Meta Quest VR/AR headsets are provably popular options for users seeking to embrace standalone and PCVR gaming without breaking the bank.
Affordability is one of the key reasons that the Meta Quest 3 fared so well against the ultra-specced (and ultra-priced) Apple Vision Pro, and such a level of accessibility could be a key reason that the company is said to have ditched its plans for a high-end Meta Quest Pro follow-up.
However, the very same product roadmap review meeting that saw the cancellation of Meta's Quest Pro 2 headset reportedly saw the company greenlight a new project codenamed 'Puffin,' and it sounds incredibly similar to the Vision Pro that Apple may have initially wanted to create and outright uncanny when compared to one of the leading AR smart glasses options on the market already.
Project Puffin: A radical shift for Quest headsets
According to digital outlet The Information, two Meta employees have revealed a new Meta Quest product with the codename Puffin — a lightweight entry into the Quest family of VR/AR devices that is said to resemble "a bulky pair of glasses" as opposed to the lineup's typical headset design.
It's widely reported that frames like this were Tim Cook and Jony Ive's original idea for the Vision Pro (and a concept Apple appears to be returning to), though it was a concept eventually abandoned due to the belief that available technology simply wasn't ready to bring the idea to life.
On the other hand, Meta believes it is. Or, at the very least, that it will be — with Project Puffin said to be targeting the same 2027 release as the now-canceled Quest Pro 2.
The best of both worlds?
Puffin will reportedly offer an opaque viewing experience through twin pancake lenses, with your only undeterred vision of the space around you coming from a set of passthrough cameras (potentially positioned similarly to the Ray-Ban Meta's camera and recording indicators).
This new Quest-like device is also said to tip the scales at just 110 grams, somewhere around the average weight of a deck of cards and roughly a fifth of the Meta Quest 3. It's also a little over twice the weight of the company's Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, which house open-ear speakers, a built-in camera, and battery.
A wired workaround
One of the primary drawbacks of Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses is battery life, with its paltry 154 mAh Lithium-ion battery not offering much in the way of longevity when it comes to continuous audio playback, media capture, or live streaming.
However, this new Quest-like wearable seeks to avoid battery issues like this by taking a page from Apple's Vision Pro playbook, relying on an external, pocketable, wired puck to house the battery and computing elements of the frames.
The external puck should be able to supply the frames with a far larger power bank and reduce any concerns about heat levels when engaging with AR or VR content.
Look Ma, all hands!
Meta is reportedly gearing up to announce a cheaper version of its Meta Quest 3 headset at next month's Meta Connect event: the Meta Quest 3S. The Quest 3S is said to be a similarly specced headset with a mix and match of Quest 3 performance and Quest 2-like style and build.
However, to keep the headset's price down, Meta is reportedly looking to ship the device without any controllers, trusting that its hand-tracking tech will be enough for most users to get by.
According to The Information, Puffin will likely follow suit, adopting eye and hand-tracking to interact with VR/AR elements similar to that found within Apple's Vision Pro.
Smart glasses are already here: Why wait for 2027?
As impressive as Meta's proposed Puffin headset/smart glasses hybrid sounds, what's more impressive is the fact that a similar experience already exists in XREAL's Air 2 Ultra AR smart glasses.
While it may not have the pancake lenses of Meta's Puffin, the Air 2 Ultra provides fairly expansive AR viewports via a micro-OLED projection, reflected off of a secondary lens (with a 52-degree field of vision) which delivers full 3D, 1080p augmented reality displays.
Better still, this model of XREAL's impressive Air 2 AR glasses also features hand and head tracking with spatial anchoring for a full six degrees of freedom, depth mesh, plane detection, and image tracking to further the frame's AR potential.
XREAL's AR smart glasses are also tethered, typically connecting to any DisplayPort over USB-C compatible smartphone, tablet, or laptop. However, the company has recently released its second-generation Beam Pro, which is a smartphone-esque device that offers a pocket-sized spatial computing experience while providing a decent level of battery to keep the frames running for longer.
Unfortunately, where XREAL's high-spec spectacle falls short is in their target audience, which is developers seeking to find use for this impressively outfitted wearable. However, given a year or two, we could see a plethora of software designed to unlock the potential of these smart glasses and showcase exactly what is possible in this form factor.
Outlook
Meta's ambitions for VR and AR stretch far beyond the bulky headsets we have available to us today. The success of the company's Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses was a surprise to many who saw Google Glass crash and burn a decade ago.
However, smart glasses are making a strong comeback, and brands like XREAL, VITURE, RayNeo, and more have been pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in this form factor for some time now.
While one of Meta's biggest reveals during next month's Connect event could undoubtedly be the rumored "Orion" AR glasses, that's a project not expected to make its way to market for much of the remaining decade.
Project Puffin is a clear stepping stone towards that end goal and could be Meta's opening gambit in its efforts to compact the technology of its Quest headsets and expand on the potential of its smart glasses success.
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