THIS FEELS NEW, different … exciting even. What is “this”? Typing. Specifically, typing on an ethereal keyboard that’s floating right in front of me, hovering atop my actual real-world office desk.

I’m writing this on the Quest 3, Meta’s latest virtual reality headset. Or rather, in it, sending a message to myself via VR WhatsApp. Except “virtual reality” is no longer quite accurate. After several generations of headsets offering pure immersive VR, the Meta Quest 3 also leans into mixed reality, with an upgraded suite of six outward-facing cameras that show your real-world surroundings in full color, track your hand movements far more accurately than on Quest 2, and allow the gizmo to place digital objects—like ghostly keebs—within reach.

Typing this way is, to be clear, far from ideal. Slowly tapping letters one at a time to ensure the virtual keyboard recognizes each input means I’m nowhere near my usual words-per-minute speed—it’s taken about 15 minutes to write this much. But being able to do this at all, accurately, and using my actual hands to type on the air, is impressive.

Back in the physical world now, and on a materially extant keyboard, it’s abundantly clear reality still has the edge. I certainly wouldn’t want to write virtually regularly, not with the current state of the format. That said, I made things somewhat harder by using hand tracking—it’s also possible to aim the Quest 3’s controllers at letters, effectively shooting each one to type. This is, incidentally, quite fun, turning typing into an ad-hoc quick-fire game. And, full disclosure, I’ve cheated slightly—all those italics above were added IRL.

Don’t worry—a new approach to the humble act of typing isn’t the most entertaining thing about Quest 3. But by bringing together the host of technologies needed to make something as mundane as typing feel weirdly futuristic, Meta has provided the first real indication that MR—or, whisper it, maybe even the metaverse—might have potential after all. The problem is, it’s still not clear that it really knows where that idea ultimately leads, and by extension, who the Quest 3 is really for.

Reality Wars

The Quest 3 is a significant upgrade on the previous model. PHOTOGRAPH: META

To be fair, Meta isn’t alone there. Every player involved in VR, AR (Augmented Reality), or MR seems to be scrambling to land any of them as a development on par with the world-changing smartphone. None of them seem to have a clue who the tech is aimed at, or what its best use scenario is. Gaming? Work? Exercise? Communication? All of them? None?

At one extreme of the market, you have Apple prepping the 2024 release of its Apple Vision Pro headset. Also heavily targeting an imagined MR market, it’s set to retail at a ludicrously expensive $3,499. At the other, you have companies like Niantic eschewing dedicated hardware in favor of AR gaming apps like Pokémon Go or Monster Hunter Now—stuff to use on the smartphone you already have.

With the Quest 3, Meta is now situated somewhere in the middle. It’s far from the high-priced luxury item that Apple is planning, but it’s also no longer the budget VR-for-all option that the Quest 2 was.

Quest 3 sees a price bump in line with its technological upgrades, with the basic 128-GB SKU listed at £480 ($500) and the 512-GB version at £620 ($650). Considering the previous model launched at £399 ($399) for its top-end 256-GB version, that’s a significant leap.

It’s undoubtedly a gamble for Meta. While the hardware generation cycle has doubled—it’s three years almost to the day between the launch of the Quest 2 and Quest 3; it was a shade under 17 months between the original Oculus Quest and Quest 2—it’s still about half the roughly six-to-seven year cycle of a conventional gaming console generation. Asking users to upgrade so soon, at a 60 percent premium, is a big risk.

Possibly not unrelated, there are reports that shipment expectations are down. So, what are buyers getting for their money with the new Quest 3?

Quest 3 Specs Bump

The Quest 3 headset is smaller, not lighter, but a better fit counteracts this, thankfully. PHOTOGRAPH: META

OK, let’s talk numbers. The Meta Quest 3 improves on the Quest 2 in just about every category, and for the price, you’d expect it to.

The system-on-chip is beefier, boasting the second-generation Snapdragon XR2, fabricated with a 7-nm process, and 8 GB of RAM. Compared to the Quest 2, with its 10-nm, 6-GB RAM SoC, the Quest 3 feels far zippier and more responsive. It’s quicker to load apps and delivers smoother experiences once you’re in them.

Some developers, such as Red Matter 2 studio Vertical Robot, have already taken advantage of the power boost, rolling out updates that deliver 4K textures, advanced filtering and shadows, and improved resolution. It makes going back to the same game on the Quest 2 feel like downgrading from PS5 to PS3.

This visual prowess is aided by improved screens and lenses, although these don’t see quite as significant an evolution. Quest 3 packs in two LCD displays with a resolution of 2064 x 2208 pixels per eye—in terms of raw numbers, not the biggest leap from the Quest 2’s 1832 × 1920 per eye resolution. Meta calls it the 4K+ Infinite Display, but don’t expect a picture as crystal clear as your 4K TV offers.

With screens so close to your eyes, pixels remain discernible. However, behind a pancake lens stack—adapted from the one introduced on the Quest Pro—and with an improved field of view (110 degrees horizontal and 96 degrees vertical, a 15 percent boost on the 2020 headset) and richer colors, everything is far clearer and sharper.

