I just picked up a Rift myself - somewhat impulsively, but I'd been on the fence since the price drop, and just finally took the plunge.
I've kind of been in the same boat of wanting a monitor upgrade. Trouble is, the problems I have with my current monitor aren't really remedied by anything currently on the market. LCD just in general has all kinds of annoying quirks: blacklight bleed, IPS glow, poor black depth, poor contrast, off-axis contrast shift, black crush, smearing, panel lottery, etc etc. You just can't win with LCD. The ONLY thing on the horizon that looks remotely interesting are those FALD displays Acer and ASUS announced, but they just got delayed until late next year.
OLED looks good, but it's got its own problems with image retention, making it unsuitable for desktop PC use. Not to mention that they don't come smaller than 55". But for a movie/gaming screen, they make a lot more sense. However, I think (hope) next year is when we'll see HDMI 2.1 incorporated into these displays, which should enable stuff like high refresh rate at 4k with HDR, making for a much more future-proof purchase.
In the meantime, in lieu of any good display options, I'll just have to continue to make do with the 1440 27" screen I've been on for the past few years.
As for the Rift, I've only played a couple of games so far, and only put a few hours in, but I'll say this: it's an impressive experience, for sure. The sense of being in a virtual space is extremely convincing, and those first 15 minutes will have you grinning like a little kid. That said, I also think it's got a ways to go in terms of fidelity and ease of use. The screen door effect in the headset is pronounced, field of view is limited (to the point of feeling claustrophobic at times, IMO), and depending how your eyes work, objects might look blurry close up. The headset is also somewhat fussy to get on and off, and to get situated on your face and head well.
Apart from the technical shortcomings, the other major weakness is the current lack of diversity of content. It's dominated by "shooting gallery" and various other gimmicky games, which, while reasonably entertaining in short stints, do get old (for me at least). Conventional video game movement around the environment doesn't work well in VR, due to it causing motion sickness for a lot of people. Consequently, developers are limited in the kinds of games that will work well on the platform. As it stands, there aren't very many games I'm personally interested in playing. I'll try out the free stuff just to see if there's anything worthwhile, and because I know just the VR experience alone adds so much that it can elevate otherwise unremarkable games, but the large majority of what's available are games I wouldn't ever bother with otherwise.
Still, if you're looking for a totally new kind of experience, and you're willing to accept the shortcomings of the current state of the tech (and the cost), it's certainly something to consider.
