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Meta Quest 3S

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160 pointsgslin97 comments

The most important spec of any VR device is its display. Since the Quest 3S has the same display as a Quest 2, this is more of a Quest 2+ than a Quest 3 Lite.

The current best deal seems to be a used or refurb Quest 3 for $450.

That said, the bump in battery/processor, tracking for controllers, and passthrough should be nice for folks that more wanted something to try in the vein of the 2, versus the "step up" to the 3

It would have been, had I not watched a graphics comparison between the 2 and 3. Now I have no choice but to replace my 2 with a 3.

The display is the most important spec for a subset of users. A 25% improvement in PPD is a big deal for productivity applications, but it just isn't particularly noticeable if you mainly play Beat Saber and Gorilla Tag.

In every respect other than the display, the 2s is basically a Quest 3 - you get stereo colour passthrough, the newer Gen 2 SoC, more RAM and the ringless controllers.

nice, you call it the 2S

Haha, nice catch

> ringless controllers

I was never bothered by the Q2 controller rings. On the contrary: they saved my knuckles from punching straight into my ceiling (oh how I miss Echo VR!)

I used to think display resolution mattered more to the general public, but even today you have people plenty happy with FHD computer monitors they look at all day.

TVs also aren't usually great, and people look at them all day long for years without much complaints.

All to say, there's definitely a market for a VR headset with a "good enough" display with more focus on processing power and other capabilities.

Yet who owns OLED TVs? Most people don't care unless it's affordable

The lenses is the most important "spec". Also the hardest to put numbers on, have to be experienced.

The killer app for these cheap headsets is streaming software, like ALVR or Virtual Desktop. I've been playing No Mans Sky and VTOL VR (with Proton!!!) and streamed to my headset with surprising stability and little latency.

The standard native Quest games are okay, but my OG Quest 1 really shines when you use it to play wireless PCVR streamed over Wifi. I would not be surprised if this was the main use-case for these headsets nowadays.

The latency is brutal though, compared to content running on-device or a headset with regular display input. I'm particularly prone to motion sickness though - it might be an acceptable tradeoff if you're not.

(Image compression over wireless or even USB is noticeable as well, but I can overlook that for the price.)

What kind of network setup were you using? The usual recommendation is that for best results you need a dedicated access point (not serving any other devices), in the same room as the headset, and with ethernet backhaul all the way to the PC server. Using a shared access point or multiple WiFi hops might work but YMMV.

Thanks for the recommendation; I was mostly using USB (3.2 Gen 2x1), as I found it much better than wireless but still not quite good enough. The wireless setup I tried was a 6e router connected to the PC over 1Gb ethernet, but there were other devices on the network.

I've heard virtual desktop can be lower latency, haven't tried it. I should say that even native Quest games are borderline for me as far as latency/nausea so there isn't much margin.

Not my experience at all. Streaming over WiFi had no noticeable latency, but I did have to upgrade my WiFi AP to one that supported -AC and have it only a couple of meters from the VR headset.

I actually expected it to kinda suck and was very impressed when it worked as well as it does.

This is on a Quest 2, not a Quest 3 however. Experiences may vary.

I'm using a dedicated TP-Link Archer AX53 (just WiFi 6, not WiFi 6E) with Quest 3 and Virtual Desktop for PCVR. Turns out the WiFi bandwidth and latency is not really a problem, rather my older GPU (Radeon RX590) is the bottleneck, struggling to encode all the needed frames in real time.

I'll mention that the single most impactful upgrade you can make to a PC for VR is to get an AMD X3D CPU. X3D CPUs really smooth out p99+ frame times which results in a tremendous improvement to the VR experience (which is dominated by outlier frame times).

Thanks, sounds like a possibly nice upgrade path in the future! :)

In your case, with an RX 590, do NOT buy an expensive x3D processor expecting any improvement. I upgraded from an RX580 (using an original HTC Vive) to an RX 5700xt (and a valve Index) and that's the position you are in. You cannot drive a high pixel density VR headset with a Mid tier GPU from 8 years ago.

