Meta Quest Pro

As a VRChat regular, Meta's VR world efforts have been hilarious every step of the way. So long and thanks for all the headsets! :) Maybe not everything has to be the next big thing for everyone. Maybe it's valuable for smaller companies or sovereign divisions to find niche markets, and simply build products and services for modest profits for strong customer bases that will never hit hypergrowth. (And are therefore resistant to the cancerous financialization that hypergrowth invites/incites) I hope they figure out how to make a modest but steady profit making headsets still. The Quest Pro is still my favorite headset, ever since I ditched the awful controllers and went back to Index controllers. Then again, the Steam Frame is likely to deliver us from this reliance, though it would be really nice to keep having budget headset options.

For what its worth, I have a Quest Pro and am quite happy with it. I don't use VR a ton, but compared to the Quest 2 I preferred the Quest Pro hands down. I have not tried the Quest 3 to compare though. That said, I thought it was already discontinued already a year ago.

There are comfort solutions but if there's nothing compelling enough for you to do so, you probably won't seek them out. (fwiw Globular Cluster is the general solution for Quests!) I just got a new different headset (Quest Pro, coming from an Index) and I had to figure out how to make it comfortable enough, because you're right that out of the box, they rarely are. (Except Index, which is still one of the best all-around headsets, even years on) But I figured out a comfort fix because I'm hooked: I'm in VR 10-20 hours a week these days, because I use it to transcend my physical body and hang out with friends around the world. There are even sleep worlds in VRChat where people literally sleep in VR! Also, less intentionally, sometimes you're hanging out and someone passes out on the couch and starts lightly snoring. As above, so below. :) In some ways, sci-fi is here! It's just, like bars, beaches, or boardgames, not for everyone.

Resolution matters a lot for productivity, and Meta's displays have more than twice the number of pixels. Image quality for the display will be much better on the Meta VR glasses because of the lack of interference from outside light. See-through displays sound good in theory but require too many compromises IMO. There's no such thing as "black" on a see-through display, only "transparent". Definitely try before you buy. I feel like Meta's track record of VR device support has been decent enough. Quest Pro still gets updates even though it was discontinued almost two years ago. When they ended support for Oculus Go they released an update that unlocked the device and granted root access. I'm sure you can find some complaints on Reddit but looking at what they've actually done I think it looks pretty good.