Out of the box, this headset is complete and ready to go to get started in a new VR adventure. I have to say that it's definitely come a long way in recent time, and this is the perfect headset to get started, whether it's for gaming, or exploring the VR world (the metaverse) and meeting new people in Meta Horizon.

It includes Batman Arkham Shadow (which is a lot of fun to play) and a trial subscription to Meta Quest plus which I think is great to help give you a taste of different games each month. The headset comes with a power adapter and touch controllers.

For comfort, I'd say the head straps that come on it are good and certainly good enough for longer sessions, but I'd recommend getting a set of straps that make it more comfortable to wear for longer periods and outside of that good pair of ear buds will make the experience even more immersive. The through vision is actually pretty good and enables you to see the real environment you are sitting in with the VR environment overlayed. Some games and apps take advantage of this which is pretty good, but it also makes it easy to see your phone or other things in the real world when you need to without taking it off.

The quality of the displays is definitely good enough to get started in VR though with the fresnel lenses some people I have had try my headset out do have a hard time adapting to looking into the headset with them, but these actually are pretty good and produce a good image and despite not being as good as the Quest 3, I'd say they are still good enough, with the main difference being that the overall quality of the image isn't as sharp but still is good. The optics with the pancake lenses and higher resolution displays make images sharper with less artifacts but the 3s fresnel lenses are really actually pretty good, certainly for a beginner/starter headset that you want to try without sinking half a grand into it. I didn't have any trouble adapting and found that once I got "into" a game or experience that I really don't notice any of the side effects of the lenses (the flares or artifacts on the very outside edge of an image).

Head and motion tracking is pretty good, but I do find that having to keep the controls in front of the headset annoying, but it does work well. The headset is quick to lose track of motion though if the controls are not kept out in front of you. That said, once you are used to that, it's not bad and this isn't just unique to the 3S but the Quest 3 as well and I think the tracking is pretty much the same for both.

Battery life is pretty good, I have found that I'm able to easily use it for more than an hour and even two hours, depending on the content. I usually try to limit my sessions to an hour or so, which the battery life so far seems to be just right for.

Overall, this is a ton of fun, and I'd recommend getting one and really giving it a chance. The first time I tried the 3 I wasn't sure about it, tried it a few times and then let it set. I recently came back to it just before getting this one and started to explore the Meta Horizons app, more experiences and gave the subscription a try and am glad I did as I have discovered a whole new world in the virtual world.

In terms of storage, 128gb is a lot but some games are larger, and any stored media definitely takes up space, so I'd recommend not storing media like videos in the storage and you'll have plenty for a good number of games, but I'd opt for the larger storage if you can.

The Meta Quest 3 is the third iteration of the Oculus Quest, which was the first standalone VR headset untethering you from a PC. With Meta at the reins, the VR space has grown as has their product improvements and refinements.

Having owned the original Oculus Quest and the successor the Meta Quest 2, I have spent countless hours playing various standalone virtual reality games and experiences. While I enjoyed those headsets, the novel experience wained and I found myself picking them up less and less. The Quest 3, originally released in 2023, iterated on the successful design, and on paper it didn’t seem like enough of an improvement for me to pick up at the increased price. Now a year later, Meta has reduced the starting price of the Quest 3 and introduced a cheaper alternative the Quest 3S.
With the Quest 3 being a year old, it may seem dated, but now is the time to buy what is currently the best value in VR.

To start, the optical stack of the Quest 3 is far superior to the previously used fresnel lens. The clarity was immediately noticeable as was the greatly improved sweet spot that lenses provide. The IPD adjustment is smooth, and can be easily adjusted between 58-70 with a dial on the bottom. This fine tuning combined with the pancake lenses of the Quest 3 is night and day compared to my Quest 2, though I may be overly sensitive to blur. I may have been drawn to the Quest 3 over the 3S due to the pancake lenses but after using the headset I realize I underestimated the benefit mixed reality (MR) brings to the table. Though the passthrough cameras are a little grainy, especially in low light, the quality improvement and addition of color makes it far more useable coming from the Quest 2. I find myself leaving passthrough on as my preferred environment as I feel it is a more comfortable experience and makes it feel more natural. It is still enjoyable to jump into an immersive VR game or experience, but I also now like using the browser or watching youtube in a passthrough environment over a virtual one.