Get something that is at least as powerful as that RX 5700xt I had (I now have a 4070 super) and you will be satisfied. It drove my Index at 90hz.

Ah I didn't realize it was that old. Well, in that case I'd recommend both a graphics card and a CPU upgrade.

In my gaming PC (with a 4070 Ti so a pretty strong GPU) I replaced a 5600X with a 5700X3D. It has made my VR experience essentially perfect.

What games do you play in VR? I know you say the outlier frame times were a huge problem for you but it really seems like such a small performance bump to get such a huge perceptual benefit.

Most of my VR time is in Beat Saber -- I'd have occasional, quite distracting frame drops with a 5600X that have completely gone away with a relatively cheap upgrade to a 5700X3D.

I'd personally argue that smoothing out outlier frametimes is not a small performance bump! As an engineer I care a lot about tail latency for services, and I feel like tail latency ends up being even more critical for high-fidelity gaming experiences like VR.

I don't notice any latency whatsoever. If you're not exaggerating and are genuinely experiencing "brutal" latency, then something is definitely wrong with your setup.

Not necessarily. Some people are just less sensitive to latency, so even if a 20ms added delay might not be noticeable to you, it doesn't mean that other people won't feel it.

I have to agree on the latency issues. While i luckily didn't get any motion sickness from it i found it very distracting and never got used to it, even after several weeks of regular use playing several simracing games. After a lot of tinkering I got i got it down to around 30-35ms with virtual desktop, but found it still very distracting.

Switching to a headset with a DP cable was night and day to me in terms of immersion!

Latency for me on a Quest 3 with a Puppis router + Virtual Desktop is around 45ms. I personally haven't found 45ms to be a problem (it's comparable to many TVs without game mode) but YMMV!

I had little issues with wireless but it was really important to have a fully gigabit capable wireless router and have my computer hardwired. I had it on a separate network because I had to buy a router that could specifically handle gigabit wireless and didn't want other things interfering. I definitely noticed issues playing Minecraft with shaders on because it's just so much data but it was only in wide open areas and I found it more fun to build or mine in VR!

Sister comments are addressing the Wi-fi part. There's of course also the host part which has to keep up with the rendering and sustain performance.

Overall VR streaming is IMHO still very finicky for anyone who's not dumping buckets of time or money into it head first.

In particular for people wanting to get into VR who were not specifically into PC gaming, there's so much things to catch up and the whole gaming ecosystem to digest. It's a lot.

Spec comparison page: https://www.meta.com/quest/compare/

So it looks like it's basically the same as the Quest 3 except for the screen resolution and the use of different lenses (instead of the pancake lenses). Everything else seems similar or even better (and there's a new button to transition from AR to VR akin to the one on the Apple Vision Pro).

At half the price, the Q3S seems to be a nobrainer no?

I'll never buy another VR headset without pancake lenses.

As someone unfamiliar with the VR headset space, what's the benefit?

Upside: Less distortion, more generous positioning sweet spot, much thinner and lighter.

Downside: Expensive, requires the display to run brighter for the same perceived brightness.

> Pancake lens allow you to make smaller headsets and typically result in better image quality. The downside is they lose a lot of light so you need very bright screens.

Source and detailed explanation with pictures: https://old.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/14lu4wz/whats_...

Another downside is the internal reflections that can make bright spots in otherwise dark scenes.

Still better than old style lenses, but it's not an unmitigated good.

same

Lower resolution, lower FOV and Fresnel lens...

Not really nobrainer if you want the best experience. And things like these could make or break the VR immmersion.

1832 x 1920 is the same resolution from the Quest 2, and fresnel lenses may come from that as well.

That effectively means it's Quest 2 optics with a Quest 3 GPU and color passthrough.

The premium Quest 3's lenses and displays are no doubt better, but for the entry level hardware this is still a good upgrade.

