The Meta Quest 3 has just been announced, building upon the supremely popular Quest 2. It comes within a year of the launch of the high-end Meta Quest Pro. Let’s explore the key differences between the Meta mixed-reality headsets.
We don’t know everything about the Meta Quest 3 quite yet, we’ll have to wait for Meta Connect on September 27th for that. But, for now, we have some key details that we can pit against the Meta Quest Pro.
We’re going to compare everything from price and features to design to try to help you decide what would be right for you. Whether you’re interested in gaming or delving into virtual working, here are the important battlegrounds in Quest 3 vs Quest Pro.
The Meta Quest 3 is cheaper
Kicking things off with the obvious differentiator, if you want to spend £499/$499 on a AR/VR headset then the Meta Quest 3 is your only choice here. The Meta Quest Pro has a starting price of £999/$999.
Your £499/$499 will get you the 128GB storage version of the Quest 3, with Meta saying a higher storage option will also be offered. Whereas the Meta Quest Pro comes with 256GB storage, and that’s the sole option.
There are also accessories to consider. We don’t know how much the Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers will cost separately, but they’re bundled in anyways. However, Meta has said you’ll be able to upgrade to the Quest Pro’s Touch Pro controllers and use them on the Quest 3 if you’d like, but they cost £149/$149 each.
You get more features with the Quest Pro
The big differences in features between these two headsets centre around tracking. The Meta Quest Pro offers both eye and face tracking, while the Quest 3 offers neither.
More specifically, the tracking on offer from the Quest Pro includes ten advanced virtual and mixed reality sensors that support six degrees of freedom inside-out tracking.
Both headsets do come with Full Colour Passthrough though, so you won’t miss out on that augmented reality experience whether you buy the Quest 3 or Pro.
The Quest 3 may actually be more powerful
You’d think that the mixed reality headset at double the price of the other one would be more powerful but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Meta itself says the Quest 3 is “our most powerful headset yet.” This seems to be down to the chipset inside, with the Quest Pro sporting Snapdragon’s XR2 whereas the Quest 3 will feature a next-gen Snapdragon chip (that we’re expecting to be the XR2 Gen 2).
It’s not clear how this will play out in real-world use, we’ll have to wait until we get our hands on the Quest 3 and are able to do some testing so we can make some conclusions on the performance.
It wasn’t all bad news for Quest Pro owners though. Meta revealed both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro would be getting a performance boost through a software update soon. The Meta Quest Pro is set to get up to a 26% CPU increase and up to an 11% GPU hike.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.