Hand tracking is much improved and is now quite useable for navigating the device and using first party applications like the browser or applications that have been updated to support hand tracking. Naturally there are limitations and it will never replace controllers but I am pleasantly surprised the progress that they have maid so far. The included touch plus controllers are a better design now that Meta has integrated the tracking into the face of the controllers instead of relying on tracking rings. They still operate on a single AA battery each and have excellent battery life, unfortunately the headset itself still only manages a little over 2 hours depending on use. Fortunately the accessory market for the Quest 3 is flush with options now that the device is fairly mature, and there are numerous battery strap options. The included head strap is actually better than previous designs and fairly comfortable for short usage. I actually prefer the ease of slipping it on for a quick session and the soft strap design allows the Quest 3 to be fairly compact for storage. The facial interface now has four depth adjustments to accommodate different faces or glasses wearers and is also removable as well. Meta sells a variety of facial interfaces including a new open facial interface that improves the mixed reality experiences and offers better breathability.

Compared to my previous experience with Quest devices, the Quest 3 is by far the best so far. Meta has done a great job and improved upon their design while also branching more into MR which is an interesting look into the future. Even looking just at the VR segment, the Quest 3 is the most popular headset on the market. Though the hardware isn’t capable of PCVR yet, the overall experience Meta has fostered with the Quest is hard to deny.

Setup: First of all, you do not need a Facebook account in order to set up the Meta Quest. You do need to download the Meta Horizon app and register with Meta (provide an email, generate a login username and password). As a whole, the setup is quite simple and straightforward. It comes with a free 3-month trial of Meta Quest+ (after the 3 months it’s $7.99/mo); you’ll need to provide a credit card number to be put “on file” for future purchases (regardless of whether you plan to or not). I also purchased a $25 gift card for other games and apps I may want to try in the future, which I placed on file as well. You can also download free apps such as the YouTube app. The Meta Quest+ subscription gives you access to a catalog of games, and gives you two free games to download per month. You can also access a web browser, which is what I used to go on streaming websites that have no apps available for the Meta Quest, such as Spectrum—I watched some TV shows that way. There’s also the free download of the Batman: Arkham Shadow game which comes with the Meta Quest 3S.

The setup walkthrough also provides you with a very helpful tutorial which showed me how to use the controllers, how to use my hands instead of the controllers, navigate between various activities (such as going back and forth between apps, open windows, etc.), how to use the virtual interface, how virtual boundaries are created, and how to switch from total transparency mode to immersive mode. I had been worried that it would take forever to set up the Meta Quest 3S, much less learn the aspects of the hardware and software, but really it was not too bad or overly complicated.

Fit: The fit of the headset quite surprisingly was pretty good for both adults and kids—my husband and I both have used it, as well as our grade school aged and middle school aged kids. The strap that goes around the back of the head adjusts similar to…I would say it’s very similar to the way some bicycle helmets can be adjusted to different sized heads, where you can tighten or loosen the fit via two sliders. There’s also a top strap that goes over the top of your head that can be tightened or loosened via a velcro closure. Once you do it a couple of times, it’s pretty easy to remember how to adjust everything quickly when different people want to use the Meta Quest headset. The straps are made of a nice fabric-type elastic material that has a good stretchy give, yet feels stable and sturdy enough to keep the headset from moving or shifting around while it’s on your head. The lenses can also be adjusted—there are three different widths to choose from, for example for my grade-school aged kid, he uses the most narrow width, while my husband and I need to use the middle-sized width between the lenses. When you try to see anything on the screen in the headset and it looks blurry, you know you need to adjust the lens spacing. And here’s a huge plus to anyone who wears glasses—there’s an included “glasses spacer” which you can quickly and easily click onto the headset, that creates added space for your eyeglasses. My kids and I all wear glasses daily, so we make use of the glasses spacer and we can vouch that it definitely works. Overall, the fit of the headset is comfortable—but not for extended periods of time. It does get top-heavy after a while, and this depends on the comfort level of the individual. My grade schooler needs to take a break (well, I make him take a break!), every 15-20 minutes or so, and even then he gets a bit sweaty underneath and around the headset parameters. I can go a bit longer, maybe about an hour or so. Everyone’s mileage will vary.

As for the hand controllers, again, you can use your hands and go physical-controller-free, but it is by no means an easy task. It’s very hard to get used to, and most of the time I just give up and pick up the controllers because then it’s a sure thing that I can precisely pick and click and navigate around the experiences. The controllers are very ergonomically good and intuitive to use. They are battery operated but you can buy separate accessories that provide a rechargeable station with rechargeable batteries, similar to the ones that can be bought for game consoles’ controllers. There is a way to see the batteries’ levels, as well as the headset’s battery level. The headset has a rechargeable battery that you charge using the included 18w charger with USB-C adapter, but you can use any USB-C adapter you already have at home too as long as the power brick is 18w or above. I will have to say that the headset battery runs out pretty quick, especially when you’re doing more intensive activities (such as my son playing the Batman game).

