The best VR headset, hands down.

The meta quest 3 is the successor to the meta quest 2 and that is VERY apparent during both initial setup and usage afterwards.Pros:Clarity, Clarity is an absolute GEM with this VR headset, the pancake lenses are so good and clear that when I tried to use a quest 2 it was like looking through the pancake lenses but rubbed all over with VaselineGameplay: the increased resolution and power compared to the quest 2 are absolutely insane. To put it in perspective, The quest 2 and 3 both do a game called "beatsaber" at a lower than native resolution. Looks a little pixelated but that's what the quest 2 could do. Quest 3 can play at the quality of a PC if you tweak it right (install mods to increase resolution, quest 2 would struggle)Weight: The weight distribution is also better, even though the headset is only slightly lighter, because the headset itself is closer to yout face, the weight extrudes less meaning its less front heavy causing less strain on your neck.Middle:Comfort- Comfy headset? Heck yes! But not really with the included strap. The included strap doesn't really even out the weight and puts too much pressure on eyebrows, nose, and cheeks. I found that a halo strap (usually around $35+, mine is the bobovr m3 pro) is a MUST have. The weight makes it feel like you aren't even WEARING a headset.Cons:Space for glasses- if you wear glasses then you will need either an additional spacer for the face cover or lense inserts (I use the Zenni inserts, meta approved). They definitely helped a ton, before when I used glasses with it it put a ton of pressure on my face, which made it bruised in the middle right between my eyes, however, the lense inserts are so good cannot even feel them!Misinterpreted con:Battery life-Battery life is technically worse, however, this is because of passthrough (most of the time, anyways). Passthrough requires the headset to process both a GAME and the environment around you, It isn't just a camera displaying an image, it's 4 cameras stitching together an image in real-time and sensing depth ad well as keeping track of where you are in the plane of the 3d vr world to ensure proper tracking. Hence why it uses more Battery. The quest 3 also uses more battery in heavier more "intesive" games that take advantage of the quest 3's extra performance over the quest 2. An easy and not too expensive remedy is a Battery bank. For games in which you have to move around I recommend the bobovr m3 pro or S3 because they feature Battery packs, the m3 pro has a 5000mah battery bank that increases battery capacity by around 2-3 hours and the s3 around 4-6. And these batteries are hot swappable meaning you can buy more, charge them as you play, and when your existing batteries die you can change them! For basically infinite playtimeI totally recommend this headset for anyone either still on the quest 1, sharing a quest 2, or as your first VR headset ever. Battery life isn't really a problem and a battery bank (18watts or higher) is a great way to fix any battery life issues you'll have, especially for Mixed reality passthrough games

The Meta Quest 3 is the third iteration of the Oculus Quest, which was the first standalone VR headset untethering you from a PC. With Meta at the reins, the VR space has grown as has their product improvements and refinements.

Having owned the original Oculus Quest and the successor the Meta Quest 2, I have spent countless hours playing various standalone virtual reality games and experiences. While I enjoyed those headsets, the novel experience wained and I found myself picking them up less and less. The Quest 3, originally released in 2023, iterated on the successful design, and on paper it didn’t seem like enough of an improvement for me to pick up at the increased price. Now a year later, Meta has reduced the starting price of the Quest 3 and introduced a cheaper alternative the Quest 3S.
With the Quest 3 being a year old, it may seem dated, but now is the time to buy what is currently the best value in VR.

To start, the optical stack of the Quest 3 is far superior to the previously used fresnel lens. The clarity was immediately noticeable as was the greatly improved sweet spot that lenses provide. The IPD adjustment is smooth, and can be easily adjusted between 58-70 with a dial on the bottom. This fine tuning combined with the pancake lenses of the Quest 3 is night and day compared to my Quest 2, though I may be overly sensitive to blur. I may have been drawn to the Quest 3 over the 3S due to the pancake lenses but after using the headset I realize I underestimated the benefit mixed reality (MR) brings to the table. Though the passthrough cameras are a little grainy, especially in low light, the quality improvement and addition of color makes it far more useable coming from the Quest 2. I find myself leaving passthrough on as my preferred environment as I feel it is a more comfortable experience and makes it feel more natural. It is still enjoyable to jump into an immersive VR game or experience, but I also now like using the browser or watching youtube in a passthrough environment over a virtual one.

Hand tracking is much improved and is now quite useable for navigating the device and using first party applications like the browser or applications that have been updated to support hand tracking. Naturally there are limitations and it will never replace controllers but I am pleasantly surprised the progress that they have maid so far. The included touch plus controllers are a better design now that Meta has integrated the tracking into the face of the controllers instead of relying on tracking rings. They still operate on a single AA battery each and have excellent battery life, unfortunately the headset itself still only manages a little over 2 hours depending on use. Fortunately the accessory market for the Quest 3 is flush with options now that the device is fairly mature, and there are numerous battery strap options. The included head strap is actually better than previous designs and fairly comfortable for short usage. I actually prefer the ease of slipping it on for a quick session and the soft strap design allows the Quest 3 to be fairly compact for storage. The facial interface now has four depth adjustments to accommodate different faces or glasses wearers and is also removable as well. Meta sells a variety of facial interfaces including a new open facial interface that improves the mixed reality experiences and offers better breathability.