The better GPU will mean it doesn't need to lean as hard on "foveated rendering" where the center of the screen is at high resolution and everywhere else is blurry and upscaled with unreadable text. I say "foveated" in quotes because it doesn't know where your eyes are looking, only how your head is oriented, so if you want to see something in detail you need to point your face at it.

The downgrade in lens type is a huge difference in user experience. Pancake lens is strictly superior than fresnel in almost all aspects, unless you want OLED. In the case of 3S you don't get OLED anyways, so it's a pretty big downgrade.

interesting... I was really looking for a nice upgrade this year, but instead I got a cheaper headset. This is making things difficult. I might just get the Q3S while I wait for a Q4.

And they are still featuring beat saber as their killer app.

Honestly as someone with over a thousand hours in VR, I still haven't found anything better than Beat Saber. Rez is fantastic but not something you replay over time. Pistol Whip and HL Alyx are both good but Best Saber is sublime.

Have you tried Contractors in multiplayer?

Honestly I don't really play multiplayer FPSes much these days.

My problem with Beat Saber is the music.

There are some good maps to some good songs… and a LOT of bad maps to really bad songs.

I end up mostly playing curated playlists of custom songs -- BeastSaber's "map of the week" tends to have good experts and expert+s.

Are you talking the PC version? Or the on-device meta OS version?

Because I haven’t seen a song of the week anywhere.

I mean https://bsaber.com/maps-of-the-week/1 -- a fan-curated list of custom songs.

I definitely use the PC version because of the ease of modding.

So I should be more clear, my problem with it is that the official app kind of sucks.

Blade and sorcery was the killer app for me. Beat Saber didn’t make sense until I found the websites which let me use AI to generate my own levels…

I don't use my Quest 2 because it's so annoying trying to keep the screen in focus with the fresnel lenses.

I've returned my Quest 3 because it gave me a headache, dry eyes and the passthrough was not at all like advertised.

Saw of people watching there phone screen, that was not possible with my unit.

Those symptoms affect relatively few people, and usually not in the long term. Thankfully, I am not one of them.

It gave me a headache / nausea (and most people I knew who tried it), so not sure about "few".

Never heard of anyone getting that except playing games where you don't teleport. Maybe it was that?

Well yeah, but the "teleporting" is annoying so you're really not left with a lot of options - I was bored with the thing within a week once the novelty wore off.

What games did you try?

Asgard's wrath, arizona sunshine, the walking dead, and a bunch of other highly rated ones. It's worth noting that I don't have a big empty room so i needed to rely on "teleporting" for most movement.

Ah yeah. Arizona sunshine is the only game that made me want to puke. I only tried it once tho and I heard you can get VR legs by doing short sessions first. My own experience was mostly with static games (beat saber) and with teleporting games. I think there's a lot of experiences that. Don't involve movements like that.

Oh yeah, tried a bunch of "static" games as well but those just got boring pretty fast for me.

yeah a lot of the videos and comments are so misleading. There were reports of people completely resetting their devices for 20+ times just to try to improve passthrough. Even with good pass through its not worth wearing a helmet still

Some people are quitters and some people push through the initial discomfort

It's important to note that "push through" here actually means:

Stop when you feel discomfort. Do other things for at least a few hours. Come back and play some more. Repeat this process, and you can play longer and longer sessions without discomfort.

If you try to force yourself to keep playing, it'll actually make the symptoms worse and you won't adapt to it.

Lol, we aren't talking about training for a marathon or rescuing someone from a burning building. VR headsets are a niche toy that many people find unpleasant to use, and will likely always be a niche product.

Did you find it headache-inducing compared to other VR headsets or just in general?

I suspect the motion lag from “inside-out” tracking (compared to valve index or vive, which was tolerable) was enough to induce nausea, at least for me.

Can this headset only run meta apps or you can connect it to your machine and is it as a vr headset in like steam ?

You can run apps from meta store, sideloaded apps from https://sidequestvr.com/ and use Steam link/Air Link/Virtual Desktop to wirelessly play PC VR.

