Kiwi Design Quest 2 head strap battery not keeping my headset charged

[JustAnotherUsername]

Hey everyone!

I just recently got a Meta Quest 2 and have been playing SteamVR games via Airlink. It seems to work great despite the occasional lag spikes every now & then however it drains the battery like hell! After about an hour of playing the headset's battery drops to about 40-50% so I bought the Kiwi Design head strap with battery.

Now, it was my understanding that the built-in battery was supposed to keep the headset charged during gaming and give you "up to 2.5 hours of extra battery life" as advertised.
So why does the stupid thing just all of a sudden stop charging??

I'll plug in the cable from the head strap, the 4 little LEDs on the back light up - good. I turn on the head set, the dashboard comes up. The little battery indicator on the dashboard shows a lightning bolt, indicating that it's charging - cool...I open Airlink, launch SteamVR, everything seems fine, but then when I remove the headset the 4 LED lights are off and it seems like the head strap is no longer charging the headset. If I unplug it and plug it back in it seems to work, but then after a while it stops keeping it charged again.

Last night I was playing Sniper Elite VR and in the SteamVR dashboard it showed that my headset's battery was at around 75% before I quit playing but then when I closed Airlink and went back into the Meta dashboard thing, it showed that I only had 55% battery left and it wasn't charging. What gives?!

Does anyone else have this problem?? I thought it was supposed to keep the headset charged. Is it just an issue with SteamVR or Airlink? I don't get it. What also adds insult to injury is the only response by Kiwi Design is to "MaKe SuRe ThE cAbLe Is FuLlY pLuGgEd iN"

IT IS!!

 

[sharknice]

Hey everyone!

I just recently got a Meta Quest 2 and have been playing SteamVR games via Airlink. It seems to work great despite the occasional lag spikes every now & then however it drains the battery like hell! After about an hour of playing the headset's battery drops to about 40-50% so I bought the Kiwi Design head strap with battery.

Now, it was my understanding that the built-in battery was supposed to keep the headset charged during gaming and give you "up to 2.5 hours of extra battery life" as advertised.
So why does the stupid thing just all of a sudden stop charging??

I'll plug in the cable from the head strap, the 4 little LEDs on the back light up - good. I turn on the head set, the dashboard comes up. The little battery indicator on the dashboard shows a lightning bolt, indicating that it's charging - cool...I open Airlink, launch SteamVR, everything seems fine, but then when I remove the headset the 4 LED lights are off and it seems like the head strap is no longer charging the headset. If I unplug it and plug it back in it seems to work, but then after a while it stops keeping it charged again.

Last night I was playing Sniper Elite VR and in the SteamVR dashboard it showed that my headset's battery was at around 75% before I quit playing but then when I closed Airlink and went back into the Meta dashboard thing, it showed that I only had 55% battery left and it wasn't charging. What gives?!

Does anyone else have this problem?? I thought it was supposed to keep the headset charged. Is it just an issue with SteamVR or Airlink? I don't get it. What also adds insult to injury is the only response by Kiwi Design is to "MaKe SuRe ThE cAbLe Is FuLlY pLuGgEd iN"

IT IS!!

I'm not sure if it's the same thing you're seeing but I think the Quest 2 doesn't fully charge the battery while you're playing.

It's a lot harder on batteries when you fully charge them, so if it detects you're playing plugged in it only charges to 50% or something.

 

[JustAnotherUsername]

I'm not sure if it's the same thing you're seeing but I think the Quest 2 doesn't fully charge the battery while you're playing.

It's a lot harder on batteries when you fully charge them, so if it detects you're playing plugged in it only charges to 50% or something.

Huh...yeah I did read something about that. I think it was called Optimized Battery Charging but it said it should keep it at 80%. However it also said that it won't start charging at a faster rate until the battery reaches 50% so maybe since it was at 55% it didn't start charging yet?

 

[XenIneX]

Hey everyone!

I just recently got a Meta Quest 2 and have been playing SteamVR games via Airlink. It seems to work great despite the occasional lag spikes every now & then however it drains the battery like hell! After about an hour of playing the headset's battery drops to about 40-50% so I bought the Kiwi Design head strap with battery.

Now, it was my understanding that the built-in battery was supposed to keep the headset charged during gaming and give you "up to 2.5 hours of extra battery life" as advertised.
So why does the stupid thing just all of a sudden stop charging??

I'll plug in the cable from the head strap, the 4 little LEDs on the back light up - good. I turn on the head set, the dashboard comes up. The little battery indicator on the dashboard shows a lightning bolt, indicating that it's charging - cool...I open Airlink, launch SteamVR, everything seems fine, but then when I remove the headset the 4 LED lights are off and it seems like the head strap is no longer charging the headset. If I unplug it and plug it back in it seems to work, but then after a while it stops keeping it charged again.

Last night I was playing Sniper Elite VR and in the SteamVR dashboard it showed that my headset's battery was at around 75% before I quit playing but then when I closed Airlink and went back into the Meta dashboard thing, it showed that I only had 55% battery left and it wasn't charging. What gives?!

Does anyone else have this problem?? I thought it was supposed to keep the headset charged. Is it just an issue with SteamVR or Airlink? I don't get it. What also adds insult to injury is the only response by Kiwi Design is to "MaKe SuRe ThE cAbLe Is FuLlY pLuGgEd iN"

IT IS!!

The Kiwi Design battery is probably operating as a standard USB2 power bank. The usual USB2 power standard (10 watts; 5v, 2a) isn't enough to keep up with the Quest 2's power needs. It'll extend the battery life substantially, but it'll slowly drain the headset's battery while in use.

You need a battery bank that outputs at least 2.4a for the Q2's battery to keep treading water.

 

[JustAnotherUsername]

The Kiwi Design battery is probably operating as a standard USB2 power bank. The usual USB2 power standard (10 watts; 5v, 2a) isn't enough to keep up with the Quest 2's power needs. It'll extend the battery life substantially, but it'll slowly drain the headset's battery while in use.

You need a battery bank that outputs at least 2.4a for the Q2's battery to keep treading water.

Here is a Reddit post showing the battery's output. https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/182mxck/i_got_kiwi_new_battery_head_strap_for_quest_3/ Not sure why I can't find the specs for this thing anywhere but anyway...

If you note the images posted in that thread, the head strap's battery is outputting around 2.8a
Sure this is the Quest 3 shown here but I'm sure the head strap is fairly similar.