Evaluating Head-Mounted Display Devices Across Application Domains: A Structured Comparative Review

The proliferation of Extended Reality (XR) technologies has created a diverse marketplace of Head-Mounted Display (HMD) devices, each optimized for different technical capabilities and application contexts. This paper presents a structured comparative analysis of five prominent HMD platforms—Microsoft HoloLens 2, Meta Quest 3, HTC Vive Pro 2, Apple Vision Pro, and Varjo XR-4—through a multi-dimensional evaluation framework encompassing technical specifications, usability factors, and application-specific suitability. Our analysis reveals that optimal HMD selection depends critically on use-case requirements rather than universal performance rankings. We examine fundamental trade-offs between immersion and real-world awareness, mobility and computational performance, and cost-effectiveness versus capability. The framework provides researchers and practitioners with systematic guidance for HMD selection, particularly for non-entertainment applications in education, training, enterprise workflows, and research. We demonstrate that devices represent distinct optimization points along multiple dimensions, requiring careful alignment between technical capabilities and application demands for successful XR deployment.