Meta Quest 3S

Verdict

A stellar headset that benefits from all of the advantages of Meta’s top-shelf Quest 3 across performance and software selection, but for significantly less money. So long as you understand the limitations of the Quest 3S’ optical stack, almost all of its other shortcomings will likely be addressed by software updates. There really isn’t anything else this good at this price point right now.

Introduction

The Meta Quest 3 has cemented itself as the go-to standalone VR and MR headset for consumers – so how can the Quest 3S stack up as an alternative?

The Quest 3 wasn’t exactly drowning in competition, but a high asking price of £469.99 / $499.99 made it a hard sell for some. Step forward the Meta Quest 3S.

A year on from the release of the Quest 3, Meta’s newest headset isn’t a direct successor, instead hoping to entice those interested in the company’s best and brightest XR system but unwilling to shell out for it, whilst also giving Quest and Quest 2 owners something to upgrade to, without breaking the bank.

The TLDR pitch of the Meta Quest 3S is Quest 2 optics, running on Quest 3 hardware and software, for about 40% less than its more costly sibling. Although a compelling proposition on paper, it’s now time to find out whether the value offered by the Meta Quest 3S is (virtual) reality or insanity.

Design

• No physical headphone jack
• Action button for pass-through
• Quest 2’s proportions and optical stack

I like the look of the Meta Quest 3S. Proportionally, it’s almost identical to the Quest 2 (20% slimmer, according to Meta), but sports sharper lines, with two distinct sensor clusters on the front that are a little more elegant and cutting-edge than the trio of pill-shaped elements found on the beefier Quest 3.

The 3S is rendered in light-grey plastic – in keeping for the series – while the in-box fabric head strap appears almost identical to the one used by Quest 3. I say “almost” as there’s no cut-out for a 3.5mm physical headphone jack on the right side of the strap.

For whatever reason, one of the cuts Meta made to hit the Quest 3S’ price point was to nix the audio port that’s otherwise available on Meta’s most recent headsets (the Quest 2, Pro and 3 all have one). That said, USB-C to 3.5mm adapters and USB-C wired headphones (if you don’t need to charge the headset at the same time) are still supported, along with Bluetooth connectivity for tangle-free audio, using any of the best wireless earbuds.

If you’d rather go headphone-free, the Quest 3S’ native down-firing stereo speakers offer up an impressive amount of depth for their size, both in their dynamic range and positional prowess. The effect is particularly noticeable when watching media in a floating window (like YouTube, or Disney Plus, via the native browser app) and toggling full-screen mode on and off, but they’re well-suited to gaming and immersive video too.

While the included head strap is comfortable, easy to tighten and remains secure, the 3S’ front-heavy design means I found myself adjusting the system on my face pretty frequently; more so than my Quest 3 (which weighs about the same but whose centre mass sits closer to your face). Partially due to the optics (more on that in a moment) but partly because the weight felt like it was pushing down on my cheeks and opening my lower eyelids a little wider than they’d naturally sit, which was uncomfortable.

The pre-fitted fabric facial interface is soft and otherwise unobtrusive, but if you’re looking for a VR system to work out in, it won’t play well with sweat. Luckily, Meta does also sell breathable first-party and silicone third-party facial interfaces that are much better suited to heavy physical activity, but you’ll have to pay extra for those.

While we’re talking accessories, it’s also worth mentioning that the 3S can also be paired with the same Elite Strap and Elite Strap with Battery as the Quest 3. The latter offers a more secure fit and helps counterbalance the headset; more in line with Quest 3 rival, the Pico 4 Ultra; provided you can swing the additional £129.99 / $129.99.

The most significant difference between the Quest 3S and the Quest 3 (and the driving force behind their price disparity) is the choice of optical stack.

The newer 3S lifts its optics pretty much wholesale from 2020’s Quest 2, meaning the same fresnel lenses, with the same single 120Hz LCD panel, delivering the same resolution of 1832×1920 per eye, the same 97° horizontal and 93° vertical FoV (field of view), and 20ppd (pixels per degree), along with a familiar three-stage stepped manual IPD (inter-pupillary distance) adjustment, between 58mm and 68mm.

