The Meta Quest 3S has some of the best features of the Meta Quest 3, for $200 less. You’ll just need to accept the limited memory and lenses.
If all you wanted was a Meta Quest 2 with the added passthrough and software upgrades of the Meta Quest 3, then the Quest 3S is easily the most accessible and affordable you can get. What’s more, it proves there’s no such thing as “entry level” VR anymore. This is it. It doesn’t have the best displays, but for playing games—still the reason you’ll buy one of these headsets—you don’t need more than this, especially if you have a fairly powerful PC on hand.
I’ve used enough of the $500 Meta Quest 3 to know that VR is still limited. Most people getting into it won’t care about Horizon Worlds or any of the supposed metaverse features. Passthrough is neat for certain applications, but I know many are like me and won’t feel comfortable watching hours of YouTube through its still-glitchy app or Prime Video with a headset strapped to your noggin. That’s true for every VR headset you can get, from Meta’s latest devices all the way up to the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro. So if you’ve wanted to try VR, why not try it at its cheapest?
The Quest 3S is easily the best deal you’re going to get for VR. It’s hand tracking is equivalent to the Quest 3, and it’s just as powerful. The passthrough doesn’t look as clean as the Quest 3, but it truly doesn’t look worse when you’re in a game. The 3S comes with a copy of Batman: Arkham Shadows and three months of the Quest+ subscription. I don’t know if two free games per month are worth it, but it’s a great way to expand your library quickly and finally play the excellent Asgard’s Wrath 2.
Then, if you have a computer capable of running some VR games, you can grab the Steam Link app and dive into all the more demanding games you can’t get on Quest, like Half Life: Alyx. If you have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you can stream a few of those games on a slightly larger screen. After that, you can use the HDMI link capability to bring your PC or MacBook onto a large screen.
The big question for anybody looking at the 3S is whether to go for the 128 GB versus 256 GB at $400. A game like Asgard’s Wrath 2 takes up about 33 GB, and that’s one of the largest games you can get. Unless you’re planning on playing many games at once, you’ll probably be fine sticking with the smaller version, especially if you’re just a dabbler. The Quest 3 now starts at $500 for 512 GB of base storage, which is more than was on offer last year for the same price. If you think you’ll need more, I’d advise paying a little extra for the Quest 3 anyway.
Any of those capabilities might bore you. You may eventually run out of games to play or things to do on your Quest. After that, it it goes back on the shelf until Meta adds a new enticing feature or somebody else finally makes a VR game you’re interested in, but at the very least it’s worth $300 to finally try VR. For that, Meta’s latest headset is easily the best value in headsets you can buy right now, so long as you don’t demand the prettiest or the most capable headset.Quest 3S Review: Design and Comfort
The Quest 3S looks like a Quest 3 except for the arrangement of its exterior sensors. While the Quest 3 has a depth sensor—which ostensibly makes it more future proof for the sake of hand tracking—the 3S has a low-light sensor that picks up the slack. Technically, the 3S is better for hand tracking in low light, as first demonstrated by UploadVR, though you probably shouldn’t use a Quest in the dark anyway.
