The Meta Quest 3 is the latest virtual reality headset on the market, but is it worth the money? Is the Quest 2 a better buy? Today, we find out:
We’ve had the Meta Quest 3 for a few days now, giving it time in the office and the quick answer is yes it’s pretty superb and if you can afford it the experience is incredible; however, there are some niggles that you might want to know about:
What we were disappointed to see:
Our last VR headset was the Oculus CV1 from 2015 and whilst a lot has changed since then with these now Meta Branded devices some things were still slightly frustrating to see:
- The black area around your eyes inside the goggles still makes you feel like you’re somewhat peering into one of those telescopes you have at lookout points or by the beach, don’t get me wrong it would be the best telescope you’ve ever looked though and the Quest 3 it’s still incredibly immersive but we felt like it could be better, for reference the horizontal field of view is 110° with Quest 3 but human eyes see 135° horizontally so you do have some black areas within your vision.
- Sadly, the above means sitting down to watch a 2-hour film inside the headset is far from ideal in our experience; you will still want a decent TV.
- The AR functionality isn’t anywhere near as clear as you may have seen on the videos you’ve watched online of people cooking, going to the gym or similar while using the Quest 3. It’s OK, but it’s clear that you’re looking through a camera via a screen and not anything truly revolutionary; other screens (e.g. a nearby TV or your phone) are massively overexposed, making them almost impossible to use quickly, which is a shame.
- The AR functionality sometimes has these odd artefacts around the edges of objects and sometimes is glitchy and slightly too slow, causing a motion sickness feeling, and all of the above is made much worse in low light conditions.
- The cost of the official accessories is quite frankly ridiculous, £70 for a charging stand and £70 for a head strap, both of those should have been included in the box.
- The standard world around you can become slightly boring… One minute, you’re fighting zombies in your lounge; the next, you’ve taken the headset off and just stood there wondering why everything is so bleak 😂
- If you’re not careful it can be put down and then not picked back up again for many weeks/months, so make sure you really will use it before buying.
Things that we love:
- It’s so engaging and immersive that very little comes close to a better experience at home.
- You can finally buy a table tennis table, pool table, machine gun shooting range, full golf course, tennis court, F16 and snowboard without needing to buy a new house and 10 acres to store it all! The amount of possibilities to itch those unscratched hobbies is impressive!
- You don’t need a massive 12M cinema display now, as you can turn on Netflix or YouTube and watch on a large scale anywhere.
- You can also travel the world for a fraction of the regular cost; that said, we were stunned to see Google Earth not on the Quest 3… Meta needs to pay Google to make this ASAP; third-party apps like Wooorld do bridge the gap though.
- Being able to connect to Xbox, Steam, Any Computer and see and interact with the content is superb
- Meeting, working or even playing with Work Colleagues or Friends is incredibly fun, even if you’re in the same room!
- Being cable-free is great; however, we would consider buying a long charge cable for those times you want to extend your gaming experience or a battery bank.
- The speakers are impressive for the size, but we would like to have seen included headphones in the box though.
Is the 512GB version worth it? Is the 128GB enough?
From what we’ve read, if you can afford the extra cost it’s worth it as you can soon run out of storage space, especially if you share the device with other family members or colleagues, that said you can always play a couple of games at a time and uninstall as needed so it will drastically depend on available funds and your thoughts on removing and uploading games when needed, an average arcade-like game is about 3GB, going up to 9GB for an action game but a full-blown game is around 30GB.
There are no other hardware differences between the two sizes and like the Quest 3 128GB you get a free copy of Asgard’s Wrath 2 (a £44.99 value) which helps to soften the financial cost, however, with the Quest 3 512GB you also get two free games a month with a six-month Meta Quest+ trial worth £47.94, this effectively makes the cost difference ~£104 for the extra storage which is expensive compared to the price of MicroSD cards. Still, it’s probably worth the extra + you future-proof the device more.
Of course, 256GB would have been perfect, but alas that’s not an option and selling a cheaper 128GB unit ensures people get hooked on buying at the lower price, even though most will end up paying the higher price for 512GB, classic Apple Pricing Structure Playbook!
What further discounts are available?
If a friend invites you to Meta Quest before you activate a device, you both get £48 in credit to spend on games; here is an example link which will give you £23 in Meta Quest Store credit for activating a Meta Quest
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