The virtually imaged phased array (VIPA) has a significant impact on many areas such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), dispersion compensating and pulse shaping due to its advantages including large angular dispersion, simple structure and low cost. Combined with diffraction grating, the spectral aliasing phenomenon is solved by VIPA to make it possible to be used in optical filter, spectral imaging and processing. The spectrometer based on VIPA has been a research topic due to its superiorities such as quick acquisition time, wide range of spectral measurement and high spectral resolution and can be applied in many areas such as gas detection, molecular science and microbiology. Based on ZEMAX optical software, VIPA 2-D imaging is simulated, the effects of the thickness and the incident angle of the VIPA on diffraction, loss, spectral and spatial resolutions are analyzed and the best imaging thickness and angle of the VIPA are discussed. Brillouin and optical frequency comb spectrometers based on VIPA are introduced. The performances and applications of spectrometers are proposed and the future development is forecasted.