This is a huge technical difference. "VR" without being able to reach out and touch the thing in front of you is barely VR at all. The difference between roomscale + motion controls and just having a ~180* tracked HMD and a gamepad is almost as wide as the gap between VR and flat monitors themselves. Once Touch comes out the only substantial difference will be that Oculus doesn't encourage devs to use games that depend on 360* tracking over multiple square meters of space while Valve does, which is a little more grey, but at launch I'd very much agree that the Vive solidly beat out the Rift technically. It's not disingenuous to say it at all. You can artificially constrain your comparison to just the HMDs and then find basically no difference, but if you compare the entire Vive VR system to the entire Rift VR system at launch, the Vive is clearly technically superior.
Disclaimer: own a Vive, love it. I have tried both motion controlled/roomscale/seated/gamepad experiences pretty extensively on it, every time my reaction circles back to this.
Other issues such as room scale vs seated/180 is yet another set of considerations and frankly, the Vive has the clear edge there even if you disagree as to its utility.