For context, the extra cash demanded by the Quest 3 instead buys you pancake lenses, a 120Hz LCD per eye, each serving up a sharper resolution of 2064 x 2208, paired to a larger 110° horizontal and 96° vertical FoV, with 25ppd, and manually adjustable IPD anywhere between a broader 58mm and 71mm.

All that said, the viewing experience on the Quest 3S certainly isn’t unusable, far from it. While the fresnel lenses at play suffer from edge distortion and aberration, and the sweet spot is smaller than that of the Quest 3’s, there’s still a perfectly serviceable amount of clarity for everything from gaming to web browsing, streaming video and even remote desktop access. I even tried a little photo editing via the Quest 3S.

One trick the Quest 3S’ design lords over Quest 3 is the addition of an Action button. The deeper body of the headset plays host to a new hardware control that lets you instantly switch to pass-through mode, so you can instantly check your surroundings. This feature is also accessible – across both the Quest 3 and 3S – with a double-tap to the side of the headset, but as many Quest 3 owners can attest, this method isn’t nearly as reliable or convenient as the 3S’ Action button.

Controllers

• Same Touch Plus controllers as Quest 3
• Tracking ring-less design
• Solid hand-tracking

It’s not just the chipset that the Quest 3S shares with its pricier sibling, Meta also includes the same Touch Plus controllers in-box too. They’re a darn sight more compact and unobtrusive compared to the Quest 2’s Touch controllers, not least because the engineers were able to ditch the tracking ring of old, making this latest generation much lighter and easier to wield.

You get the familiar assortment of grip and trigger buttons A,B (right) or X,Y (left) buttons, a clickable thumbstick and a menu button on the left controller, which stands in for the right controller’s Meta button (replacing the Quest 2’s Oculus button).

They attach to each wrist with an included lanyard for extra peace of mind, and by ditching the ring, you’re less likely to slam them into anything around you or each other, when flailing around in Beat Saber.

Even with the single AA battery inside (which is easily replaceable, thanks to a slick, hidden spring-loaded battery door), each controller clocks in at about 20g lighter than their predecessors. I commend the ergonomics and impressive ‘TruTouch’ haptics; something the controllers from rival Pico fall down on.

While criticism could be levelled at Meta for not going further with the Touch Plus controllers, by adding more accurate and immersive hand and finger tracking – akin to Valve’s Index controllers – for a pistol grip-style means of interaction, they’re easy to use, and wonderfully responsive and accurate.

Of course, controllers aren’t always the right tool for the job, and thankfully the Quest 3S carries over the same great hand-tracking experience as on the Quest 3. You might have to wait a few seconds for the headset to realise you’ve downed the controllers and are now trying to perform actions with your hands, but once it catches on (you’ll see a virtual overlay of hands tracked atop your real flesh mitts when it does), interaction is generally very intuitive.

Just as with the Quest 3, the action of double-tapping the controllers together to toggle between controller and hand tracking refused to work for me, but the system otherwise functions as you’d hope.

You only need to learn a single special gesture (pinching your index finger and thumb together, with your palm turned towards the headset) to pull off actions like pausing a VR experience to get to your home menu and re-centring your view, but beyond, interaction is similar to many other hand-tracking experiences.

If a floating window is within your grasp, you can physically reach out and pinch at its edge to move it around, or its corner to resize. You can even swipe and tap at any element in XR and it’ll behave as if it were a giant floating touchscreen. If you’re further back from virtual elements, like a media player, however, your hand’s movements instead control a floating cursor; with a pinch gesture emulating a tap and pinch-and-hold behaving much the same.

The Quest 3S’ four environmental cameras, pair of IR emitters (in place of the Quest 3’s ToF sensor) and assorted algorithms do an impressive job of locking virtual elements in your physical space, whilst simultaneously keeping a lock on where your controllers or hands are, relative to it all. The one thing the experience lacks is full-body tracking, with Meta instead opting for leg position estimation.

