Meta Quest 3S Hands-On: VR’s New Budget Buy
VR is no longer new to me. But it might be to others. That’s how I felt when I tried out Meta’s new Quest 3S, a headset that arrives on October 15 for $300 — just in time for the holidays. That’s more expensive than the discontinued Quest 2, which was only $200 earlier this year , but the 3S is also a more capable product. The Quest 3S, announced at Meta’s Connect developer conference, is intended to make mixed reality experiences more affordable while also unifying Meta’s VR product lineup so that apps run consistently across all the new devices.
And yet, despite all the new features – a better color passthrough camera that enables mixed reality, just like the more expensive Quest 3 and the same Quest 3 processor for more advanced graphics in games. I wonder how quickly the VR and AR app landscape on Quest can grow with this.
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The Quest 3S is clearly the new budget choice, starting at $300 with 128GB of storage. But then it’s tempting to upgrade further, not to the $400 256GB storage model, but to the now-cheaper Quest 3 with 512GB of storage, which now costs $500. For $200 more, you get a lot more storage for games, and significantly brighter pancake lenses and higher-resolution displays.
The Quest 3S, meanwhile, still has Fresnel lenses and the same screen resolution as the year-old Quest 2. It’s perfectly capable, but watching movies and playing high-end games like the upcoming Batman: Arkham Shadow were a little disappointing due to that screen degradation compared to the Quest 3, which I’m using as my home VR headset.
The Quest 3S has the same controllers as the Quest 3.
Why you might buy this headset instead of a Quest 3
The big advantage of the Quest 3S is that it can almost certainly run any game that the Quest 3 can. Batman Arkham Shadow, for example, is one of the many new games that will not run on the Quest 2. Much like what happened with the original Quest, the list of incompatible apps for older Quest 2 owners will only grow.
My demos with the Quest 3 were familiar stuff. Arkham Shadow looks fun and has good graphics, but it’s a typical VR gaming experience. I saw a new Dolby Atmos demo that showed off the system’s 3D audio and a movie playback dimming feature that can gradually dim the passthrough cameras, but the overall experience of watching movies through Quest headsets feels the same. I wandered around Meta’s Horizon Worlds, a social Metaverse app with games and small community-generated worlds and 3D spaces loaded with live concert footage, but that felt familiar, too.
The 3S has the same controllers as the Quest 3, so nothing has changed there. They are fine controllers, small but full-featured, and they lack the plastic tracking ring of the Quest 2.
A clever new addition is a dedicated button for activating camera passthrough. The small button on the bottom of the headset is difficult to find at first, but is easier to use for jumping between the real world and full VR than double-tapping the side of the headset.
I also tried out a new mesh face piece designed to improve breathability during fitness gaming, one of my favorite uses for the Quest 3. The face piece lets more light in through the sides, but it’s sold separately and not included with the 3S.
Why you might not
I didn’t see any mixed reality demos of 3D experiences overlaid on the real world. Thanks to its new array of front-facing cameras, the Quest 3S should be able to do that, despite the lack of a depth sensor. But a year after the Quest 3, Meta hasn’t made much progress in showing off what the future of mixed reality might be.
I like the Quest 3 as much for its improved display as for its passthrough cameras and better graphics. The 3S doesn’t feel all that different from the Quest 2 at times, and if you’re perfectly happy running existing VR games as is, you might not see much reason to upgrade. Then again, the Quest 2’s long-term compatibility remains questionable.
Review to follow
The Quest 3S comes out in a few weeks, and we’ll be posting a full review on CNET. No other company can match Meta’s aggressive pricing on its VR headsets, and the Quest 3S would make a great gift for anyone who’s been waiting to buy one, especially since there are no other major gaming consoles coming to market this holiday season (except for the $700 PlayStation 5 Pro). Meta is also offering a free download of the new Arkham Shadow game with purchase.
I’d still consider the Quest 3 the best headset, but $300 for the Quest 3S is a very good price for what it can do. I’m sure it’ll be a popular choice for that reason alone, but Meta should put a lot more effort into making more exciting mixed reality experiences. That’s what could make the Quest 3S feel truly new, rather than just a slightly better version of what’s already out there.
