Meta reveals Quest 3 headset starting at $499.99

Meta just officially unveiled the Quest 3, hours ahead of its gaming showcase and days before Apple is expected to reveal its own mixed-reality headset.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the new headset via an Instagram post on June 1. The Quest 3 will start at $499.99 for a 128GB model when it launches this fall, alongside a higher-storage variant with pricing still under wraps. Meta promised to reveal full details at its annual Connect conference on September 27.

Slimmer optics, double the GPU power

The most noticeable change from the Quest 2 is on your face: the Quest 3 features a 40 percent slimmer optic profile (excluding the foam facial interface) for a lighter, more comfortable fit.

Inside, an upgraded next-gen Snapdragon chipset delivers more than twice the graphical performance of its predecessor. It remains backward-compatible with the full Quest 2 catalog, meaning your existing VR library carries right over.

The front face now sports three pill-shaped sensor cutouts. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman previously detailed in a leak, these house four cameras (two full-color and two standard) alongside a center depth sensor built to supercharge color passthrough and mixed-reality tracking.

The controllers also got a makeover. The new Touch Plus controllers ditch the bulky tracking rings, pack TruTouch haptics, and Meta confirmed bare-hand tracking works right out of the box.

Quest 2 gets a $100 price cut

To keep hardware moving, Meta is slashing prices on older headsets starting June 4. The 128GB Quest 2 drops $100 down to $299.99, while the 256GB version drops by $80 to $349.99, completely undoing last year's unpopular price hike.

Meta is also rolling out an upcoming software update for both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro that boosts CPU and GPU performance while enabling Dynamic Resolution Scaling.

Why it matters

Timing is everything here. By revealing the Quest 3 right before Apple's widely anticipated headset debut, Meta is aggressively anchoring consumer expectations around price and accessibility.

At $500, Quest 3 sits in a sweet spot for everyday gamers and early MR adopters. It brings full-color passthrough and serious silicon upgrades to a mainstream budget, while the discounted $300 Quest 2 keeps the floor dirt cheap.

We think dropping this news now is a smart defensive play, but it leaves one big question unanswered. Hardware refinements and ringless controllers are nice, but without truly compelling mixed-reality software that goes beyond niche gaming, Meta still has to prove that MR is ready for prime time when September rolls around.