James Bentley, hardware writer
This week I’ve been: Enjoying and bearing the British summertime in equal measure, whilst playing too many deck builders (Here’s looking at you, 2 fights in 2 tight spaces and Moonsigil Atlas).
There’s part of me that feels like I’ve somewhat fallen for the sunk cost fallacy of VR. I’ve always liked VR headsets, but don’t think I’ve quite got the same value out of them as I did with the very first one I owned in lockdown at the start of 2020. That is, until now.
After buying myself a Meta Quest 3, I thought, “This time, I’ll recapture that feeling”. I thought the years since really being a big VR would deliver me a trove of awesome games, and there are certainly some standout offerings like Asgard’s Wrath and Batman: Arkham Shadow (both of which were helped by Meta, which has seemingly jumped ship from VR gaming), but nothing quite willed me to strap the headset on my face every single day.
That was, until the start of 2026, when I thought I’d fully try committing to VR exercising as an experiment and commitment to my future health. One thing I can say right off the bat is that I became less adventurous after the first month. Where I tried a decent few apps and exercises in January, I basically stuck to my FitXR subscription and used that almost exclusively. Any other VR exercises I did were just a welcome consequence of playing VR normally.
Even now, I coudn’t call FitXR the best way to VR exercise, simply because I haven’t tried enough other ways to know. In the same way that I picked my local gym when I signed up and called it a day, with exercising, I’m looking for convenience. I’m looking for something to slot into my day, a quick fifteen minutes at lunch, or ten minutes to wake myself up.
I find VR’s immersiveness not only engaging, but I willingly pushed far beyond where I would in a normal exercise
And wake me up, it does. I find VR’s immersiveness not only engaging, but I willingly pushed far beyond where I would in a normal exercise. I found myself panting and sweaty after half-hour sessions, and I would previously struggle much more to get there with simple callisthenics or walking. A gym is always an option, but I think the public, social element of it has always made me a touch too self-conscious to fully go for it. I don’t mind an exercise so tough it leaves me on the floor, in the comfort of my own home. And that’s before mentioning the trek home after the gym.
The convenience of VR is its biggest selling point to me. If I have a spare ten minutes, I can simply throw it on and go for a little while. More formal exercise requires a level of preplanning that ends up eating up more of my time than I often plan for.
Pros and cons of VR exercising
✅ Can do in the comfort of your home with no extra equipment (other than the headset)
✅ Fun
❌ Pricey initial cost
❌ Nobody likes a sweaty headset
It does have its defined downsides, though. Despite paying hundreds for my Meta Quest 3, I’m still paying around $10 a month for my subscription, and though it’s cheaper than a gym, I don’t get any of the equipment that a gym membership affords me. As well as this, there’s nothing quite as distinctly uncomfortable as a sweaty faceplate.
I find a wipe-down and air out, and maybe a spare faceplate does the job, but it’s still a bit messier than I would otherwise like. But I knew going in that I’d have to push through uncomfortability. And I’ve done a lot of that over the last half a year.
I’ve woken up with sore legs because I’ve decided to take on a course with a lot of jumping, or found my arms sore because I wanted to push it with a hard HIIT exercise. And I’ve managed to find some joy in that. I’ve found myself liking a little burn in my leg because it feels like a sign of how much exercise I’ve done.
I’ve found myself liking a little burn in my leg because it feels like a sign of how much exercise I’ve done
I set myself a few rules before I went into this whole experiment, to make sure I had some consistency. My ground rules were pretty simple a few months ago. Apple has an exercise function, where you can make ‘rings’ and you fill those rings by doing a pre-structured amount of exercise. It has a red ring for movement, a green ring for exercise, and a blue ring for standing.
I tend to finish the red and blue ones naturally, but the green one, at 30 minutes a day, is something I consciously have to fill. And that is what VR is for. But if, somehow, I manage to fill that on a normal day, I promised myself I would still exercise. I simply couldn’t let the headset get dusty because I happened to take a few flights of stairs at work, or felt like going for a hike. These ground rules have pretty much stayed the same ever since.
I have missed days. I have forgotten about it, found myself away from the headset for a few days, or simply been too lazy. But I’ve been holding myself accountable with my own health, and know that I’m a little too cheap to pay the subscription and let it go to waste.
Since the start of January, I’ve lost around 35 pounds, and though I think a part of that is the VR exercising, another big part is that I simply don’t want all my effort to go to waste. I don’t want to strap the headset on my head nearly every day and not feel healthier. So I started eating better this year. I started tracking my progress. And I’ve tried to be as honest with myself as possible when I’m making progress and why.
Recently, I haven’t made as much progress. I took things pretty lax around my birthday, I found it harder to will myself to exercise in the British summer heat, and hay fever has sapped my energy, but most importantly, I just became a tad complacent with it. But in a sense, that’s the joy here. I hold myself accountable, and the shame of returning to the gym after an absence doesn’t really exist. I simply got back onto the VR horse without a second thought.
And this is all before mentioning that I have fun exercising now. I make a regular habit of activating the passthrough mode on my headset, popping something on the TV and doing some combat exercises while watching anime or listening to a podcast. Yes, I know it’s dorky to watch a shounen battle scene whilst pretending to punch the air with a big screen slapped onto my eyeballs, but I can be as much of a nerd in my headset as I like, and I can feel better while doing so.
Effectively, the VR headset exercises almost every day have been a way to remind me of how conscious losing weight and getting healthier has to be for me. I have to stay aware of it, and need to keep pushing if I want to reach my goals. And my goals right now are simply to feel better. They are to be able to do long hikes, to go for a run, to exercise and feel like I’m putting in less effort than before. VR has given me a fun, stress-free avenue to improve my life little by little, and I’ll continue doing it for as long as it stays that way.
Best VR headsets 2026
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