Meta Quest 3 announced just ahead of Apple headset launch

Apple is wide expected to motorboat a pricey Reality XR headset connected Monday, but that isn’t stopping VR elephantine Meta from launching a caller Quest headset. Yes, the institution has conscionable launched the Meta Quest 3, truthful what should you expect from the caller device?

For starters, the institution says the Meta Quest 3 is 40% slimmer than the Quest 2, which should marque for a much comfy experience. Meta says it’s besides redesigned the Touch Plus controllers to beryllium much ergonomic portion wholly dropping those quirky tracking rings.

We besides spot cardinal spec upgrades, specified arsenic the power to a “next-generation” Snapdragon chipset that promises implicit doubly the graphical show of the Quest 2’s Snapdragon XR2 processor. This suggests that the Quest 3 is so powered by the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 SoC.

The Quest 3 besides brings a higher solution surface with alleged pancake optics, enabling improved visuals and a slimmer wide package. Other notable features see higher-quality colour passthrough, augmented world integration for games (such arsenic playing a virtual committee crippled connected a existent table), and backward compatibility with Quest 2 content.

Meta Quest 3 terms and availability

The Meta Quest 3 starts astatine $499.99 for the 128GB model, which so represents a $100 premium implicit the erstwhile procreation headset (or $200 erstwhile comparing it to the Quest 2’s motorboat price).

Expect the Quest 3 to beryllium disposable successful each regions wherever the Quest 2 is offered (e.g. Australia, Europe, Japan, North America, South Korea, and Taiwan). There’s nary connection connected a circumstantial motorboat day barroom a autumn merchandise window.

Speaking of the Quest 2, Meta besides announced a terms driblet from $399.99 to $299.99 for the older exemplary (128GB). The 256GB variant besides gets a terms chopped to $349.99. Of course, the headset primitively launched for $299.99 earlier Meta instituted a $100 terms hike. Nevertheless, Meta says it intends to proceed selling the older Quest alongside the Quest 3.

There’s besides bully quality for existent Quest 2 and Quest Pro owners, arsenic the institution says a aboriginal bundle update volition boost CPU and GPU speeds for these headsets (up to 26% for the CPU, up to 19% for the Quest 2 GPU, and up to 11% for the Quest Pro GPU). The 2 headsets are besides getting dynamic solution scaling, which allows for on-the-fly solution adjustments to guarantee accordant performance.