Meta Quest 3S Is A New Budget-Friendly Standalone VR Headset, Releases In October

A new Quest mixed reality headset has been announced at Meta Connect 2024. Thes Quest 3S model is designed to be a more affordable alternative to the Quest 3, and it’ll launch worldwide on October 15 with a starting price of $300 for the 128GB model and $400 for the 256GB version.

This is substantially cheaper than the Quest 3 headset–the 512GB model has dropped to $500 and the remaining 128GB models will be sold for $430 –but some hardware concessions have been made to bring its price down. Existing stock at several retailers aren’t reflecting the new prices yet, but they will be updated soon.

Internally, it has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset as the Quest 3, but when it comes to lenses, it reuses the lower-1832 x 1920 per-eye resolution fresnel lenses of the Quest 2 instead of the Quest 3’s pancake lenses. There’s also a narrower field of vision and no depth sensor like on the Quest 3, and the front of the headset has a spider-like arrangement of front-facing cameras when compared to the pill-shaped design that the Quest 3 uses.

The Quest 3S will ship with Touch Pro controllers and users will be able to navigate through menus and apps using gesture controls. Overall, Meta says you’ll still get the same mixed-reality features and performance as on the Quest 3, so you’ll be able to play the same games on it and upcoming titles like Batman: Arkham Shadow.

It’s also claimed that you’ll get better battery life in comparison to the Quest 3, just over two-and-a-half hours from a full charge under optimal conditions while the Quest 3 averages two hours. Another new feature on this model is an “action” button for quick-switching between passthrough and immersive modes–the Quest 3 uses a double-tap gesture–and ideally, it looks like this will be the new entry-level Quest headset as Meta is planning to end sales of the Quest 2.