Meta Quest 3 News & Reviews

Meta announced its annual Connect developer conference is returning this year on September 17th-18th. While it’s probably still too early to speculate, there are a few things we’re hoping to hear about.

Meta typically fills out its speaker schedule closer to Connect, which may give us a better idea of what to expect come September. There’s also the long trail of leaks that inevitably crop up ahead of the event. So far, the company hasn’t provided any clues beyond the usual boilerplate:

“As in years past, we’ll share the latest and greatest in Meta Horizon updates, peel back the curtain on tomorrow’s tech, and give XR devs the tools they need to help build for the next computing platform today,” Meta says in the blogpost announce.

Still, Connect is typically the company’s premier event for its biggest announcements, and we’re already looking forward to a few.

At last year’s Connect, Meta revealed the October launch date of Quest 3S, the company’s latest mixed reality headset starting at $300. While we’re not expecting another Quest headset to launch this year, one thing we didn’t hear about at Connect 2024 was just when the rash of third-party headsets running Horizon OS will release, slated to arrive from Asus and Lenovo, in addition to an Xbox-flavored version of Quest.

Granted, it’s a seven-month wait until Connect 2025 kicks off, so it’s possible we could hear about those headsets sooner rather than later. Still, it’s a good bet Meta will put Horizon OS in the spotlight as it seeks to compete with Google’s forthcoming Android XR.

To boot, in January serial leaker ‘Luna‘ reported Asus may be the first out of the gate with a Horizon OS headset, which is reported to include eye-tracking, face-tracking, and displays which could either be quantum dot LCD with local dimming or micro-OLED, Luna reports.

At Connect 2024, Meta also unveiled Orion, an internal AR glasses prototype that packs a laundry list of features, which notably may not make their way to a consumer pair of Meta AR glasses for some time—coming at least before 2030, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says. As the race to release an all-day pair of AR glasses heats up, we’re of course hoping to hear more at Connect 2025.

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are also another area of growing interest. Last year the company brought AI tools for reminders and the ability to scan QR codes and phone numbers using voice commands. The gen 2 version of Ray-Ban Meta released in October 2023, so it stands to reason the companies are looking to launch a new generation to capitalize on the thus far successful segment.

Notably, a recent Bloomberg report maintained we may see an expansion this year. Essilor Luxottica is reportedly working with Meta to create a sportier model in addition to a high-end model with a built-in display.

And although you might expect Connect to be all about AI this year, the company seems to be offloading this to a separate developer conference, called LlamaCon, kicking off on April 29th, which will be dedicated to its family of generative AI models.

That said, it’s a long leadup to Connect 2025. Meta typically confirms the actual dates in the summer, making this the earliest the company has ever announced the dev conference. Maybe there’s something bigger on the horizon? Whatever the case, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the Meta developer blog and the Meta Connect website to glean what’s next.

Daisy Ridley, who played ‘Rey’ in the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy, has been tapped to star in an upcoming VR experience, which is slated to arrive on Quest in March.

As reported in a Hollywood Reporter exclusive, the experience is called Trailblazer: The Untold Story of Mrs. Benz, which recants the story of 19th century German automotive pioneer Bertha Benz—the first person to drive an internal combustion engine automobile over a long distance, and wife of Carl Benz, creator of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen from 1885.

The VR experience, which is slated to arrive on Quest 2 and above on March 7th, is being directed by Emmy-nominated Eloise Singer from UK-based Singer Studios, which also developed narrative VR experience The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend (2024), starring Lucy Liu.

Ridley, who plays the role of Bertha Benz, will join Singer and Lesley Paterson as executive producers when Trailblazer is made into a film and graphic novel series.

“Bertha’s determination and courage are incredibly inspiring,” Ridley tells Hollywood Reporter. “It’s been such a privilege to step into her world and help tell her story. I hope audiences are as moved by her journey as I was while working on this project.”

Trailblazer: The Untold Story of Mrs. Benz is said to “invite audiences to step into Bertha’s shoes, explore her workshop and assemble the engine that reshaped transportation forever.”

While the VR experience first premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2022 and SXSW in 2023, that was before plans were revealed that Ridley would be attached to the project.