Luckily, you’re unlikely to run into many titles where its absence is an issue, but if you want your virtual feet to line up with your meat feet in experiences like VR chat, you might instead want to consider the aforementioned Pico 4 Ultra, which launched alongside a pair of additional ankle trackers for this exact purpose.

Specs and Features

• 4MP full-colour pass-through
• Same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR 2 Gen 2 chip as Quest 3
• 8GB RAM + 128GB or 256GB storage

Another upgrade Quest 2 owners (or older) will appreciate is the improvement to pass-through. Moving to a pair of 4MP RGB cameras gives functional stereoscopic vision, which paired with the headset’s excellent tracking makes mixed-reality experiences wholly possible.

I mainly enjoyed carrying out chores – like putting away the washing up – while being able to move around a floating 120-inch Disney Plus window, but the included First Contact game does a great job of showcasing the 3S’s abilities as a capable MR gaming headset too.

I describe the pass-through as “functional”, only because the sensors still lack clarity and dynamic range in brighter conditions, and welcome obvious noise when in low light. If you think opting for the pricier Quest 3 or the Pico 4 Ultra – with its 32MP pass-through cameras – might solve this shortcoming, however, don’t bother.

The top Quest’s pass-through looks about the same and clarity isn’t all that much different on the Pico, despite what the megapixel count might have you think. Even Apple’s Vision Pro (which costs almost as much as 12 Quest 3Ss) suffers from some of these same maladies. A generational upgrade to pass-through sensors is what’s needed, which likely won’t materialise for at least another year.

While optics create the biggest quality divide between the experiences offered up by the Quest 3S and Quest 3, performance brings back parity. In the standalone headset market, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 is currently the silicon of choice for the best balance of performance against battery life. It’s what powers both the Quest 3 and Pico 4 Ultra, and it lies at the heart of the Quest 3S too.

Like the Quest 3, that chip comes paired with 8GB of RAM on the Quest 3S and in its execution, I couldn’t readily find fault. Start-up and waking from sleep take mere seconds, as do app load times, while even larger games load in about 30 seconds at the most.

Horizon OS’ (the operating system on Meta’s headsets) primary interface is intentionally structured to run three windowed apps simultaneously, but the Quest 3S didn’t complain when I extended that to multiple tabs and browser windows – including some with video playback – across a total of six panels. In fact, performance dips, were rare, even when the headset’s battery was about to run out.

Of course, while the XR2 Gen 2 may be the biggest fish in the pond that is standalone XR, in terms of the fidelity of PC VR games, there’s clearly room for improvement. PC VR doesn’t suffer from the same power consumption or physical design constraints as standalone systems, which has allowed for more demanding, higher fidelity experiences.

With standalone, it’s a case of eking out as much performance as possible, without crippling battery life; a tricky needle to thread but one that close collaboration between the likes of Meta and Qualcomm could pull off, come the next generation of devices.

As for storage, the arrival of the Quest 3S resulted in a restructure of capacities across Meta’s current headsets. The Quest 3S can be had with either 128GB or 256GB of space, while the Quest 3 is now only available in a single top-spec 512GB build (it was previously available with 128GB of storage too).

Meta says that 128GB is enough to accommodate up to 30 standalone games, and in testing, the 20 or so apps and games installed on my review unit occupied around 100GB, which suggests Meta’s claim looks pretty accurate, erring on ambitious.

Software

• Impressive selection of first and third-party content
• Meta controls the standalone XR content market
• Lots of Meta exclusives

There’s no escaping the fact that Meta’s majority market share and financial might have allowed it to essentially define the content landscape for standalone XR.

On the one hand, this apparent monopoly has negative implications for rivals trying to make of fair go of creating worthwhile competition, on the other, it means those currently within Meta’s camp – such as Quest 3 and 3S owners – have access to what is undoubtedly the best XR content library available today.

