The Meta Quest 3 is highly regarded as the most well-rounded VR experience available today, offering a solid blend of standalone and PCVR gaming capabilities with a host of supplementary entertainment and spatial computing possibilities to boot.
It's also one of the cheapest and most accessible VR/AR headsets on the market, but that may not be the case for much longer as Meta reportedly prepares to unveil a new Quest headset at next month's Connect event set to kick off September 25.
It's still too early in the Quest 3's life-cycle to expect the Meta Quest 4. However, mid-cycle 'pro' and 'lite' refreshes have been a staple of console releases the last few generations, and Meta's Quest headsets look to be receiving one of their own with a super affordable, entry-level model on the horizon in the Quest 3S.
Meta Quest 3S: Super affordable, but at what cost?
In the wake of Meta reportedly canceling its plans to develop a high-spec successor to the Quest Pro, all eyes now turn to the company's other rumored headset, the Quest 3S.
The Quest 3S is said to offer the same powerful performance as Meta's Quest 3 while adopting the boxier frame of the popular Quest 2 that came before it. We've previously seen leaked images of the Quest 3S surface online, and Meta may have accidentally revealed its name in advance after a mistake led to its listing in the Horizon Store.
Little is known for certain about exact specs, but it's presumed that the Quest 3S will feature a blend of the two's components, such as adopting the Snapdragon XR2 chipset of the Quest 3 and the cheaper Fresnel lenses of the Quest 2.
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Meta may further reduce the cost of the Quest 3S by selling it as a standalone headset, sans controllers. This would imply that Quest 3S will primarily be controlled through hand-tracking, and greatly impact the out-of-the-box experience for users when compared to Quest 3 owners, who also gain Meta's impressive Touch Pro peripherals.
However, all is not lost. While the Quest 3's Touch Pro controllers are fantastic peripherals, as a Quest 3 owner, I can attest to the accuracy and performance of Meta's hand-tracking tech — and the lack of controllers may help to position the Quest 3S as less of a wearable game console and more of a standalone computing option similar to the experience posed by Apple's Vision Pro.
Still, there's plenty of fun to be had with the Quest's hand-tracking controls, with many games available to play in full without worrying about the use of controllers. That aside, navigating, browsing, and watching videos, films, or TV shows on a Quest headset is a breeze using hand tracking — and you can connect a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for a pretty impressive spatial computing experience too.
Of course, Quest 3S owners will almost certainly be able to purchase their own Touch Plus controllers (which retail at around $100) to enhance the experience and expand on their headset's gaming potential, but that combined purchase narrows the gap between the Quest 3 and 3S, potentially making one of the two somewhat redundant.
Outlook
I've previously claimed that 2024 will be a make-or-break year for VR, and I still believe that to be true. Thankfully, while Apple priced itself out of the competition pretty early with the $3,500 Vision Pro, things have been looking up for this corner of the industry.
This year has already seen AR smart glasses like the XREAL Air 2 and VITURE Pro XR bring augmented reality into wearable form in an impressive manner, reigniting interest in this particular wearable while also flirting with the potential of being the future platform for spatial computing with devices like the XREAL Beam Pro.
In fact, Meta is reportedly ready to showcase its own game-changing AR glasses at next month's Connect event in tandem with the Quest 3S. This double-feature reveal could further spur momentum in the VR/AR space, and attract more people to give Meta's new budget-friendly Quest headset a chance.
While VR/AR has seen a strong start to the year, the final third of 2024 could prove to be an incredible success for Meta — especially with a wave of new AAA games heading to the platform like Batman: Arkham Shadow, Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded, Just Dance VR, Skydance's Behemoth, and Alien: Rogue Incursion which joins popular franchises such as Ghostbusters, The Walking Dead, Sniper Elite, and Assassin's Creed.
It seems all of the pieces are in place for Meta to give its Quest headsets and the VR/AR marketplace its biggest push to date, though we'll need to wait for Meta's Connect event on September 25 to see exactly what the company has in store for the remainder of the year.
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