Compared to my previous experience with Quest devices, the Quest 3 is by far the best so far. Meta has done a great job and improved upon their design while also branching more into MR which is an interesting look into the future. Even looking just at the VR segment, the Quest 3 is the most popular headset on the market. Though the hardware isn’t capable of PCVR yet, the overall experience Meta has fostered with the Quest is hard to deny.

There are several Meta Quest models now, and version 3 is one of the top choices. This particular model offers a higher resolution LCD display of 2064 x 2208 pixels and 120Hz, as well as a lot more storage at 512 gigs, compared to lesser models. It also offers more sophisticated cameras on the front to track your hands/controllers as well as the environment around you when you are moving around while wearing the headset.

Setup is ok, but a little fiddly. The head strap “harness” has a few ways to adjust it on the top and back, and it can take a while to find the right fit to make the Quest 3 as comfortable as possible on your head. There’s a foam insert surrounding the face area that also has tiny buttons on each side of the inside with 4 levels you can use to pull it out a bit, and there are very fiddly to use – it’s easy to accidentally pull out the whole face insert! Though you can pop it back in easy enough. This is allegedly to allow you to be able to wear glasses while using the headset, but in my case, this didn’t work. More on that later.

If you have an existing Facebook account, you can sign in with that once you charge up the Quest 3 via the USB-C port on the left side, or create a new account in the phone app you’ll download as a companion to the device. It does take a bit and mine came almost completely drained, so charge it first before setting it up. The Quest 3 has to go through initial setup routines, download a software update, and connect the two hand controllers to it’s system, so expect to make an evening of it to get it all done. There were a couple of glitches in the app during setup where it couldn’t find a hand controller, but then it did, then not the other, then it did, lost the WiFi connection, then found it, etc. You get the idea – patience is a virtue during setup.

Once set up initially, the Quest 3 will want to create a map of the room you’re in so you won’t walk into things while using it. This can take a few minutes, and you turn your head in all direction to map things out (you can redo it whenever you want or to reorient things). Virtual screens hover in the air in front of you so you can adjust settings, create an Avatar that represents you when in the virtual world, shop the app store to download apps to use in the store, or use a browser to surf, or even watch shows on Youtube or Netflix. When needed, a keyboard can also pop up so you can enter your info. Now, you are supposed to be able to see virtual hands when you hold your hands out that you can use in place of the controllers for certain activities, but mine, so far, has been a bit buggy… mine will appear and begin to work, then disappear, causing me to fall back on the controllers. In a couple of cases, the controllers stop working, only to be replace by the hands. Ugh.

My big complaint is that even though they say you can use the Quest 3 if you wear glasses, this is not always the case. I use reading type glasses for various things, that can vary from 1.25 to 2.50 strengths depending on what I’m doing. I have those and a few other variations, and I tried EVERY one of them, and even fiddling with all 4 levels of adjustments and a wheel on the bottom of the headset that adults the “IPD (Interpupillary Distance) adjustment wheel”, that adjusts the width of the two inner lenses. It’s NOT a “focus” adjustment – it just varies the width, and did little good. In every case with every pair of glasses, everything ranges from bad to really bad in terms of clarity. I found that really, just not wearing glasses at all helped some, but as of the time of this writing, I still haven’t been able to get what I would call “sharp” clarity from the headset regardless of settings, controls, or apps. If you wear prescription lenses, you can order a set from Meta to replace what comes with the headset, at an additional cost, that may work depending on your eyesight circumstances.

Games and apps can vary from fully submersible, in which all you see is the activity in the app, to a pass-through where you can somewhat see the room you are in through the front cameras while a virtual environment plays on top of it, such as an initial game where you shoot fuzzy aliens as they seem to bust through your ceiling and walls. More elaborate games make you a part of them, such as the included (with mine) Batman Arkham Shadow game, which allows you to take on the roll of Batman as though you’re looking through his eyes, maneuvering around Gotham and battling villains. It can be disorienting until you get used to VR, and caution is needed when standing to play these games, but you do get the hang of it. You can of course seek out other things like tourism or nature apps that simply allow you to be someplace else. Search for free ones online because a lot of them via the store are pay apps and range in prices from as little as $1.99 each all the way to $49.99 and higher.

