VR is no longer a new thing for me. But it still might be for others. That's also how I felt trying out Meta's new Quest 3S, a headset arriving Oct. 15 for $300 -- just in time for the holidays. That's more expensive than the discontinued Quest 2, which was just $200 earlier this year, but the 3S is also a more capable product. Announced at Meta's Connect developer conference, the Quest 3S is about making mixed reality experiences more affordable while evening out the VR product line for Meta so that apps can run the same across all new devices.
And yet, for all its new features -- a better color passthrough camera that can enable mixed reality just like the more expensive Quest 3 and the same Quest 3 processor for more advanced graphics in games -- I wonder how rapidly the VR and AR app landscape on Quest can accelerate along with it.
The Quest 3S is clearly the new go-to budget pick, starting with 128GB of storage for $300. But then it's also tempting to upgrade further, not to the 256GB storage model for $400, but to the now lower-priced Quest 3 with 512GB of storage that's now $500. For $200 more, you're getting a lot more storage for games and significantly clearer pancake lenses and higher-res displays.
The Quest 3S, meanwhile, still has Fresnel lenses and the same display resolution as the years-old Quest 2. It's perfectly capable, but watching movies and playing advanced games like the upcoming Batman: Arkham Shadow on it were a tiny bit underwhelming because of that display downgrade compared to the Quest 3 I've been using as my home VR headset.
The Quest 3S has the same controllers as the Quest 3.
Why you might get this headset instead of a Quest 3
The big advantage to the Quest 3S is it'll almost certainly run whatever games the Quest 3 can. Batman Arkham Shadow, for instance, is one of a wave of new games that won't run on Quest 2. Much like what happened to the original Quest, that list of incompatible apps is bound to grow for older Quest 2 owners.
My demos with the Quest 3 were familiar stuff. Arkham Shadow looks fun and has good graphics, but it's a typical VR game experience. I saw a new Dolby Atmos demo showing off the system's 3D audio and a dimming feature for movie playback that can gradually black out the passthrough cameras, but the overall experience of watching movies on Quest headsets feels the same. I walked around Meta's Horizon Worlds, a social metaverse app with games and little community-made worlds and 3D spaces overlaid with footage from live concerts, but that felt familiar, too.
The 3S has the same controllers as the Quest 3, so nothing's changed there. They're perfectly great controllers, small but full-featured, and they lack the plastic tracking ring of the Quest 2.
One clever new addition is a dedicated button to trigger camera passthrough. The small button on the bottom of the headset is hard to find at first, but it's easier to use for jumping between the real world and full VR than double-tapping the side of the headset.
I also tried a new mesh face piece designed to help breathability for fitness games, one of my favorite uses for the Quest 3. The face piece allows 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 top of the real world. Thanks to its new array of front cameras, the Quest 3S should be capable of those despite lacking a depth sensor. But a year after Quest 3, Meta hasn't made much headway in showing off what the future of mixed reality could be.
I like the Quest 3 as much for its improved display as for its passthrough cameras and better graphics. The 3S is sometimes not that different-feeling from the Quest 2 at all, and if you're perfectly happy running existing VR games as-is, you may not see a huge reason to upgrade. Then again, the long-term compatibility of the Quest 2 remains in question.
Review to come
The Quest 3S is arriving in just a few weeks, and we'll have a full review on CNET. No other company is matching Meta's aggressive pricing for its VR headsets, and the Quest 3S could be a great gift for anyone who's been waiting to buy, especially with no other big game consoles emerging this holiday (except for the $700 PlayStation 5 Pro). Meta's also throwing in 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 really good price for what it can do. I'm sure it'll be a popular pick for that reason alone, but Meta should be making a much bigger effort to make more exciting mixed reality experiences. That's what could make the Quest 3S feel truly new, instead of a slightly better version of what's already been available.