it immediately just looking at the instructions.
Here the well assembled stand.
I appreciate the overall design, very functional and looking quite good; the black color is what you want, so that no light reflection can hit and waste the HMD lenses.
HMD Test
Give a look at the overall look with a few headsets on: PSVR2, HP Reverb G2, Quest 2. As said, here the skeleton was not hooked properly, however it was very stable; obviously when hooked properly, it’s really stable and immovable, you can handle it as you wish, no worry about HMD safety.
As you see I decided to put the G2 controllers with the handles pointing outwards, because I like to see sticks and keys in front of me; however you can also put them pointing inwards in a more compact way, by hanging them through the opposite half of the rings (see below).
As you see, I mounted on Quest 2 the Replaceable Headstrap I’m going to review in my third article.
If you’re curious, I’m going to use the VR Stand for the HP Reverb G2, my daily driver. The following is my definitive configuration.
Price
On Amazon.it, the official Kiwi Design store sells the VR Stand at 38 euro. Weird, on the Kiwi Design website you can buy at lower price, 29 euro, no shipping fees beyond 20 euro. After a quick search, I found other similar stands on Amazon.it ranging from 30 euro to 38 euro. However I can’t say you can trust the sellers or that the products are as good as Kiwi’s. I can say Kiwi Design is really a serious honest reliable company very respectful of customers, selling very good products; you can’t be wrong with Kiwi’s VR Stand, that’s my personal experience. I don’t own other similar items to make proper comparison. Beware of VR stands below 30 euro on Amazon, they look not so functional, reliable, robust, safe, well designed and compact as the Kiwi VR Stand or other more pricey stands.
Conclusions
Kiwi Design deserves your complete trust, you can’t be wrong with their universal VR Stand housing whatsoever wired or not wired HMD with satisfying functionality, stability, safety, robustness, compactness, design. I think the high price goes together with the high quality and reliability that I’m not sure other companies can grant with the same or lower price. My only note is about the not so intuitive way to hook the vertical skeleton properly to the base; maybe it’s just me and my fear to push too hard and break something; maybe Kiwi Design can still implement a better way to secure the main skeleton to the base. However despite my fears nothing got broken in my test and everything is really stable and robust, you can handle the stand as you wish with no worry about HMD safety. So my final ratings of the product are the following:
Company reliability (selling, shipping, customers care) 10/10
Quality/Price ratio 8.5/10
Absolute quality 9.5/10
Overall Design 9/10
Assembly 8/10
Overall look 8/10
Functionality 9/10
Safety 9.5/10
Stability and robustness 9.5/10
Compactness 9.5/10
Video Games Art 