A brief aside on the visuals: Meta has a solid explainer of how resolution in VR works differently to TVs or phones here, and how what really matters is Pixels Per Degree, or PPD—the number of pixels crammed into one degree of the FOV. The Quest 3 offers 25 PPD, compared to 20 PPD on the Quest 2 or 22 PPD on the Quest Pro, making for the best picture it has yet offered. However, given the human eye’s retinal resolution is closer to 60 PPD, it seems we’re still a few hardware generations away from “flawless” VR.

Good Things, Smaller Packages

Thanks to contact pads on the base of the Quest 3, it can charge using a sold-separately external dock. PHOTOGRAPH: META

Its physical dimensions are one set of numbers that has gotten smaller with the Quest 3. New components and thinner lenses have allowed for substantial miniaturization, resulting in a headset that’s 40 percent smaller than its predecessor.

While this has benefits in terms of packaging—the box is practically petite compared to the Quest 2’s gargantuan cuboid—the reduction makes the Quest 3 far more comfortable to use, especially over longer periods.

It’s actually a tiny bit heavier than its older sibling (515 grams versus 503), but the flatter profile means its center of gravity is closer to your own. The padded facial cushion remains cozy, hugging your face while also blocking out most peripheral light—only a sliver around the nose gap intrudes—while a slightly redesigned elasticated strap features a new Y-shaped spacer at the rear of your head, providing adjustable tension for a far more secure fit.

Other physical improvements include a dial on the visor’s left underside to easily adjust inter-pupillary distance—the space between the eyes—while you’re wearing the headset, a major improvement on the Quest 2 which required you to take the device off and on to adjust spacing. Lenses are also far less likely to fog up, something I found to be a regular irritation on the Quest 2.

Sound is once again pumped out along integrated speakers built into the “arms” on either side of the headset, and while it won’t satisfy audio snobs, it’s a notable generational leap. In particular, 3D directionality is excellent, creating an incredibly clear sense of where sound is coming from. There are some smaller layout changes, too, including the USB-C charging port now being on the left speaker arm, with the power button now sitting below it. Speaking of power, contact pads on the base of the unit, situated next to the volume rocker, provide the ability to charge the headset using the sold-separately external dock.

The biggest physical change to the Quest 3 is aesthetic, with a tricloptic array of front-facing vertical panels breaking up the once-monolithic gray face. Two of these house the RGB cameras that allow you to see your surroundings in color, while the middle one incorporates a depth sensor, further improving the accuracy of Quest 3’s spatial and motion detection.

I’m still not decided on whether I think the Quest 3 is exactly pretty, but those contrasting panels do give the gadget a bit of a Ghost in the Shell cyberpunk cool factor.

That more secure fit is more important than you’d think, though, as it finally makes VR exercise genuinely viable. Sure, Meta has been pushing Quest headsets as virtual gyms for years now, but between the larger bulk and the looser fit of earlier models, it always felt a risk. Whenever I tried out fitness apps on Quest 2, no matter how tightly I pulled the headset to my face, it always felt like it was going to wobble off with any halfway vigorous movement.

Not so on Quest 3—after going through several rounds of Les Mills Bodycombat without the headset moving an inch, I’m a convert. Throw in a decent fitness tracker device—Les Mills purports to show your calorie burn after a workout, but I’m presuming it’s predicted based on height and weight settings, rather than measured—and you might just be able to save on your real-world gym fees. You may want to splurge on the optional silicone face pad if so, just for cleanliness.

Also shrunken are the Touch controllers, now branded Touch Plus, weighing in at a svelte 126 grams each. While the layout remains familiar—a thumbstick and two input buttons on the face, with a trigger and a grip for each hand—the headset’s improved spatial detection abilities mean Meta has been able to chop off the tracking ring. Overall, the Touch Plus grips are far more accurate tools, with improved haptics that make interacting with virtual objects feel more realistic.

Weirdly though, I miss the rings. Their absence changes the general heft I’ve become accustomed to since the OG Quest back in 2019, and now they feel even more likely to careen out of my grip during any particularly hectic session of Beat Saber, safety straps be damned. Battery covers held in place with click-in clips, rather than the slide-on/off versions of the Quest 2’s controllers, help here, at least.

Alternate Realities

COURTESY OF META

The most notable change in using the Quest 3 is that pass-through is enabled by default. While full VR environments remain an option, seeing your actual surroundings from the moment you put the headset on is the first indication of just how much emphasis Meta is now placing on mixed reality.

While earlier Quests had pass-through features, they were incredibly basic, presenting blurry, black-and-white versions of your environs. On Quest 3, the introduction of color makes a world of difference, with those front-facing RGB cameras delivering an 18-PPD view of your space.

There’s no sugar-coating it though: It’s still blurry, although significantly less so than Quest 2’s gray, grainy morass. Like the internal lenses, we’re still probably a few hardware generations away from pass-through that’s indistinguishable from not having a headset on at all.

Yet even with the slightly blurry haze, the full-color experience really does make MR apps viable. Or rather, it could—but this is also where we start getting into the Quest 3’s aforementioned identity crisis, the confusion over who and what it’s for.