When fully charged, the battery indicator shows about 2 hours and 30 minutes charge (give or take). The more elaborate the app, the quicker it can drain the battery, though. The included charger takes a couple of hours or so to recharge the Quest 3. I wish they could have put a bigger battery in the device, being honest. Time runs out quickly when you get into it. I tried to use an extended cable and charge while I used it, but it seems to drain the battery faster than it can charge it that way.
The controllers are powered by AA batteries, and you can use rechargeable batteries if you prefer. They’re comfortable to hold and have wrist straps so you don’t sling them around the room when using them. You can do some tasks using just one, but many times both are required unless you enable hand tracking in the settings area, in which case you can use your virtual hands to control things (kind of hit and miss in my use). A charging dock (sold separately) will allow you to charge your Quest via 4 small pin connections, as well as the controllers if you use rechargeable batteries in them.

I can only speak about my experience with the Quest 3, as it has a huge following of people who love it. However, due to the incompatibility of my being able to use my reader type glasses with it and not being able to get a sharp viewing experience, I’m a bit disappointed with the performance of it. It still has it’s neat moments with some apps, and it can be entertaining, but much less so if you’re not able to get that sharp image you need. I think it would not be hard to put a TRUE dioptric type of focusing mechanism in a future version of this and not just a IPD wheel, so even people with glasses of any type could forego having to use them at all.

I would say if you have good vision and don’t mind a lot of pay apps to fully enjoy the Quest 3, you will find it entertaining. If you wear glasses, be aware of possible complications and incompatibility issues out of the box, or having to order prescription inserts at an additional cost, and perhaps wait for a more refined future model with better adjustment controls. So I would say that in my case, I’m a bit disappointed with the Quest 3 as my expectations were perhaps higher than the device, but your mileage may vary depending on your circumstances. I would recommend this, with reservations talked about above.

Last generation, when it was a choice between wired PCVR and wireless standalone VR, I went with wired. I was curious to know how far things have come since then. The second I turned on the Quest 3 and strapped it to my face, I knew that this was a whole new level.

The first thing you see when you turn on the Quest 3 is the actual world around you in full color. The AR experience is incredible, being able to open up menus and browser windows and place them wherever. Last gen, the pass-through was limited to black and white, and only there as a fail-safe to keep you from bumping into things. While wearing the Quest 3, the passthrough was so good that I was regularly checking my phone, amazed at being able to read the text on the screen, even if it was a little wobbly and rainbow shimmery.

I grabbed a highly rated table tennis game off of the store, and after a quick install I was holding a ping pong racket and relearning how to navigate in this virtual space. The physics were pretty incredible, and the hand tracking didn't skip a beat. I saw in the screenshots that there was an AR mode, so I turned that on and turned my dining table into a full sized ping pong table. That got a little too weird, and my daughter sitting at the table kept distracting me, so I went back into living room and the virtual world and practiced serving, since the game enforces actual rules like keeping the ball behind the table and hitting it on the descent after tossing at least 16cm. It took me a while to get the timing right, but once I did, everything felt real, down to the slight impact of the ball thanks to the rumble motors in the controllers. When my daughter asked to have a turn, I was about to set the controllers on the nonexistent table until the "this not reality" warning bells went off.

I plugged my gaming PC into a wifi 7 router that I have designated strictly for communication between it and my Quest 3. and set up Meta Link, which basically thrusts you into the older "Home" environment of last generation, but allows access to the PC. The clarity and sharpness of the screen was so good that I had no problem reading text in web browsers, word processing documents, and spreadsheets. I was even able to play a few PC games that I had installed that support VR without any perceptible lag. This is everything that I wanted out of VR, and surpasses even the lofty ambitions I had, which were originally set back when I was a kid watching Lawnmower Man on cable over and over again.

The onboard speakers work well to immerse you, and anyone else around you, in your virtual surroundings. There is also a headphone jack, so you can plug in your favorite headphones and enjoy some privacy without disturbing anyone. Bluetooth is also an option.

That being said, the included strap was finicky and puts all the weight at the front of the face. The facial interface (the liner between the actual housing that holds the electronics and your face) is also coarsely textured, presumably to prevent slipping, but with the unintended effect of being slightly abrasive especially to sensitive skin. The strap is upgradable, and the facial interface is removable, which also allows better vision of your surroundings for AR usage, at the cost of immersion. I also wish that there was some sort of bumper around the lenses included to keep my eyeglasses from potentially scratching them.

At the new price point, and without requiring a beefy gaming PC, the Quest 3 is a remarkable product. The out of the box experience is very beginner friendly, especially as it places you in AR first to help get you used to moving around with basically a bucket on your head. And if you do happen to have a PC and a newer Wifi router to hardwire it to, well, the wireless PCVR dream is now and I’m here for it. I've especially enjoyed watching movies from my PC in a virtual private movie theater with a 20' screen while also sitting on my living room sofa instead of my PC chair. While I wish that the battery lasted longer, the experience that gets packed into such a tiny device is incredible.