I love my Meta Quest 2 and use it almost daily, but being in virtual reality for long stretches of time can be isolating — and can lead to some nasty bumps and falls if you’re not careful. The recent Meta Quest Pro has advanced passthrough cameras for seeing your actual surroundings, but it’s designed primarily for productivity, and costs a whopping $1,000. That’s why I was especially excited to get my hands on the Meta Quest 3, a seemingly perfect middle ground that combines the real and virtual worlds for an attainable price.
Launching on Oct. 10, the Meta Quest 3 promises improved performance, a slimmer, comfier design and an immersive mixed reality experience that lets you blast open portals in your basement or play a virtual board game on your real-life living room table. And after roughly an hour with Quest 3, it’s shaping up to be exactly what I wanted out of a sequel to our best VR headset pick.
Meta Quest 3 release date and preorders
The Meta Quest 3 improves on our favorite VR headset with a slicker design, better performance and exciting new mixed reality experiences.
The Quest 3 is available for preorder now, and will officially hit stores on Oct. 10. The headset starts at $500 with 128GB of storage, with a $650 configuration available for folks who want a larger 512GB of free space. For reference, the Quest 2 starts at $300 with 128GB and goes for $350 with 256GB — it would have been nice to see the Quest 3 start with 256GB given its price, but you do at least have a larger storage option than before.
Buying either Quest 3 option from now until January 27th will get you a free copy of Asgard’s Wrath (normally $60), and if you spring for the 512GB model, Meta will throw in a six-month Meta Quest+ subscription for instant access to a curated selection of games.
There will be a ton of accessories available for the new headset, including a $70 Quest 3 Elite Strap for better weight distribution, a $40 Silicone Facial Interface ideal for working out, a $130 Charging Dock and a $70 Carrying Case.
A new and (mostly) better design
There’s no mistaking the Meta Quest 3 for its predecessor. This headset is 40% thinner and mostly sleeker than the Quest 2, so long as you don’t mind the three giant camera modules that are now plastered onto the front of it (more on why those matter soon). I was immediately struck by the multiple color options on display at Meta’s event space — whether you use the stock black strap that comes with the device or pick up a blue or orange strap for an extra $50, the Quest 3 has a nice two-tone look that sets it apart from the all-gray Quest 2 that you get out of the box.
The Quest 3’s thinner design is also meant to feel better, with a lens adjustment wheel at the bottom, a depth adjustment interface inside the headset and a redesigned strap that are all built to help you get the right fit and a clear field of view. That being said, once I finally got the unit on my head, I had to do a decent amount of tweaking to get it fitting comfortably while keeping everything in focus. It felt heavier to me at first brush, but that may be because I use a custom third-party strap for my Quest 2 that helps distribute the headset’s weight more evenly. Fortunately, these fit issues started to melt away as I got fully immersed in a series of demos that were largely unlike anything I’ve experienced on my current Quest.
Mixed reality is a literal game changer
The Quest 3’s marquee feature is mixed reality, which uses advanced new passthrough cameras to let you engage in virtual activities while still getting a clear view of your real-world surroundings. The older Quest 2’s passthrough mode works well enough when I need to find my water bottle mid-workout or make sure I’m not stepping on the dog while gaming, but its pixelated, monochrome video output doesn’t exactly paint a clear picture of my living room. That’s why I was blown away the second I put on the Quest 3 — I could still see the people and objects all around me, in full color and with fairly minimal pixelation (Meta says the new passthrough mode has 10 times the detail of the Quest 2’s, and it certainly looked like it). But the real magic began once I played some games.
I started out with First Encounters, an exclusive Quest 3 experience that serves as a tutorial for the headset’s mixed reality capabilities by having you open up portals for the game’s cute, colorful critters to enter. Blasting literal holes in reality and watching these tiny aliens jump through them and into my real-world playspace immediately felt surreal, as did watching their spacecraft take off from an actual living room rug. And this turned out to be just a small taste of what the Quest 3 can do.
Up next was Stranger Things VR, an upcoming Quest title that blends the real and virtual worlds in even more dramatic ways as you step into the shoes of series villain Vecna. This demo had me put my controllers down, as the Quest 3’s hand-tracking capabilities allowed me to interact with the world using just my hands — to mixed results. While the game wasn’t always responsive to my gestures, things felt great when they worked. Picking up and crushing creatures with my telekinetic powers was immensely satisfying, as was opening up a portal with my actual hands and peering into the Upside Down. But what really stood out about Stranger Things VR was the way the virtual world gradually overtook the real world throughout the course of my demo. I started out playing around with my powers in a real living room, but by the end of the demo, I was fully enveloped in the same hellish void we’ve seen the Hawkins kids navigate. Cool stuff.
Perhaps sensing that I needed a palette cleanser from all that bleakness, Meta then set me up with Samba de Amigo: Party Central, the latest installment in Sega’s rhythm game series that challenges you to shake your maracas (or in this case, your Touch Plus controllers) to a beat. As a devout Beat Saber player, I felt right at home here, flailing my arms and unashamedly striking poses to hit every target coming my way — and getting a decent workout in the process. This was yet another nice use of mixed reality; the level I played kept most of the real world intact at the start, and gradually introduced more and more virtual elements until I suddenly found myself moving my body atop a giant cityscape.
Another benefit of mixed-reality gaming is that it lets you enjoy tabletop-style experiences with your friends, without all of the setup, cleanup and inevitable missing pieces that come with physical board games. I experienced this firsthand with BAM: a fun multiplayer battle game (think Smash Bros. with more shooting) that takes place in a tiny virtual arena that you can place neatly in your real-world surroundings. This was a great taste of the Quest 3’s communal multiplayer capabilities; being able to physically see my opponent sitting across the room from me — as an actual person, not an avatar — preserved all of the laughter and trash talk that comes with playing games with your friends on the couch, but within a unique video game that could only work in VR.