Meta Quest Pro wasn’t really the prosumer hit it was chalked up to be, leading the company to discontinue its first mixed reality headset a little over two years after release. Now Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports Meta is not only working on an ostensible Quest 3 consumer follow-up, but also a “high-end” model that could succeed Quest Pro.

In Gurman’s weekly newsletter, he rounds up a wide range of recent XR news, from Meta possibly including a display in its next Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses to reports of Apple winding down Vision Pro production amid decreased demand for the $3,500 headset.

Citing insider sources, Gurman also reported that Meta is “working on Quest 4 VR goggles, as well as a new high-end model that could eventually become a successor to the Quest Pro mixed-reality headset.”

Released in late 2022, Quest Pro marked a significant departure from Meta’s line of consumer standalone headsets, which, at the time, ranged around the $300 mark.

Initially priced at $1,500, the ‘Pro’ level headset offered a host of features over its concurrent Quest 2, such as color-passthrough, pancake lenses, and both face and eye-tracking. Less than five months later though, Meta decreased the price of Quest Pro to $1,000 in an effort to attract more prosumers.

Then, in July 2023, The Information released a report claiming Meta was discontinuing the Quest Pro line entirely, which Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth was quick to contest, stating “don’t believe everything you read.”

An additional report from The Information from July 2024 suggested Meta was switching its ‘Pro’ efforts to instead develop a lightweight mixed reality device resembling “a bulky pair of glasses,” codenamed ‘Puffin’—reportedly set to target a 2027 release date. This comes in addition to Meta’s claim it’s hoping to release a pair of AR glasses before 2030 which will be similar in functionality to its Orion AR glasses prototype.

A follow-up report from The Information released shortly afterwards further claimed a Quest Pro 2 prototype, codenamed ‘La Jolla’, had also been shelved. Bosworth later went on record to confirm that it indeed cancelled La Jolla, and is developing Puffin, although didn’t make mention of whether the company was abandoning its Quest Pro line for good.

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Meta’s iterative approach to product development involves spinning up and shutting down prototypes, which Bosworth has outlined in the past as a way the company prioritizes exploration over immediate commercialization. Where projects, like Quest Pro 2 and others, currently are on that continuum is a mystery, making it difficult to tell whether reported stops and starts are actually stepping stones or dead ends, respectively.

Whilst refuting the earlier claim that the Quest Pro line was cancelled, Bosworth noted “there might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you, but I will say don’t believe everything you read about what’s been stopped or started.”

Meta already has a way to watch your own content on Quest, although browsing through a file system and viewing on a windowed panel is decidedly less immersive than a proper home theater. Now the company says it’s experimenting with the idea.

Mark Rabkin, VP leading Horizon OS and Quest, says in a recent X post that Meta is currently working on a home theater environment for Horizon OS, which is not only Quest’s operating system, but the soon-be-the OS used on a host of third-party headsets.

In response to a post wondering why such a first-party effort doesn’t already exist, Rabkin says the team is “[w]orking on all that, experimenting with lighting and other effects to see what’s best. Also trying to figure out awesome sound.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Meta developed its own theater environment. In 2014, Meta (then Facebook/Oculus) launched Oculus Cinema for Samsung Gear VR, which would later morph into Oculus Video for Gear VR and Rift, presenting a more cohesive way to watch your own content in addition to renting movies for on-device viewing. Released in late 2015, Oculus Social was another early attempt, allowing up to five users to connect and watch Twitch and Vimeo streams in a variety of virtual theaters.

Without rehashing ancient history (the list of now-defunct home theater apps goes on), Meta’s most recent attempt was in Horizon Home on Quest, which was updated in 2021 to allow multiple users to join your home space and do things like watch videos and launch into VR apps together. This however didn’t include many of the features associated with a dedicated home theater app, such as custom environments or advanced playback controls.

And while the content on offer varied over time, all of those apps had one thing in common: they put enough friction in the way between users and traditional content that it essentially shunted users to support more open alternatives, like Bigscreen and Skybox, but also dedicated apps serving up Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc.

That said, Meta’s next attempt at a dedicated theater environment probably won’t unite those fractionalized apps into a monolithic theater environment, although having a built-in, easily accessible way to immersively watch your own content might just be enough.

Meta announced that Supernatural now boasts over 100,000 users, putting its first-party fitness app’s revenue in the millions.

