It seems that our previous report was correct: Meta has decided to pivot away from an expensive AR device to compete with the Apple Vision Pro. Taking a step in the opposite direction, the company last week revealed the Quest 3S headset, a lightly stripped-down model designed to appeal to more consumers at a lower pricepoint starting at $300. Coinciding with this news was the announcement that the company is discontinuing the Quest Pro, which sold for $1,500 at launch, further signaling Meta’s focus on more affordable products.
Instead of micro-OLED displays like the Apple Vision Pro, the Quest 3S will utilize 1832×1920 LCD displays (compared to 2064×2208 LCD for the Quest 3). Besides this display change and a slightly smaller field of view, the Quest 3S seems largely unchanged from the Quest 3. Meta even says that the new, more affordable model boasts an improved battery life over the Quest 3, and utilizes the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR Gen 2 processor.
The following was originally published September 3, 2024:
Meta has cancelled plans for an Apple Vision Pro competitor, according to The Information. While the Meta Quest 3 is the company’s flagship VR headset, to compete with Apple’s $3500 device, a new headset would require several upgrades. Chief among these would be the integration of micro-OLED displays, as opposed to the Meta Quest 3’s pair of LCD displays.
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Unfortunately, this looks like it’s the very reason Meta called off the planned device in the first place. The Information reports that Meta intended the headset, codenamed La Jolla, to be priced under $1000. As Apple discovered during production of the Vision Pro, micro-OLED displays are very expensive to produce, and Meta eventually determined that delivering a micro-OLED headset at its device pricepoint was simply not feasible.
Resources dedicated to La Jolla have reportedly been shifted to the production of headsets more in-line with the Quest’s pricepoint, with Bloomberg reporting that the company plans to release a budget-minded version of the Quest 3 as soon as later this year.
