Meta Quest 3S 128GB VR Headset

I owned the original Oculus Rift and upgraded to the Meta Quest 3. It was a big leap forward for me.— TRACKING —Gone are the days when you had to have fixed sensors in your room with a fixed play area. Now, you can bring this anywhere and play wirelessly, with or without a computer. Just the fact that I don’t need sensors is a win. The tech packed into this can detect your surrounding environments quickly and easily. It even tracks your hands and you can navigate with just your hands using gestures similar to an iPad/iPhone.— SCREEN —The screen is a big improvement over previous generations, including Meta’s Pro model. The colors are vibrant, the sharpness is perfect, and getting your head in the sweet spot is much easier. I advise using an app to measure your eye distance (like Eye Measure), and then you can adjust the lenses to suit your exact eye distance for optimum viewing comfort.— STORAGE —I got the 512GB because I was torn about their pricing model. I didn’t want to underdo it so I spent the extra money so I had more space, even if I didn’t know if I would need it. Frankly, 256GB would’ve been perfect for me personally at the moment.— WIRELESS PLAY —The games runs off the headset—if you buy games from the Meta Quest store. They do run more expensive and the sales are okay when they’re there. If you have been buying VR games on Steam, you can run them wirelessly with SteamVR as long as your computer’s graphics card is compatible. You can also physically connect a USB-C cable to a computer to play your games.— GAMES —Games feel like an elevated Nintendo 64 at the moment. The tech is there, we just need higher-quality textures and more AAA games when the masses start pouring in. Most games seem to have a stylized polygonal quality to them, and few games are going for a realistic look. Currently, I would say the quality of games is good enough for where the technology is at the moment in terms of the processing power that’s in the headset at this price point.One of the great things is Asgard’s Wrath II is included free with purchase and this is one of those games that takes full advantage of this headset’s capabilities. You also get a 6-month free trial of Quest+, which is two pre-selected curated games per month for as long as you’re a member; you lose those games when you cancel, but if you subscribe again your library will be there.— APPS —Besides games, you can use different apps with this. I use Virtual Desktop to access my 3D movie files on my computer, plus other media I have. I can also access my SteamVR games this way as well. Then there are media consumption apps like Amazon and Netflix. Explore and you’ll find useful things to install.— MIXED REALITY —This is part of the future of gaming, baby. Having a big play space at home combined with a mixed reality game is one of the most fun experiences to have. This is also similar tech in Apple’s Vision Pro. There are a couple of free games included, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds in this growing game category.— BATTERY —The battery lasts on average about two hours. For me, that’s great because I generally get a little dizzy before that period so the headset will die before I get fully nauseous. VR dizziness is a real thing and I advise that if you start feeling some type of way, to stop sooner rather than later. I would build up your brain’s tolerance to VR slowly. If you get dizzy, start timing how long it takes. Take a day off and try to add 10 minutes or so in the next session, until you can go longer.If you are one of the lucky few who are not affected by dizziness, you can plug this into a wall while playing and it will charge while you play. In theory, you could play non-stop with the right cable and charger.— SUMMARY —If you haven’t gotten into VR yet, try it out in the stores. If you like it, then definitely get the Meta Quest 3. If you’re unsure, you could wait for a price drop hopefully around Christmas of 2024.

422 people found this helpful

I mean, how can you go wrong? Santa brought this for my son, it’s his last year I think he will believe. He knew money was tight so there was no way I could get him all the things he wanted plus a quest 3. He had a 2 but there are a lot of great games you need a 3 or 3s for. He about lost it when he opened it. Battery life seems to be on par with his 2, maybe a little better. But visually is looks great. The pass through camera is really cool and makes things feel super interactive. I haven’t played with it much, but my son hasn’t had one single complaint. Highly recommended. And if you haven’t tried vr, you should go try it out somewhere. Everyone I’ve recommended it to usually says yeah yeah, ok. But then when they try it out they all want one. Wish I had VR when I was a kid. We only had the virtual boy, and of your my age, you know how well that worked out. Lol

21 people found this helpful

I was one of those people who every time I had tried virtual reality I would get unbearable motion sickness. So, to want to own a VR headset didn’t seem like my thing. I originally ordered this product for my girlfriend and she let me try it on. I was astounded by the clarity and motion tracking. I can experience VR on this device without motion sickness. I was hooked and needed it for myself. My girlfriend said she’d be happy with a 3S since she didn’t need to worry about motion sickness from VR. I got her that one instead and kept this one for myself. I have since tried her 3S and it just simply doesn’t compare for me in terms of motion sickness. For her the 3S is perfect, it has the same motion tracking. The reason why I have given 4 stars instead of 5 is for a couple reason. The the head strap is very uncomfortable, the battery life does not last long and Horizon OS feels buggy/crashes a lot. These issues, with the exception of crashes, are solvable by buying 3rd party peripherals. For example, a more comfortable head strap and an attachable battery pack.

36 people found this helpful

Pretty decent VR headset. Knocking off two stars for annoyances.#1: It’s actually very hard to charge this headset. Unless you plug it into a *very* high power charger, what happens is the yellow charging light turns on and the headset’s battery *drains* indefinitely until it’s dead. I tried this with an 11w USBC charger – enough to fast-charge my phone or tablet – and in the span of 6 hours charging the headset went from 80% to 50%. It just pulled all that power from the wall and wasted it. This means if you plan to take this thing with you on a trip or between home and office, you need to bring the official cable and charger brick with you, which is really annoying. It also continues drawing power even once it’s at 100%, though thankfully it seems to only draw about 1w in this scenario. This is why people complain that leaving batteries or battery straps connected to the headset kills the batteries – the headsets are basically defective.#2: Related to the previous power issue, by default even if you power the headset off it will periodically power on to install updates. This means it will eventually drain from 100% if left off without being plugged into a strong enough charger.#3: You have to use an android or iOS app in order to set up the headset. They should really make this clear, and it’s kind of silly as a limitation – some people might be buying this to use with a PC via a link cable or the Steam Link app, since the official website advertises this as a feature. The android app doesn’t seem to add any value whatsoever, it’s just a pointless limitation for a stand-alone headset to have.#4: The standard strap and facial interface are both kind of uncomfortable and it’s hard to get it to sit right on my face so things aren’t blurry. This can be solved by buying a better strap and/or interface, and I’ll probably do that. But I feel like they could have gotten one or both of these things right without raising the price of this thing much and avoided sending stuff to the landfill.#5: They tell you to ‘adjust the knob until text is crisp’ for adjusting your interpupillary distance (IPD) but on that screen there’s barely any text and no test pattern to look at. There is no IPD tester/calibration app on their store either, so if you want to get your IPD right you’re basically just guessing. I gave up.#6: The hand tracking is kinda flaky and there’s no function to calibrate it or adjust it. I end up having to reach for the controllers really frequently even though the stuff I’m doing all theoretically supports hand tracking.#7: In a dark room the headset basically doesn’t work, it *needs* to be able to track the environment. This may be a deal-breaker if you want to use it to do something like watch movies/tv. I tried powering it on in my bedroom for this purpose and it was unusable until I turned on two lamps, powered it off, then powered it back on (turning the lamps on wasn’t enough, it was confused.)

9 people found this helpful