What is your recommendation for a starter XR/AR/VR model?

Currently the best compromise if an accountless 2nd hand Quest 2, typically available for ~150 EUR.

It depends on few criteria starting with your budget, what you plan to do with it and what are your expectation on privacy.

Currently, in September 2025, the most popular option is the Meta Quest 3. It's a relatively affordable headset at around 500 EUR. Unfortunately it requires a Meta account which does have negative consequence on privacy. It can be mitigated by having an account solely for XR, not linked to any other account, e.g. no Facebook, no Instagram, no WhatsApp, etc. Most options relative to privacy should be explored. Note that since Summer 2025 it can be rooted and thus there is on-going work to make onboarding via a Meta account optional. This might aleviate most privacy challenges but it would still create a dependency on Meta.
A much more affordable option is to rely on an older version of the Meta headset, namely a Quest 2 or even Quest 1. They are powerful enough have an up to date browser. The Quest 1 is already end of life so will not receive security update. Consequently if purchased for a very low price, less than 150 EUR. Note that it will probably not be possible to purchase content for it but WebXR content, like this project, will work. See also QuestStack, a novel way to root the Quest 1.
There are more open alternatives, e.g. XR1 by Lynx, from France, but they are relatively expensive and hard to obtain. Note that the XR1 can be rooted with no exploit required. The Lynx has Wolvic (a fully open-source browser supporting WebXR) builds, even though oudated for now. Unfortunately the Lynx company closed in May 2026.
The Apple Vision Pro is extremely expensive and is tied to the Apple ecosystem. That is not a recommended option but it is also excellent for text.

Last but not least the most important criterium in order to have a headset for this project, is WebXR support. The project is based on WebXR as W3C specification precisely to avoid being tied up to a specific vendor.

PS: what about upcoming headsets? Well the trend so far is that new headsets do come with WebXR support. The biggest change will be Google AndroidXR and it does officially support WebXR. Consequently all headsets running AndroidXR should work with this project.

What to avoid?

Cardboard and similar mobile phone based solutions. They are very cheap and need no new hardware do it is very tempting. Unfortunately they do not support WebXR, nor 6DoF, nor hand tracking. You can though try some AR test via WebXR on Android with limited interactions (e.g. laser and ray casting) but not VR proper.
Headsets that do not support WebXR or no known working browsers like Wolvic. You might be stuck with proprietary APIs and receive little to no support.
non-headsets based solution, e.g. video mapping, cardboard, LookingGlass Holoxica screens, etc. They might work in some form but you will most likely not have a 1-to-1 hand tracking experience making interaction counter-intuitive. See still efforts in #75 to try to broaden support. Consider this highly experimental though.
Oculus Go and other 3DoF headsets. They allow for the consumption of 360 or 180 videos and few basic games via the controller. They are typically not supported by manufacturers anymore. They might be good for immersive videos but they are just providing the right affordances for highly interactive content.
PC based VR, e.g. Oculus Rift or even Valve Index. If you do already having a gaming PC the Valve Index is quite outdated but works well under Linux and allows to support a company that is not promoting lock-in and produce amazing gaming content. Unfortunately there is no WebXR support on Linux except very experimental explorations. They also do not support hand tracking. Consequently it is not recommended.

What if you want an XR headset for programming?

See the few posts in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674545