We had so much fun tearing down the Meta Quest Pro that we decided to take
a closer look at another popular VR headset — the Valve Index.
The Index was released all the way back in 2019, so it’s not quite cutting edge
tech — but now that VR and AR are part of the mainstream tech landscape, we thought it
would be good to see how different companies find solutions to the complexities of VR.
Before we go on, a quick disclaimer. As you may know, iFixit partners with Valve to
provide spare parts for their products, including the Valve Index. Valve has no input on our
editorial process and this video was made without input or feedback from Valve.
On with the teardown! The Valve Index has some of the best tracking capabilities of
any VR system and it’s mainly thanks to these base stations.
Valve calls this a Lighthouse and pointing an IR camera at it quickly reveals why.
Two infrared emitters sweep the room as a central rotor spins the emitters
on a single axis. The overall effect is similar to
how a lighthouse emits a beam of light at fixed intervals to aid navigation at sea.
In this scenario we have two Lighthouses and our vessel is the headset. The VR headset
“knows” where it is because it’s triangulating its position relative to the two Lighthouses.
I’d like to take a closer look at the internals but unfortunately I can’t see an easy way in.
Removing the bottom cushion doesn’t help, and the only way inside the base station appears
to be through the plastic face and our x-rays from Creative Electron seem to confirm this.
After several attempts at heating and prying, it becomes apparent that I'm going to have to
cut my way in. These base stations are clearly not designed to be repaired which is a shame
because it seems it would have been trivial to secure this plastic face with screws.
Moving on to the controller, I need to pop away the circular plastic face using
a pick. Lifting the face up reveals several Torx screws and a few cables.
One screw in particular is pretty well hidden underneath what looks like a touch sensor.
That one screw is the keystone holding the board and all the plastic components in.
There’s clearly no more progress to be made through this side but I’ve seen people attempt
a battery replacement through the grip so that’s where I’m heading next. Popping away the plastic
reveals the battery package sandwiched between the two halves of the controller.
Removing the exposed screws doesn’t help so I’m
going to move over to the tracking ring to see if I can gain access from there.
This is where things start to get ugly. The plastic on the tracking ring is clearly clipped
in place but there’s something preventing it from coming off. After much prying,
I eventually ended up breaking the plastic and what I found was a bit alarming.
The glue they’ve used to secure the plastic is more like cement which seems entirely
inappropriate for this application and because of all the prying to get the plastic off,
several ribbon cables leading to the various IR sensors were damaged.
The tracking ring itself is made up of multiple
IR sensors which pick up the beams sent out by a Lighthouse
By measuring the time it takes for the IR beams to hit a receiver, it’s possible to
use some clever maths to figure out exactly where each controller is in three dimensional space.
This is known as the Time of Flight principle for measuring distance between objects.
Lifting the tracking sensors away reveals a few more screws securing the strut and the
base of the controller to the tracking ring. Now I can separate the two halves
of the controller to reveal the mainboard and the battery pack.
More ribbon cables, screws, and press connectors,
but eventually I can remove the PCB from the plastic frame.
The battery looks a little homemade because of that outer wrapper but it’s a pretty standard
lithium-polymer rated at 4.18 Wh. This’ll give you about 7 hours of continuous use,
very just hung on similar to what we found in the Meta Quest Pro controllers.
By the way, if you haven’t seen the Meta Quest Pro teardown you
can click the link on screen or find the link in the description below.
At this point I need to give a shout-out to my colleague Sam Omiotek. We’re so late
to tearing this device down that iFixit already has guides and parts available on our website.
I’ll be following Sam’s guide for the most part and I’d recommend you do the same if
you’re repairing your device. Remember this is a teardown not a repair guide!
Let’s go back to those x-rays provided by our friends at Creative Electron to
get a visual of what I’m getting myself into here.
Hopefully not another 146 screw nightmare like the Meta Quest Pro.
The first thing I’m going to do is remove the velcro head strap and face cushion then the
lengthy cable comes away fairly easily and I can move on to the eye relief knob. This knob adjusts
the distance between the lens and your eyes and pops off fairly easily with the help of a pick.
There’s a couple of screws underneath there and a third T6 sits
directly opposite, it’s recessed deeply enough that I’ll need a fixed blade driver to get to it.
And with that the head strap comes away. Take notes here Meta,
there’s no speaker cable to finagle with either,
they’ve used spring loaded copper pins to make the whole assembly as modular as possible.
Here’s where the head strap falls short though. These cushions really need to be
replaceable. Cushions absorb sweat, as anyone who’s ever used a VR headset can attest to.
Let's remove the front cover which reveals the
USB expansion port and several screws that give us access to the mainboard.
I’m going to go ahead and disconnect a few ribbon cables and with that I can remove the faceplate
and now it’s just a matter of unscrewing a few screws holding the mainboard down.
Heading back to the lens side, I’m going to remove the exposed screws
holding the plastic frame which surrounds the fresnel lenses.
The concentric circles on these lenses magnify the image on the display and bring it into focus.
Let’s turn the device on its side now and take a look at the IPD adjustment tab. The
Inter-Pupillary Distance knob adjusts the distance between the two lenses,
allowing you to center each lens on your own eyes.
The Index has an IPD range of 58mm to 70mm which is pretty decent. Thanks to
our repair guide I know that there’s a screw hiding under here so let’s
go ahead and remove that before going any further.
Back to the front of the device to remove the upper and lower rails securing the display panels
in place and once those are out I can remove that plastic cover and rubber blackout around
the lenses. It’s now possible to gently nudge the lens assembly out and away from the main body.
Each LCD panel runs at 1440x1600 supporting a refresh rate of up to 144hz. Positioned
side by side, the panels provide a combined resolution of 2880x1600 across both eyes.
There’s no mistaking the fact that this headset is in a league of its
own when compared to almost all other VR headsets. A lot of thought has gone
into ensuring this device is both comfortable and user-friendly.
You can see that in the high accuracy base station setup and the extremely satisfying
grip design on the controllers. And the software is where it really shines — just
compare Meta’s sterile tutorials to the lively shenanigans of Valve!
On the flip side, we have some issues where the base station is concerned. It’s simply
not user serviceable and replacing the battery inside those controllers is less of a guided
process and more of a workaround — unless you’re willing to risk breaking the controller entirely.
Still, credit where it’s due. Valve does provide OEM replacement parts
for many components and they have shown that they’re a company with a conscience
by making their newer hardware offering, the Steam Deck, a fully serviceable device
All eyes are on project Deckard, the followup headset from Valve,
and we’re hoping the company will address the repairability issues we found in the Index.
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