Meta announces Quest 3 VR headset
After several leaks and rumors, Meta’s Quest 3 virtual reality and mixed reality headset has been officially announced. Meta revealed the Quest 3 ahead of Thursday’s Meta Gaming Showcase, where it will likely debut several new games. The Quest 3 costs $499.99 and comes with 128GB of storage, and has a release window for Fall 2023. The company says it will reveal more details about the headset at Meta Connect on September 27.
Meta didn’t give hard specs for Quest 3, but promised “higher resolution, stronger performance, breakthrough Meta Reality technology, and a slimmer, more comfortable form factor” for its next-gen headset. Meta says it has also “completely redesigned Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers with a more streamlined and ergonomic form factor.”
The Quest 3 is the successor to the Quest 2 which was launched in 2020 and has become the most successful and longest supported headset on the market. Like the Quest 2, the Quest 3 is a wireless headset that does not require a fast PC. The Quest 3 works with the entire Quest 2 catalog, and Meta promises it will deliver twice the graphics performance of the Quest 2, with higher resolution screens and thinner optics.
Unlike the Find Prowhich can follow your face to make your cartoonish avatar more convincing in the metaverse, the Quest 3’s features don’t seem to be a huge leap over the Quest 2. However, the passthrough mode has received some improvements, with high-fidelity color passthrough, which allows you to play augmented reality games such as demo, which uses the Quest 3’s tracking cameras (the Quest 2’s passthrough mode is fuzzy and full-color). The Quest 3 also features redesigned Touch Plus controllers, with haptics improvements borrowed from the controllers included with the more expensive Quest Pro.
Meta will continue to sell the Quest 2, albeit at a lower starting price of $299.99 for the 128GB model starting June 4 and $349.99 for the 256GB model. It also announced that an upcoming headset software update will improve CPU and GPU performance for the 2020 headset.