Speaking of which, Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to Quest 3 — meaning you’ll be able to pop your headset on, grab a controller, set up a virtual screen and play Halo, Forza or any of the other 400-plus games available on Xbox Game Pass. If it works as advertised, it’ll essentially turn your headset into a portable Xbox, one that’ll let you game pretty much anywhere while still being able to see and hear your partner or parents come in the room to tell you that you’ve been playing Gears of War for six hours straight and should probably take a break. This same virtual screen experience will be available for various entertainment and productivity apps as well, allowing you to watch sports in a room without a TV, or instantly gain a second monitor for doing work. It sounds a lot like what Apple is promising with the $3,499 Vision Pro but for a fraction of the price, and I’m very eager to see how the two stack up.
Even better specs for serious gaming
As awesome as mixed reality is, sometimes you just want to get fully engrossed in a great VR game. And based on my brief demo time, the Quest 3 is shaping up to be a better option than ever for fans of immersive blockbusters, thanks in no small part to its Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor that promises double the graphics performance and an upgraded 4K+ Infinite Display that aims to deliver 30% better resolution for clearer visuals.
I got to experience the benefits of this added muscle firsthand while playing Red Matter 2, a first-person sci-fi adventure game that will be getting a significant visual upgrade for the Quest 3. I was quickly struck by how detailed and lifelike everything was, from the wear and tear on the window of a space station to the stunning planetary vistas that lied beyond it. When I picked up a bottle of alcohol, I could even see the liquid inside sloshing around as I moved it. Interacting with just about any object in the game’s dilapidated lunar base felt immediately intuitive and was a ton of fun, though the Meta team might have been a bit concerned by how many bottles I flung at the wall just because I could.
Another impressive showcase of the Quest 3’s console-quality chops was Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, which lets you enjoy all of the sneaky combat and perilous parkour of Ubisoft’s hit action franchise in first person. While the game wasn’t as visually impressive as Red Matter 2, it largely made up for it on the gameplay front. Fighting enemy assassins felt visceral and intense, and climbing and leaping my way up buildings was a real thrill — to the point where my actual hands started sweating after landing an especially daring jump. Even simply walking around was exciting and immersive; I could wave at townsfolk and see them instantly wave back, or hop in the water and swim around by simply stroking my arms.
I don’t have a ton to say yet about the slick new Touch Plus controllers, mostly because they felt immediately familiar and worked exactly how I needed them to. They’ve got a great new design that, like the Quest Pro’s controllers, ditch the large tracking rings up top for a sleek, seamless look that should look nicer sitting on your shelf. The Touch Plus controllers also promise more detailed haptic feedback, which is something I look forward to testing more in-depth.
Neat new features, same great Quest library
On top of its promising mixed reality capabilities and improved performance for straight-up VR, the Quest 3 packs some noteworthy new features and much welcomed quality of life changes. The new headset will let you set up Augments, which are essentially digital objects that will persist throughout your home any time you put the Quest on. For example, you can have a floating weather report or a digital radio player sitting in the corner of your living room, or have a portal to a game sitting right on top of your coffee table. As a Supernatural fanatic, I love that there’s a dedicated Augment that will place a cartoon avatar of one of the app’s excellent coaches in your home, ready to guide you through a workout at a moment’s notice. These seem like the mixed reality equivalent of the widgets you’re probably already using on your phone, and I’m excited to see how they actually function in everyday use.
One of my biggest pain points with my Quest 2 is its boundary system, which requires you to manually draw up a virtual playspace so you don’t knock into your furniture — and, in my case, constantly re-draw said boundary whenever the headset seems to magically forget or alter it. That’s why I’m very happy about the Quest 3’s ability to automatically scan your room and create an appropriate playspace, which should save me time from constantly sketching the same rectangle across my floor.
Unlike certain other VR platforms (we’re looking at you, PlayStation VR 2), the Quest 3 is backwards compatible with all existing Quest games and apps — so if you already own a ton of software on your Quest, Quest 2 or Quest Pro, you’ll be able to bring them with you. On top of that, Meta says to look forward to more than 100 new Meta Quest 3 experiences by the end of the year, including brand new games as well as existing titles that have been upgraded to take advantage of the headset’s added power. It’s worth noting that all of these games will still work on Quest 2 — you’ll just need the new headset to take advantage of the fancy new mixed reality stuff.
Meta says to expect the same battery life as Quest 2, ranging from 90 minutes to three hours depending on what kinds of games and apps you’re running. You’ll get a power adapter and cable in the box that can fully juice the headset in two hours, though the headset will also support wireless charging for folks who pick up the optional $130 charging dock. You can also look forward to all of the features and perks of previous Quest headsets, including Quest Link for playing PC-based VR games and screen casting and recording for sharing your virtual reality exploits.
The takeaway
Based on my early hands-on time and an incredibly promising list of specs and features, the Meta Quest 3 should have no problem dethroning its predecessor as our best VR headset pick. The thrill of mixed reality gaming is something you simply can’t get on the Quest 2 — and something you previously had to shell out at least $1,000 on a Quest Pro for. The fact that the Quest 3 even surpasses the Pro in some areas (including a sharper display resolution and a smoother refresh rate) just makes it an even better deal.
That being said, if you can live without mixed reality, there are plenty of good reasons to hang on to your Quest 2 (or pick one up at a discount). The Quest 2 and Pro are both getting software updates this fall that will deliver improved performance, and all current and upcoming Quest games will still work on older headsets, albeit without some of the exclusive enhancements that are built for the new model. But if you’re jumping into VR for the first time or are ready to step up, the Quest 3 seems like it’ll be the headset to beat — something we look forward to answering definitively once we get one in for review.