The Oculus Quest comes with decent built-in speakers that use a piped audio system to send audio down the head strap and into your ears. While this solution works in most situations and can provide good spatial audio, sometimes you’ll want to use a pair of headphones for better audio quality and higher levels of immersion.
The bottom line is that any standard pair of headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack with work on the Oculus Quest. The Quest has two audio ports, one on each side of the headset. Both will work with any headphones, allowing you to use either side depending on the configuration of your headphone cable.
The Official Option
Facebook also produce an official pair of Oculus Quest in-ear headphones which can be purchased separately from the Quest for around $50. There’s multiple ear bud sizes included with the official earphones to fit a variety of ear sizes. They connect on either side of the headset into both of Quest’s earphone ports and, since they don’t have long wires, don’t tangle and store easily with the headset.
With normal headphones, the singular, long cord will often hang in front of you and swing around when plugged into the Quest. The split, two cord solution of the official headphones removes this problem entirely.
Alternatively, UploadVR staff members have also tried these similarly designed KIWI earbuds made for the Quest, and reported they worked well. If you’re looking for that short, two cord solution for a cheaper price, these might work well for you.
Wireless Bluetooth Headphones?
Unfortunately, the Quest does not officially support wireless Bluetooth headphones. However, depending on your model of wireless headphones and what you’re doing while using them, you may be able to use them on Quest, with mixed results.
In the Experimental Features tab on the Quest, it is possible to enable Bluetooth connections and pair wireless Bluetooth headphones. In our tests, we found that a pair of wireless Bose NC700s would connect to the Quest and play audio, but performance varies depending on the activity.
When playing games, the Bluetooth headphone connection tanked the Quest’s performance in gameplay and made the device near unusable. Beat Saber barely maintained a few frames per second while using Bluetooth headphones. However, when using media apps such as Netflix, we found that the headphones worked just fine with no noticeable latency or performance hits.
Your mileage might vary — certain models of wireless headphones might work better than others and have different effects on latency and performance. It should also be noted that there are no Bluetooth headphones in existence currently that have low enough latency for convincing audio spatialization, even if they do work with the Quest.
That should cover everything you need to know about using headphone with the Oculus Quest. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave them down below.
