The official Oculus Link Headset Cable is now available
The Oculus Link Headset Cable is long and fast enough to bring PCVR to your Oculus Quest.

What you need to know
- The Oculus Link Headset Cable is now available from Oculus.
- The fiber optic cable is long enough and fast enough to support Oculus Link.
- The cable is available for $79 from Oculus (opens in new tab).
Oculus released the official Oculus Link Headset Cable today. The fiber optic cable allows people to play PCVR games on their Oculus Quest through the new Oculus Link feature. The cable is not the only cable that will work with Oculus Link, but it should provide the best results as it is fast, flexible, and long enough to reach your PC easily.
Oculus Link allows you to play Oculus Rift titles on your Oculus Quest by connecting your gaming PC to the Oculus Quest. We went hands-on with Oculus Link back in September and were impressed. It greatly enhances the library of games available on the Oculus Quest and the versatility of the headset.
The Oculus Link Headset Cable is 5 meters long and 4.6mm in diameter. It's a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C active optical cable, so it can handle the speed demands of Oculus Link. It supports speeds up to 5 Gbps and has a 3A power supply.
The cable is available in the U.S. and some people report being able to order the cable in Canada as well. At this time, the cable seems to only be available in select countries.
Windows Central Newsletter
Get the best of Windows Central in your inbox, every day!
Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).
-
I haven't had a VR-ready PC until recently, but I have experienced some VR using Google Daydream. However, my new phone no longer supports Daydream and it would appear to be dead technology going forward. I would be very interested in getting more into VR gaming in the future using my PC though. At this point and given the availability of Oculus Link now, is there any reason to buy a Rift over a Quest? I'm assuming with this new cable, the Quest essentially just becomes a display and motion tracking platform like the Rift and it no longer (minimally) relies on the Snapdragon processor. The question I guess I'm asking is, are there any limitations on what the Quest can do compared to the Rift now?
-
Basically, yes. There are some differences in screen resolution, optics and comfort between a rift s and a quest, but if I were buying a headset now, I would get a quest over a rift s (I worked on some of the rift s software when I was employed at oculus)
-
So basically this turns it into a regular headset for 80 more bucks.
-
It's just a USB 3.2 cable, don't waste 79 bucks people. Or do, whatever, I'm not your mother.
-
The cable is that expensive because it had to be specially designed to not strain the connector on the Quest, and to ensure the connection over that long of a cable. Getting the link working was late in the development of the Quest, so there wasn't time to redesign the headset to accommodate regular cables. Yes, a regular cable *might* work, but the Link cable is designed for this use case. I am having trouble finding a 15+ foot (5 meter) USB 3.2 cable on Amazon. Their 6 foot cable is $30 -- so $80 does not seem to be that unreasonable for that length, even if it was just a "plain" cable.