A short demo called First Encounters shows off MR’s potential and guides users through setting up their space for MR (not dramatically different from drawing a VR boundary on the floor, but now you also place flat panels to block out furniture). Once completed, you’re treated to an admittedly impressive invasion of alien puffballs, breaking through your walls and ceiling, revealing exotic terrain beyond. However, the game itself is a simple score-rank shooter that lasts a matter of minutes.

Beyond that, it’s hard to find good uses for MR, at least during the review period (several apps Meta had told WIRED would be available to test, were not). The two best examples I stumbled across were Rube Goldberg Workshop, which allows you to create your own elaborate contraptions in your living space, and Zombies Noir: Mixed Reality, another shooter that sees you gunning down the undead as they stumble through vaguely pulp elements layered into your rooms.

Although the former could make better use of mixed reality—letting you incorporate real objects into your outlandish creations—there’s delight in building a network of rails, tracks, gears, steps, and more, accurately laid over your room, and watching the chain reaction play out around you. The latter is a bit more conventional—it could work just as well as a VR, rather than MR, shooter—but is still fun, although it does need rather a lot of space in which to effectively dodge zombies.

Elsewhere, and despite my excitement at typing on a floating keyboard, there’s still not much of a place for productivity or office work in MR beyond virtual meetings or other communication features. There are plenty of 3D painting apps in the Quest store, though, allowing you to draw glorified wireframe models in the air—it’s easy to see the promise there for design work. There’s definitely potential in all those hypothetical applications of MR, but right now, everything feels like a hint of what might be.

Maybe it’s a deliberate stepping stone, another attempt to get the ailing metaverse up and running, using Quest 3 to get people used to bridging the real and the virtual more generally. Work, collaboration, exercise, and play—one headset does all.

There’s no denying that between improved visuals, accurate hand tracking to better interact with immaterial worlds, and a built-in mic and speakers to chat with passersby, the Quest 3 makes wandering around virtual environments more workable than ever.

The problem is, no one’s interested—dipping into Horizon Worlds, Meta’s much-hyped shared world and creation platform, meant to be a best-case example of the metaverse’s potential, is still like wandering a ghost town. A digital comedy club sits empty, a Halloween-themed horror world is as devoid of people as it is of scares. Even Super Rumble, a free-to-play arena shooter built in Worlds and undeniably one of the better experiences on offer, never had more than three players whenever I tried it.

If the metaverse isn’t dead on arrival, it’s definitely on life support, and I’m not sure the Quest 3, even with all the ways it improves the experience, is enough to revive it.

Where the Quest Becomes a Trial

Despite the hardware bumps for the Quest 3, its OS and UI remain stubbornly dated. PHOTOGRAPH: META

It’s also surprising that, for all the upgrades Meta has given the Quest 3 on the hardware front, the OS and UI remain stubbornly dated. Navigation is messy, and the organization remains terrible—everything you own, installed or not, sits in your App Library tray, listed in order of recent usage. There’s no way to sort by alphabetical order or even separate them by installation status, let alone more advanced features like being able to group apps into folders.

This was frustrating even on the Quest 2’s original 64-GB unit, but with the Quest 3 offering up to 512 GB of storage, it gets cluttered, fast. Given aspirations for Quest 3 to be a multipurpose platform equally suited to work, exercise, and play, Meta desperately needs to allow users to curate their apps.

There’s little arguing that gaming still represents the biggest user base for the Quest 3, though, which makes the lack of improvements to basic features such as save data migration disappointing. Technically, cloud backups are enabled by default, a feature introduced on Quest 2, but there’s seemingly no way to actually manage data or manually move it between devices. Even if you check your cloud backups in a browser, you can only see what each headset has uploaded, with the option to delete the file, but not copy or force migrate it from a Quest 2 to Quest 3. It’s maddening.

It also remains frustrating to link the Quest 3 to PC, to use VR games installed either through the Quest desktop app or other platforms such as Steam. Physically connecting isn’t the problem, with both the Quest Link cable and the wireless AirLink feature offering simple options, but rather performance.

On a rig running a still-reasonably-powerful Nvidia RTX 3060, literally every game I tried, from Beat Saber to first-person adventure Obduction, was slow to load and slower to use, with frequent crashes.

Then again, Quest’s biggest selling point has always been that it’s cordless, delivering increasingly compelling VR experiences without needing a powerful PC, permanently mounted external sensors, or any of the other rigmarole that some of its technically better but less convenient rivals mandate.

That remains a strength with Quest 3. It is, hands down, the best way to engage in VR games without tripping over a viper’s nest of wires—and now it can do a whole lot more besides.

I’d even go so far as to argue that its cordless nature may prove to be a secret weapon against the Apple Vision Pro, which brandishes a cord tethering the user to either an external battery or power socket, on top of its wallet-busting price.

However, there’s also no denying that the Quest 3 feels a bit “jack of all trades, master of none.” Everything it does, it does well, but it does nothing at the apex of its class. A significant step up on Quest 2 in every respect, but it still might not be enough to make mainstream adoption of VR or MR an actual reality.

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