In recent years, virtual reality technologies have been improving in terms of resolution, convenience and portability, fostering their adoption in real life applications. The Vive Controllers and Leap Motion are two of the most commonly used low-cost input devices for interactions in virtual environments. This paper discusses their differences in terms of interaction design, and presents the results of a user study focusing on manipulation tasks, namely Walking box and blocks, Block tower and Numbered cubes tasks, taking into account both quantitative and qualitative observations. The experimental findings show a general preference for the Vive Controllers, but also highlight that further work is needed to simplify complex tasks.