Meta has finally revealed its latest headset, Quest 3S. Although it retains some of Quest 2’s flaws, it creates much needed parity in power and features, all at an unbeatable price: $299.
There’s no getting around the fact that the Fresnel lenses in Quest 2 (and now Quest 3S) are worse than the class-leading lenses in Quest 3. It’s not even so much the lower resolution, but mostly the glare and smaller sweet spot—which are almost completely absent on Quest 3—that are so visually reminiscent of Quest 2. These artifacts really impact the clarity of the image coming from the display.
Unfortunately this means that doing basic things in the Horizon OS interface—like navigating through your app library, browsing the web, and playing videos—will look nearly identical on Quest 3S as it does on Quest 2.