Launched in 2020, Supernatural gamifies fitness with some very Beat Saber-inspired orb-smashing mechanics, which is set to the beat of a poppy soundtrack led by personal coaches in a variety of picturesque locales.

Now, Meta has released its first user figures for Supernatural, saying in a blog post it now counts 110,000 users of the app.

As the first user data released for Supernatural, it’s difficult to tell whether the app has floated or flourished since its release during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw many gyms closed, forcing users to workout at home. Still, it’s clear Meta is putting some gas behind Supernatural, as the app recently released a workout led by fitness legend Jane Fonda.

Granted, Meta may be counting among its 110,000 users those taking advantage of the 14-day free trial, which you’d expect to be at its peak right now as users are looking to get fit in the new year. Provided Meta is counting actual subscribers though, that handily puts the app’s yearly revenue in the millions.

At $100 per year, or $10 per month, Supernatural’s yearly gross revenue could fit somewhere between $11 million and $13.2 million, or $917,000 and $1,100,000 when calculated monthly. It may also be slightly lower than that, considering the app can also be purchased in Quest 3/3S hardware bundle for an additional $50 than either headsets’ base version, which provides a one-year subscription to the app.

In comparison to leading non-VR fitness apps, Supernatural still has lot of room to grow if it wants to become the ‘Peloton of VR’. According to data compiled by Statista, Peloton’s mobile app subscription posted over $5 million revenue in January 2024 alone.

While Peloton can be used with nearly any mobile device, and be paired with any manufacture of rower, stationary bike, or treadmill, Supernatural’s bottleneck to higher user numbers invariably comes down to the number of Quest headsets in active use.

Meta hasn’t published recent figures on monthly active users (MAU) of its Quest headsets, however a 2023 Wall Street Journal report citing internal figures from October 2022 noted the Quest platform counted 6.37 million MAU.

And the need to recoup on Supernatural is very real, if only to justify the company’s costly legal process started by the United States Federal Trade Commission in 2022 to block the acquisition of original developer Within under the guise of unfairly monopolizing the VR fitness space.

Meta has officially discontinued Quest Pro, the company’s first mixed reality headset.

Meta announced back in September that it was winding down Quest 2 and Quest Pro sales. At the time, the company said remaining stock would be sold through the end of the year or until they ran out, whichever came first.

Now, in place of the Quest Pro order page, Meta is suggesting users to buy Quest 3 “for the ultimate mixed reality experience and premium comfort.” You can still buy Quest Pro’s ‘Touch Pro’ controllers however, as they support Quest 2 and above.

Released in 2022 at the eye-water price of $1,500, Meta hoped to use the headset to kickstart its mixed reality ambitions among consumers, as it was the first to offer color-passthrough, pancake lenses, and both face and eye-tracking—coming in strong contrast to the company’s other offering at the time, Quest 2.

Nearly a year after launch, it was apparent the Pro-level headset wasn’t appealing to users nearly to the degree Meta had initially hoped, prompting the company to knock Quest Pro down to $1,000. To complicate matters, high initial pricing of Quest Pro put a strain on developers, which resulted in very few compelling MR experiences out of the gate.

It was clear what was needed was a more accessible headset. In October 2023, Meta released Quest 3, which housed much of the tech seen in Quest Pro—minus face and eye-tracking, and at the starting price of $499.

Clamping down yet further on price-performance, Meta released Quest 3S a year later, which houses the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as Quest 3, although including the same cost-saving Fresnel lenses and displays as Quest 2—marking the company’s most energetic push to capitalize on its mixed reality ambitions.

While Meta’s strategy to capture the console price-point with Quest has been a winning strategy thus far, what’s uncertain is whether the company will head back into the ‘Pro’ pricing structure anytime soon. The Information reported earlier last year that Meta was cancelling a potential Quest Pro follow-up, however Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth partically refuted those claims, noting that “there might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you, but I will say don’t believe everything you read about what’s been stopped or started.”

One of the worst things to happen on Christmas morning is downloading updates and charging batteries. Undoubtedly even worse though is downloading an update that then bricks your device before you can even use it. This apparently happened to a number of users last week, which Meta has responded by offering new devices and Horizon Store credit.

