If you’ve been eagerly anticipating Meta’s completion of the upgraded Quest 3 VR headset, or if you’ve been less patient about it, we have exciting news. The company just revealed that the Quest 3 is set to launch on October 10, and pre-orders are now live, including at retailers like Best Buy. Priced at $499.99, it comes with a higher cost compared to its predecessors, but it remains the most affordable option for diving into the latest generation of VR gaming.
The big change for the Quest 3 is the addition of full-color, high-speed cameras to the exterior of the casing. While the Quest 2 allowed you to “see” through its tracking cameras, the low-res, black-and-white picture was really only useful for stopping yourself from hitting a wall. The new camera setup allows for far more immediate interaction with the world beyond your headset, not to mention a new focus on augmented reality apps and games.
Other big changes to the design include new hand controllers that don’t need the sensor ring, a 40 percent thinner body enabled by pancake lenses, enhanced 2064×2208 per-eye resolution, a greater field of view, louder open-air speakers, and a more powerful Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor.
Meta is betting big on that expanded augmented reality functionality being a win for the Quest 3. And it really needs one. Despite selling more than 20 million Quest headsets since acquiring the Oculus company and VR technology, Meta is burning through billions of dollars chasing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse ambitions, which don’t seem to appeal to anyone else. That’s not a great place to be in, especially with Apple poised to enter the market at the extreme high end with its Vision Pro headset next year.