Meta has put a lot of time and money into developing its own games, apps and experiences, either internally or by acquiring established VR and MR developers. What’s more, it’s been able to partner with events organisers to deliver exclusive recordings of high-profile concerts, like Sabrina Carpenters’ post-Coachella debut and Doja Cat’s performance during the Detroit leg of her Scarlet Tour.

In the standalone space, Meta has made its headsets the only place to find big-name games like Beat Saber, not to mention some high-profile, high-quality platform-exclusives that even PC VR players can’t get their hands on, such as Assassin’s Creed Nexus and, most recently, Batman: Arkham Shadow; which at the time of writing comes included with the purchase of a new Meta Quest 3 or Quest 3S.

All told, the Meta Horizon Store today features around 600 games and almost 3000 apps in total, and best of all, the Meta Quest 3S has the performance to support the lot. Add to that access to PC VR through a wired connection, Meta’s Air Link and native support for Valve’s Steam Link, and as far as content goes, it and the Quest 3 have access to what must be the largest content library of any headset on the market, period.

Whilst there’s a lot to love about Meta’s content offering, such a huge repository of experiences is only as good as the means of filtering and finding things you might actually want to access, and that is an area that could use some work.

Whether within the Quest 3S or using the companion Meta Horizon smartphone app, you only have universal keyword search at your disposal. You can’t filter by content type or publisher, you can’t arrange results by price or specify whether you’re looking for mixed reality-only experiences, or those that prioritize hand tracking, for example. Individual listings on the store contain such information, but for some reason, Meta isn’t giving users the tools to leverage this indexing.

This means Meta curates the content you’re most likely going to see and consider accessing, and there’s very little smaller developers can do to feature on the store’s front page. They’re at the mercy of Meta’s tastes and preferences, or otherwise have to focus on a distribution method like App Lab.

There’s also more Horizon OS could, should and will do. While native Meta apps for Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are all welcome integrations, it’d be great to see support for standard Android app APKs (Horizon OS is based on AOSP, the Android Open Source Project) without side-loading or SideQuest.

Access to multimodal Meta AI using voice (as on the Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses), would be great in more regions (as it’s currently exclusive to US and Canada in English), while forthcoming additions like a native calendar app with Meta Horizon Worlds can’t come soon enough.

Battery Life

• 4324mAh battery
• Almost 19% larger capacity than Quest 2
• Included 18W charger

Despite a battery with a capacity that’s 11% smaller than that of the Quest 3’s (4324mAh versus 4879mAh), Meta cites a longer run-time of 2.5 hours of ‘average use’ on a single charge for the Quest 3S, compared to 2.2 on the Quest 3. As the underlying chipset is the same across both systems, the promise of improved longevity is likely a result of the less demanding and lower-resolution optical stack used by Meta’s latest headset.

In practice, however, the playing field felt a lot more level. Whether using the Quest 3S for a combination of VR gaming and MR productivity, or solely running around Gotham as the Dark Knight from 100% charge to zero, the Quest 3S doled out about two hours of use on a charge, every time.

That’s a win for consistency but well below Meta’s quoted figures. The number I kept getting across multiple charges and mixed usage on both the Meta Quest 3S and Meta Quest 3 was 2 hours and 5 minutes, so use that as your benchmark.

While wholly usable, this is one area where Pico’s latest headset (the aforementioned 4 Ultra) fared much better, with its more capacious 5700mAh battery delivering between three and four hours of use on a charge, which feels like a more usable amount in a single stint; especially if you’re looking for a headset that can assist as a productivity tool.

As for charging, like the Quest 3, Meta includes an 18W power adapter in-box, which consistently refilled the Quest 3S in under two hours (1 hour 55 versus the Quest 3’s exact two-hour recharge time).

One small note for Quest 2 upgraders or those also considering the Quest 3 is that there’s no proximity sensor on the Quest 3S, meaning no wear detection. So, be sure to tap the power button to sleep the headset when you take it off, otherwise, you’ll needlessly be burning precious power with the displays staying on when not in use.

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