The price for Meta’s virtual reality headset, the Quest 3, is $499.99
The Quest 3: A Heavy-to-Light VR Headset with a Lighter, More Comfortable Structure and Lighter Sensors
The Meta Quest 3 follows—and effectively replaces—the Meta Quest 2, which became available in the fall of 2020. It has been received well in the VR headset market as a cheap, stand-alone headset with a high-resolution display that uses inside-out tracking. The older headset will get a performance boost along with the price drop on June 4 as the price of the quests 2 will go down to $300.
In addition, an upcoming software update for the Quest 2 and Meta’s more expensive Quest Pro will increase their CPU and GPU performance and enable Dynamic Resolution Scaling.
Meta’s headset news comes ahead of Apple’s WWDC software event next week, where the company will reportedly reveal a years-in-the-making face computer of its own. Apple has been meeting with app developers in recent months to entice them to build experiences for what the company considers a new platform. This would be the first major launch of a new hardware product line for Apple since it introduced the Apple Watch in 2015. The HomePod speaker was introduced by Apple in 2017, but that was not a new platform for apps.
We already had a pretty good idea of how the Quest 3 would shake out after Mark Gurman of Bloomberg detailed his hands-on experience with the then-unannounced device earlier this week, reporting on the lighter and more comfortable design that adds new sensors and redesigned controllers.
The video clearly shows the three new areas across the front of the device that make it different from previous versions and the head strap. The pill-shaped zones hold four cameras split between the left and right sides, with two of which are full-color cameras, and a single depth sensor in the middle that can improve the headset’s augmented reality performance.
We also see the new Touch Plus controllers with TruTouch haptics “for experiences you can feel,” without the old rings they used to have for positional tracking. This announcement didn’t go into detail on the sensor setup, but the depth sensor should work with the controllers, and Meta confirmed hand tracking will be supported out of the box this time around.
Present Status of the Magic Leap 2 Augmented Reality Headset, Launched at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, in September 2015
The Meta Quest 3, on the other hand, is more of a consumer-friendly device. The headset was announced just hours before the company’s Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, an online event which shows off the library of games and experiences available for Meta’s platform.
Other companies are making last-minute changes to prepare for Apple’s new product, which will be released next week. The ThinkReality VRX headset is now shipping at a price of $1,299. Magic Leap, which has been working on augmented reality technology since 2010 and holds thousands of patents around optical technology and AR/VR manufacturing processes, has been meeting with press to demonstrate its Magic Leap 2 headset. The headset is aimed at enterprise customers, and is light and thinner than the Magic Leap One.
