Meta Quest 3S Review: The Best Headset for VR Noobs

The archetypal thing you’ll apt announcement astir Meta’s caller Quest 3S is that it costs lone a fewer 100 dollars, not galore hundreds (or thousands) similar different virtual world headsets. The terms stands out, due to the fact that the Quest 3S arrives lone a fewer months aft Apple’s Vision Pro—a dense and buggy $3,499 VR headset—was released to disappointing income numbers.

Instead of appealing to developers and aboriginal adopters with heavy pockets, arsenic Apple tried to do, Meta wants its headset to entreaty to much casual users. For them—the newbies and the VR-curious—$300 is simply a overmuch much charismatic price. (That’s for the 128 GB of retention space, by the way. Add different $100 if you privation the 256 GB model.)

Those casual users volition beryllium greatly pleased. The Quest 3S does precisely what it’s expected to do; it functions somewhat amended than the Quest 2 that it replaces but not rather arsenic good arsenic the Quest 3. While I cognize this is not what Meta intended, it definite does consciousness similar the S successful the sanction is meant to basal for “sweet spot.” Meta has created an affordable headset that delivers thrills without fuss, making the Quest 3S the happening that mightiness get a batch of radical (me included) into VR astatine agelong last.

Same but Different

Though the 3S repurposes galore of the parts from the Quest 2, the caller headset makes immoderate changes that enactment it a measurement supra the fund exemplary earlier it. In spot of an invisible touch-sensitive fastener connected the broadside of the Quest 2 headset that triggers video pass-through that lets you spot your surroundings, the 3S has a dedicated fastener connected the bottommost of the headset. Directly adjacent to it is simply a measurement switch. Using tactile buttons to power these basal functions feels much reliable than double tapping the broadside of your headset, which ne'er truly worked perfectly.

Resolution is 1,832 x 1,920 pixels per eye, inactive little than the Quest 3’s 2,064 x 2,208 resolution. The 3S uses antithetic optics than the Quest 3’s pancake lenses, which usually connection a clearer presumption than what you spot connected the 3S. The fresnel lenses connected the 3S tin origin much fuzziness to look astatine the edges of your vision. It took maine tons of adjusting the straps and lens tweaking to fig retired the optimum viewpoint, but erstwhile you get there, the remainder of the acquisition becomes comparatively straightforward.

Bring Me the Horizon

Meta’s hardware is truly conscionable a vas to gully radical into its room of games and its ain VR metaverse, Horizon Worlds. Horizon Worlds feels much lively than it has successful the past, but it is not yet the thriving societal hub Meta wants it to be. A emblematic trek done the antithetic worlds of Meta’s verse volition see bouts of implicit emptiness, loading screens to get from spot to place, and, erstwhile a country is populated, the energetic shouting of packs of precise large children who look to beryllium everywhere. It’s not precisely my scene.