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VR and AR headsets · Meta Quest

Meta Quest 3S

6owners with an opinion
20%of verdicts positive
1/4positive/negative since 2024
1 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for value and ease of use; criticized for performance and comfort.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 1 year
I have to agree. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is it an insane value for the $250 I paid for my Quest 3s last year at Target? Hell yes. My kids and I use our two headsets a lot. Sure, it's not a daily driver for workflows, but the uniqueness of many of the game experiences just can't be replicated on desktops/consoles. It's a damn shame because Facebook bought up Oculus, poured gasoline on a fire by pumping $100B dollars in and now seems set to walk away because it didn't make a $100B + 1 dollars. In its current state, it was never going to be a replacement for PCs or phone experiences. It's just a different lane all together. But Beat Saber, or Walkabout mini golf, or the I Expect You to Die series are insanely fun and unique. I'll be sad if they fold the quest down entirely, but I hope that Valve or others take up the banner. VR doesn't have to be a $100B industry to be viable, especially in its infancy. Meanwhile, Apple tosses a $3,500 headset onto the market and then is surprised that it's treated as a novelty. Why is it so hard for these companies to get their strategies right? Maybe it's because it's not a product suited (today, at least) for two of the largest companies on earth to focus on. These are moonshot companies who make products that half of the globe uses on a daily basis. I just want a solid VR platform with a healthy pipeline or quirky, interesting games.
Doesn’t like it
I'm a little late to the party but is there any list for recommended VR games? I had Quest 3s for a couple weeks but I returned it because I didn't liked it and wanted to buy the Quest 3, but at the end I just decided to wait for the Steam Frame.
Doesn’t like it
This is everything and much more than i wanted from a VR system, it feels like its designed exactly for me. Also tbh i thought after the steam machine price shock i got that this will be like 200 more. 1. It is SteamOS with desktop mode, the SteamDeck made me really miss that feature on any newer console i use like my ps5 or switch 2. Like even if we just limit it to games, playing games like The Binding of Isaac or Minecraft unmodded is a pain for me. Even just using websites for Streaming Services that dont have their app on every system ever, PS5 and Switch 2 dont even have webbrowsers you can just access, I think you have to edit DNS settings to make it think you have to sign up for a free wifi in the browser IIRC. 2. Wireless Streaming without the (Quest 3S) downsides of Wireless Streaming. I have a 6ghz router in my room, connected to my Laptop with an ethernet cable and tried the streaming on a quest 3S. I dont want todo that ever again, it was so inconsistent. It felt like the beatsaber song and gameplay speed up and slowed down like 1-5% in waves to catch up with the stream. Also sometimes my right eye turned into a chess grid of black pixels but i would assume that was more of a Linux Quirk. Also since i use a Laptop i dont want any wires from my headset to the Laptop, I dont want to pull my laptop and possibly more off my desk in the middle of a game. Also for movement games like beatsaber i find cables really annoying when you want to quickly accelerate. 3. Both…
Doesn’t like it
"Assuming that they've implemented eye-tracking based UI like Vision Pro, and I don't have to shoot tiny targets to click, which is hilariously bad UI." Assuming that the Steam Frame isn't accompanied by a complete change to the current SteamVR experience that hasn't been so much as hinted at, alas, no, SteamVR is full of tiny targets to shoot. I've only ever used the Meta Quest 3S' native UI but the smallest targets there are generally significantly bigger than the smallest targets in the SteamVR UI. On the plus side, once you activate some of those small targets you can do some cursor navigation like a conventional UI, and having that option is a breath of fresh air... but it's completely inconsistent. You experience it as a bonus when it's available because it's not even consistent enough to "miss it when it is gone", let alone for it to be a consistent navigation method. We may get the obvious eye-tracking upgrade but the targets are still pretty small, it's going to need to be very accurate.
Neutral
In comparison, my experience with a Quest 3s with MetaHorizonOS. It has a screen recording feature that when you use it the first time it asks you whether it can use the microphone. It claims that this can be reset somewhere in the settings. So the first time I used the feature, I disabled the mic. A couple days later I wanted to record with mic and searched through the settings but found nothing. Googled it and discovered little. Many posts and answers pointing out that other feature settings require a factory reset to be able to alter initial settings made. I searched again in the settings, fiddling here and there but found nothing in the settings nor anything that fixed the setting. In the end, I had to do a factory reset. Then I was able to enable the mic for screen recording. The device is good enough but the UI is a nightmare. Bulk deletion of notifications? Not possible. Getting out MetaHorizion? Three to four menus until a pause button can be used. Much prefer my Apple devices - no BS, no factory reset.
Doesn’t like it
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.)
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
VR controllers will be significantly better than a SpaceMouse for teleoperation. Even if I already had a SpaceMouse I would buy a Quest 3s and switch to it, if I was doing more than a trivial amount of teleoperation. (As is typical with robot teleop setups, I would not wear the headset on my head, it's just a dongle to track the controllers).
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
That's not quite true - when did you get your free Quest 1? Only January of this year did Meta officially stop allowing devs to support those devices which IMO is not nice, but probably necessary to put resources towards newer devices since it was extremely outdated and very hard to keep supporting. The Quest 1 launched in May 2019, so it got almost 6 years of updates and if you have one, you can still install older versions of existing apps that choose to support it (which admittedly is very rare). I shut off support for my game back in 2024 when they recommended it, since the device is less than half as powerful as the Quest 2, very few users still had one, and the Q1 was a hard target to hit performance-wise vs newer devices. If you spend $50 to get a Quest 2 you'll get a couple years of updates or even better, spend $299 to get a 3S which is an amazing piece of kit and will probably be supported for at least 5 more years since it just came out.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
I have used VR headsets since the original Oculus Development Kit Mk.1. It is until the Quest 3 that VR feels like a compelling product. If you can try it, I would suggest you do so. Keep in mind, that the Quest 3 has been discontinued in favour of the cheaper and inferior Quest 3S. It still has some good qualities, but the best one is no doubt the Quest 3. Another thing is that to save on costs, they all ship with a very inadequate headband. For comfort, it is imperative to get another solution, either the (expensive) elite headstrap or a (cheaper) 3rd party one.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
I bet (litteraly, founded an xr game development company in february) xr/vr games will indeed became a mainstream gaming platform in the next 5 years, maybe even next year. If or when it become the case it may totally become as present as smartphone and replace a lot of monitors, especially if they succeed to reduce them as smartglasses like their totally are progressing to. if it become the case, meta get 30% of the revenues associated with it. If it does not, i'm pretty sure they can now make good smartphones and even have a dedicated os. I'm pretty sure they can find a way to make money with it. A meta quest 3s in inself is an insane experience for 330€ and it's current main disadvantages for gaming are the lack of players and the catalogue size. Even using it as a main monitor with a bluetooth keyboard is "possible". I would have find it 'improbable' a few years ago even as an enthousiasth, i now could totally imagine a headset replacing my screen in a few years with a few improvements on.
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
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?
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
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.