According to mass user reports that flooded Reddit on December 25th, some new Quest owners encountered a critical error after being forced to apply the latest update, with an error message stating “Your device is corrupt. It can’t be trusted.” From there, there was no way of resetting the headset, effectively bricking the device.

The issue appears to have been caused by applying Quest’s latest v72 update, which the company released earlier this month. User reports indicate it has affected new, but alsoold headsets that haven’t been updated in a while.

Here’s what Meta says in a user help thread addressing the issue:

“We’ve discovered a software update issue that caused some Quest 2/3/3S headsets to be unresponsive and unable to start up correctly. We are actively working on resolving the issue for all users, but in most cases, you are now able to use your device normally.”

User reports suggested only a fraction of new headsets responded this way, although following a pause by Meta to pull its latest firmware update, new users are now likely in the clear if they still haven’t set up a new Quest. And for those with bricked headsets, Meta is sending out replacement units with some Horizon Store credit to smooth things over.

“We are aware that a limited number of Quest 3S devices are experiencing a software update issue that is causing headsets to be unresponsive and unable to boot up properly,” the company says in a ‘Next Steps’ thread for Quest 3S users. “If your device is affected by the issue, we’ll send you a replacement Quest device at no cost to you. We’ll also issue you Horizon Store credit as a token of our commitment to supporting you.”

While Meta was quick to respond, the damage was already done, prompting some to return faulty headsets to stores and hope their next device wasn’t afflicted with the same issue. Some users, such as Reddit poster ‘Physical-Slip5049’, says it ruined their son’s Christmas.

“I bought a never before used second hand Quest 2 from eBay as a Christmas present for my 9 year old son. He opened it Christmas morning, started it, and was forced to update it,” Physical-Slip5049 reports. “Having never used a VR headset before, I tried to reset it after following Meta’s own instructions. Now it’s hard-bricked. It’s been turned on for just 5 minutes in its entire 2-year life. My son spent 3 months waiting to play this but couldn’t use it when it came to the big day. He spent half of Christmas day crying and upset.”

Additionally, users are reporting that Meta is offering those with out-of-warranty headsets, such as Quest 2, with refurbished units to go along with store credit.

We’re following the after effects of this closely. Let us know in the comments below if you’ve been affected, and what steps Meta is taking to solve the issue. 

Reducing weight and increasing performance are two of the most important factors in pushing standalone XR headsets forward. While Meta has shown off its own Orion AR glasses prototype using a wireless compute unit, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth doesn’t think a similar setup is the magic bullet for standalone VR gaming.

Bosworth, who is also head of the company’s Reality Labs XR team, held another one of his Instagram Q&As earlier this week, where he typically delves into a wide variety of topics—some professional, some personal.

In the latest session, Bosworth expounded on the subject of wireless compute units, and how the company thinks they aren’t the right fit for its standalone VR headsets.

“We have looked at this a bunch of times. Wireless compute pucks just really don’t solve the problem. If you’re wireless, they still have a battery on the headset, which is a major driver of weight. And, sure, you’re gaining some thermal space so your performance could potentially be better, although you’re somewhat limited now by bandwidth because you’re using a radio,” Bosworth says.

Technical hurdles aside, Meta is primarily focused on building something accessible to consumers, with its latest Quest 3S selling for as low as $300 for the 128GB version. Bosworth continues:

“You’ve increased your cost dramatically, because even if your major silicon is in the wireless compute puck, you still need quite a bit of silicon to just power the displays and do the local corrections required there, and handle the stream of data. So it really ends up … the math doesn’t work, is what I’m saying. And it doesn’t end up saving you that much weight and dramatically increases your cost and complexity.”

This comes in contrast to Meta’s Orion prototype, which does incorporate a wireless compute unit. Granted, Orion isn’t going to be productized due to its enormous cost—a reported $10,000 per-unit owing to its difficult-to-produce silicon carbide lenses, however it’s clear that in some cases wireless pucks do make sense—namely in delivering less immersive graphics to AR glasses.

Then again, Bosworth has said its first pair of AR glasses for consumers won’t hit at that Quest price-point when they land at some point in the future. Bosworth said back in September that such a device is “not going to be cheap,” noting however the company aims to make them accessible “at least in the space of phone, laptop territory.”