The Meta Quest Pro has a stylus tip for writing and drawing that’s aimed at the business market
(Picture: Meta)Meta – the company that until a year ago was known as Facebook – has unveiled its latest VR headset.
But with a starting price of £1,499, it is nearly four times the price of the Meta Quest 2, so what exactly does it do to justify the high cost of entry?
As you might expect given the price jump, it’s upgraded across the board. The battery now sits at the back, distributing the weight more evenly for a more ergonomic fit, it’s 50% faster thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Plus chipset and each eye display now outputs at 2,160 x 2,160 — a decent upgrade on the 1,832 x 1,920 of the Quest 2.
But it is the new features that push up the cost. While the Quest 2 is VR only, the Quest Pro is going all in on mixed reality with high-resolution outward-facing cameras to output AR content on to your real-world surroundings. There are also more than a dozen cameras for things like eye tracking, skin tone detection, spatial detection and the capture of facial expressions, meaning your avatar can be more human in virtual environments.
Finally, the controllers are now self-tracking with built-in cameras, meaning they don’t need a line of sight with the headset to function. Showing their work credentials, they also include a stylus tip for writing and sketching within virtual environments (you might want to lean on a table for this).
There’s one big downgrade, however, and a big hole in the metaverse as it currently stands. Although the 5,000mAh battery is much bigger than its predecessor, the increased power demands mean that the Meta Quest Pro will only run for about half as long, needing a recharge every one to two hours.
Niche to mainstream?
For a company with so much belief in the future of VR and the metaverse that it renamed itself to Meta, the Quest Pro sure looks niche. How many businesses are ready to drop £1,500 a time on multiple VR headsets at a time when costs are spiralling out of control? Sharing them between employees doesn’t seem ideal, either, given we’re still emerging from a pandemic that made hand sanitiser sales go through the roof.
But two things may shape Meta’s thinking here. The first is that Apple is likely about to make the Meta Quest Pro look like the value option. Apple has long been rumoured to be working on a mixed reality headset of its own, and it won’t come cheap, with the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believing it’ll cost between $2,000 and $2,500.
As mentioned in Tuesday’s piece about the struggles facing foldables, a launch by Apple should increase overall demand and, by having a lower-cost alternative, Meta may be in a good position for VR-curious businesses.
The second is that lessons learned from the Meta Quest Pro will shape what both smaller businesses and regular consumers can expect to see in the “budget” Meta Quest 3 and/or 4.
Meta makes this point in its blog post announcing the Quest Pro: “Eventually, the use cases that catch on with Meta Quest Pro will help inform what features and content we add to our entry-level line of headsets.”
These might be the headsets that Meta eventually sees taking off in business, in much the same way that affordable webcams eventually beat fancy video conferencing hardware.
In other words, while the Meta Quest Pro may not sell in massive volumes, it can still act as a blueprint to find the mainstream appeal of mixed reality headsets. That’s important for a business with the grand ambition of building a metaverse for all.
Smartwatches were once struggling to get a market foothold before they homed in on fitness as the main selling point. Meta will be hoping that the Quest Pro provides a similar eureka moment.
