Meta Quest 3 128GB— Breakthrough Mixed Reality Headset — Powerful Performance

I've been in the VR game for a while now, going all the way back to the Oculus Rift dev kit 2 days. My other current headset is a Valve Index, and I mainly bought the Quest 3 with the intention of playing the Quest-exclusive games, fully expecting it to feel like a toy in comparison.In practice, I'm in love with this thing. The displays are both high resolution and high quality, with little to no screendoor effect, and the tracking is impressively stable for something only being tracked by cameras and software. I thought the removal of the rings from the Q2 controllers would cause them to have more issues with occlusion, but I haven't noticed anything. Even the features I didn't know it had are pretty cool for the games that support them, like its mixed reality and controller-free hand tracking. But the thing that's really going to keep me away from my Index (at least for the games that aren't specifically tailored to it, like Half Life Alyx) is that I had no idea how much I needed to ditch the cable and play wirelessly until now. Being able to just walk around in my room without having to be aware of the cable behind me is such a nice feeling that it feels like I'm getting into VR for the first time again.With that said, there are some small caveats -- namely, that this is not really a $500 headset. Meta has taken on a sort of Spirit Airlines approach, where the headset itself is affordably priced in exchange for other basic things being extremely expensive "accessories". The strap is the main offender, with the default one being the rough equivalent of just tying the headset to your head. They're happy to sell you a $60 strap, or a $130 one that extends the battery, though! And while you're at it you can blow $80 on a cable for linking it to your pc if you aren't a fan of wireless tethering, a $70 carrying case, a $40 silicone facial interface for extra comfort, a $130 charging dock to replace the controllers needing AA batteries, $40 hand straps for the controllers to give them Index-esque free-hand support... To be clear, most, if not all of these have off-brand counterparts that are just as good (or better!) for a fraction of the price, but my point is this is not a fully out of the box experience for those with more discerning tastes. For parents buying them for their younger children they'll probably be thrilled with it anyways, and can safely ignore all of that, but I would wager most adults will probably end up wanting at least a new head strap of some kind, whether it's the official one or not.Ignoring the troublesome accessories, though, this is an easy win as far as I'm concerned. The only real competition is that the Quest 2 is still holding its own as well from what I hear, and for prices that seem to be as low as they could possibly be around the holiday season. I can't speak first-hand on whether the Q3 is worth a $300 difference, but I can say I don't regret buying it. I held off on the Quest line of headsets because I've never been a big fan of Meta as a company, but I have to begrudgingly admit that this is probably the best vr headset at the best price you could get right now.

SETUP:Q3 + Elite Battery StrapCOMFORT - 4/10:To me, this is less comfortable than the Q2, despite being slightly better balanced (weight distribution is closer to face now). Namely, the interior plastic now makes contact with my face, which digs in, making it uncomfortable. This happens even at the furthest facial interface setting (for folks with glasses, which I don't have)... and that comes at the price of worse FOV.LENSES - 10/10:Compared to the Q2, this is much clearer, with a much more forgiving sweet spot. In fact, it's so wide that the IPD adjustment seems to have almost no effect, and we can pass between players without adjustment. That's wild, and very different than our Q2 experience.COLORS - 7/10:It's still an LCD, so expect washed out greys instead of blacks, muted colors, and no HDR.PASSTHROUGH - 7/10:It's cool, but was massively overhyped. Do I prefer passthrough as my default view? You bet. It's nice to have a sense of my surroundings while in menus. Is passthrough viable for things like reading texts and working at your computer? Heck no. It's a grainy (albeit color) mess of compression artifacts and distortions. You'll give yourself a migrate trying to read small text or even the keys on your keyboard. It's worse if your keys are backlit, as the glow bloom adds to the artifact mess.I've had some issues with my Q3, namely in what seems like a loose lens or display panel or something. The lightest tap sends my vision stuttering - which has never happened in hundreds of hours of the previous Q2.CONTROLLERS/TRACKING - 9.5/10:This still has occlusion and line of sight issues, like the Q2, but otherwise it's MASSIVELY improved. I'm a decently ranked beat saber player, and my scores significantly improved when switching to the Q3, despite using a claw grip (which could interfere with the LED signal from the tracker, since it doesn't have the ring like before).PERFORMANCE/SPEED - 10/10:This is the most noticeable gain from the Q2 (aside from the usable passthrough), and you feel it everywhere. Bootup is faster, shutdown is faster, menus open faster, apps/games load much more quickly... and I assume this has something to do with why the controller tracking is so good - it likely can just handle the tracking math much faster, thanks to the improved compute.GAMES - N/A:I've basically given up on the Quest store at this point, mostly using this for SteamVR via Virtual Desktop (which continues to work great). I'm sure there are some good titles on there, and native apps do perform with much better latency than via wireless PCVR, but the visuals are just much worse in comparison. For instance, Beat Saber is smoother on native Quest, but looks like a blurry mess (with fewer visual effects) than on PCVR - not to mention the lack of mod support without jumping through even more hoops than we have to on PCVR.OVERALL - 9.5/10:It's not perfect, but pretty close, and arguably hits the ideal mark based on its incredibly low price point. If Valve finally releases a new HMD, will I buy it? You bet. Until then, the convenience of the Q3/wireless trumps all other headsets IMO.