Meta’s cheaper Quest 3S might just be an upgrade

Meta finally announced the very heavily leaked Quest 3S VR headset, and the leaks were right: it’s a $299.99 headset that looks like a mix of the Quest 2 and Quest 3. But now that the specs are official, I can tell you that it’s a lot closer to the Quest 3 than expected for a refresh that’s almost half the price. If you don’t have a Quest headset already, the 3S is potentially a very compelling purchase.

The Quest 3S offers the same mixed reality features and performance as the Quest 3 — it even has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip — meaning you can play all of the same games and experiences on either device. The Quest 3S uses the same Touch Plus controllers as the Quest 3. And the Quest 3S is actually rated for a higher battery life than the Quest 3: Meta says the 3S gets 2.5 hours of average use versus 2.2 hours for the Quest 3.

There are a few differences. The Quest 3S is slightly larger than the Quest 3. It has its front sensors arranged in two triangular formations versus the Quest 3’s three pill-shaped cutouts. It lacks the Quest 3’s depth sensor. And perhaps most notably, the 3S uses lower-resolution displays than the Quest 3 — the same 1832 x 1920 per-eye resolution as the older Quest 2 — and the Quest 3S has a narrower field of view, too.

But in a demo of the Quest 3S yesterday, as I lurked through dank sewers in Batman: Arkham Shadow and struggled through some bad games in Horizon Worlds (a replica of the office from The Office, whoopee!), I didn’t find myself missing the Quest 3’s upgrades. And the headset felt fine on my head during my half-hour demo thanks in large part to its Y-shaped split strap — I would have happily worn the headset for a lot longer if Meta had let me.

The 3S also has an “Action Button” for switching between passthrough and immersive modes that I didn’t get to test. You can already switch between immersive and passthrough on the Quest 3 and Quest Pro by turning on a “Double Tap” feature, but having a dedicated button might mean you’ll switch back and forth more regularly to get a view of the real world around you.

Quest 3S preorders open today ahead of the headset’s release on October 15th. Meta is also bundling Batman: Arkham Shadow, which comes out on October 22nd, if you buy either the Quest 3 or Quest 3S.

With the Quest 3S, Meta’s VR headset lineup is pretty clear. There’s the 128GB Quest 3S for $299.99, the 256GB Quest 3S for $399.99, and the 512GB Quest 3 for $499.99. The 512GB Quest 3 originally cost $649.99 when it launched last year, and now Meta is planning to sell its leftover 128GB Quest 3 headsets, which started at $499.99, for $429.99.

Now that the Quest 3S is part of the lineup, Meta also plans to end sales of the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro. “We’ll be selling our remaining headsets through the end of the year or until they’re gone, whichever comes first,” the company says in a blog post.

With the Quest 3 and the Quest 3S, Meta has a strong lineup. Even though VR headsets remain relatively niche — and the company’s metaverse ambitions haven’t even come close to fruition — if you’re new to VR, Meta offers great hardware and a ton of VR experiences to get lost in. And perhaps best of all, you won’t have to pay $3,499 to get started.