Meta's cheaper Quest 3S could be an upgrade

Meta's cheaper Quest 3S could be an upgrade

Meta finally announced the much-leaked Quest 3S VR headset, and the leaks were correct: it's a $299.99 headset that looks like a mix of the Quest 2 and Quest 3. But now that the specifications are official, I can tell you that it's a lot closer to the Quest 3 than you might have thought, while costing about half the price. If you don't already have a Quest headset, the 3S is potentially a very compelling buy.

The Quest 3S offers the same mixed reality features and performance as the Quest 3 - it even has a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip - which means you can play the same games and experiences on both devices. The Quest 3S uses the same Touch Plus controller as the Quest 3. And the Quest 3S is actually rated for more battery life than the Quest 3: Meta says the 3S gets an average of 2.5 hours of use compared to the Quest 3's 2.2 hours.

There are a few differences. The Quest 3S is slightly larger than the Quest 3. Its front sensors are arranged in two triangular formations while the Quest 3's are three pill-shaped cutouts. It doesn't have the Quest 3's depth sensor. And perhaps most notably, the 3S uses a lower-resolution display than the Quest 3 — the same 1832 x 1920 per-eye resolution as the older Quest 2 — and the Quest 3S's field of view is also narrower.

But in the Quest 3S demo yesterday, when I was playing hide-and-seek in the dirty sewers in Batman: Arkham Shadows and grappling with some dirty games in Horizon Worlds (a replica of the office from The Office, wow!), I didn't feel the lack of the Quest 3's upgrades. And the headset felt fine on my head during my half-hour demo, thanks to its Y-shaped split strap - I would have happily worn the headset for a lot longer if the meta had allowed me to.

The 3S also has an "action button" for switching between passthrough and immersive modes that I wasn't able to test. You can already switch between immersive and passthrough by turning on the "double tap" feature on the Quest 3 and Quest Pro, but having a dedicated button might mean you'll switch back and forth more regularly to see the real world around you.

Preorders for the Quest 3S begin today, ahead of the headset's release on October 15. Meta is also bundling Batman: Arkham Shadows, which releases on October 22, with the purchase of either the Quest 3 or Quest 3S.

With the Quest 3S, Meta's VR headset lineup is pretty straightforward. The 128GB Quest 3S is available for $299.99, the 256GB Quest 3S for $399.99, and the 512GB Quest 3 for $499.99. The 512GB Quest 3 was originally priced at $649.99 when it launched last year, and now Meta plans to sell its remaining 128GB Quest 3 headsets, which start at $499.99, for $429.99.

Now that the Quest 3S is part of the lineup, Meta is also planning to stop selling the Quest 2 and Quest Pro. "We will continue to sell our remaining headsets through the end of the year or until they run out, whichever comes first," the company said in a blog post. With the Quest 3 and Quest 3S, Meta has a strong lineup. Even though VR headsets remain relatively niche — and the company's metaverse ambitions are still far from complete — if you're new to VR, Meta offers great hardware and a plethora of VR experiences. And perhaps the best part is that you don't have to pay $3,499 to get started.