You can also stream PCVR over USB instead of WiFi if you prefer, though the convenience of WiFi wins for most people.

They also recently added the ability to connect a USB HDMI capture device and view any 2D input on a virtual big screen.

IMHO having no cables attached to your headset is a win, especially in applications where you move your body a fair amount.

I use a Quest 3 and do almost all of my gaming with Steam + Virtual Desktop and wireless PCVR. Including games available natively on the Quest like Beat Saber. (It's a lot easier to mod the PC version.)

There are only seven titles in the library on the website, which is a bit underwhelming. Would I be able to play my Quest I titles, too (like Trevor Saves the Universe and Superhot)?

The Quest 3S should be compatible with the full library of Quest titles.

interesting tradeoff wrt to the display. i can understand why it was made and why xr was prioritized over better visuals. it would've been a sell for me if they went with the newer lens at least.

> Log into your Meta account to continue

Pretty crazy I have to login to view this. I despise the internet's evolution where everything expects an account.

That's weird, I specifically never log into meta properties outside of the browser's dedicated containers and this page gave me no prompt whatsoever.

Perhaps it's detecting a previous session that timed out or some other liminal state ?

"Log into your Meta account to continue"

Nope.

The specs are impressive. I feel like we're seeing a sci-fi future develop before our very eyes.

Unfortunately, I am starting to think we will get to "The Matrix" only instead of using us for harvesting our heat energy, Meta will just make us view ads all day.

If you view ads all day you won’t be buying anything

Nitpick: In the matrix they harvest bioelectricity, not heat. Not that it makes any more sense.

In the Matrix books, the machines actually used the brain power of humans, rather than their energy. The makers of the movies just thought people would be too stupid to understand that.

That retcon was bizarre. There are myriad simple pretexts for enslaving humanity. Choosing "let's maintain lukewarm meat bags for energy" is so contrived and absurd.

Link is gated behind a facebook/meta account.

As is the Meta Quest 3S.

Sure, but I need an Apple account to use an iPad or an iPhone, but I don't need to log into my Apple account to browse hardware on my computer.

I hate Facebook in general, but I like that Meta is investing in a hardware platform. I can live with needing an account to use a piece of hardware, if the hardware is good. I have a quest3, I like it. But they care so much about tracking you that it undermines their hardware and the adoption of it.

They could have the best VR hardware in the industry by 100x and I would still avoid purchasing their headsets.

You can "Decline optional cookies" and browse without being logged in, at least in Europe. (Just tested in a private window, FB/Meta is only allowed in a separate container on my computer.)

will the external cameras finally be available to apps? they're crowing about mixed reality, but previous quest can only do passthrough - even the most basic use of the external cameras is extremely limited and requires workarounds.

Quest 3 has had full passthrough AR for a year now

My understanding is that the app cannot access the pass through video for privacy reasons, only decide which parts to occlude with overlays

They announced a passthrough API for next year, so yay to that. That's def going to open up even move possibilities.

Yes current generation can only do pass through, the app cannot see the cameras to do any sort of computer vision on your environment. Think running a real-time style GAN on your external cameras - can’t do it with pass through. All you can do is overlay stuff in the world, with extremely limited information on what you are overlaying it on.

The display specs are pretty impressive. Mostly superior to the Valve Index, which costs $500 without the controllers ($1000 with the controllers and trackers) versus $320 for the Question 3S (including controllers!).

The Valve Index is five year old hardware inexplicably still being sold at its original launch price to this day, it really isn't relevant anymore.

Even the Quest 2 had a higher display resolution, four years ago, for $300 at launch.

Okay, so besides other Meta Quest, which consumer VR headsets should I compare it against? The only ones I know of are the Valve Index, the Sony PlayStation VR2, and the HTC Vive Pro 2.

Pico 4 and Pico 4 Ultra would be direct competitors (similar price range, closer in specs and capacities)

Probably fair, although neither of those are sold in the US.

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