I do recommend purchasing one accessory for sure—a case for storage and transport. The Meta Quest is not like a gaming console that is continuously sitting in one place; it’s wireless and meant to be moving around, and it’s good to have all the pieces (headset, two controllers, power adapter, charging cable) all in one place, especially when traveling.

Overall, I give the Meta Quest 3S 4/5 stars. It is obviously exceptionally good for the price—I have tried another virtual headset that is quite a lot more expensive, and it is predictably a lot better quality-wise (both hardware and software), but you just cannot beat this headset for the price! On the other more expensive headset, I am fully immersed in the experiences and it is overwhelmingly breathtaking and just…out of this world. But with the Meta Quest, there is what I call a “nose gap” in the headset where I constantly see the ground below my nose and where the light from my surroundings is very noticeable because it unerringly enters the interior of the headset. And this is no matter how snug and tight I put the Meta Quest on my head. Also, during most of the various experiences I do on the Meta Quest, there are always blurry edges, kind of like smudges that also constantly take me out of the immersive experience. In addition, when I go into some of the 360-degree experiences, even when I carefully set boundaries all around me and stay within those boundaries, sometimes I see these virtual “squares” that pop up here and there (kind of like I’m in a Star Trek holodeck and the glowing squares are where the computer didn’t create the virtual scenes yet? Or there’s a “glitch” in the holodeck program?). That also never happened with the other very expensive virtual reality headset that I tried. But again, to reiterate—for the price, this Meta Quest 3S is very much worth it! For my family’s first foray into the virtual reality world, it has been great and continues to entertain us daily. Playing games, going to different places around the world, watching television and movies—all on a virtual huge screen that looks even bigger than a movie theater screen!—I definitely recommend this for any individual or family, young and old and in-between.

This is an excellent all-in-one VR headset. It’s a good upgrade over the older Quest 2 and the color passthrough is top notch. The main sacrifice you make over the Quest 3 is in the display and it’s a meaningful difference, but if you don't want to make the extra investment in the Quest 3 the Quest 3S is in a class of its own.

The headset isn’t extremely heavy and feels comfortable on my face, though I definitely felt some fatigue about an hour into my play sessions with all of the weight on the front of my face. The included fabric strap is comfortable and pretty easy to adjust, but I think the Elite Strap or some similar 3rd party accessory is an essential purchase for this and really helps out with the long term comfort.

The Touch Plus controllers are similar to the ones that were included with the Quest Pro, though they do not have built-in batteries (they run on AA’s) and don’t have inbuilt tracking like the Quest Pro’s controllers did. They’re comfortable to hold though and I haven’t had any issues with tracking since I’ve been using them.

The display is the same as the one that was on the Quest 2. It doesn’t look bad, but having come from previously using pancake lenses on the Quest Pro I can definitely say the Fresnel lenses are of a noticeably lower quality by comparison and the sharpness falloff on the peripheral of my vision can be distracting at times. There are also only 3 fixed adjustments for the IPD and I feel like my ideal adjustment is somewhere in between them. If VR is a sometimes thing for you this is easy to live with, but if it’s going to be an everyday thing for you I think it’s worth investing in the higher end non-S model for the pancake lenses alone.

The color passthrough is excellent and I love that there is a button on the headset that will quickly switch you between VR and AR. I wouldn’t say it looks ‘natural’, but it’s much much better than what I’ve experienced on the Quest Pro and I’m able to walk around and do pretty much everything with it on, including looking at my phone and watching TV.

The general interface on the Quest 3S is easy to use and navigate using both my hands and the controllers. I really like how the sensors in the headsets can now automatically map out the room and define play areas so that no longer needs to be done manually. You don’t need a Facebook account to use the Quest, which is nice, but you will need to sign up for a Meta account.

Playing games so far has been a great experience. The bundle I got included Batman Arkham Shadow, which is not just an excellent VR game but an excellent Batman Arkham game. You’ve got all the classic hits like Beat Saber and you also get 6 months of Meta Quest+, which gives you access to even more games. The Snapdragon XR2 processor isn’t going to match for a dedicated PC for VR, but it delivers some pretty impressive experiences for an all-in-one headset and you can still use the Quest 3S with a PC via a dedicated cable or wireless link.

The headset has built-in speakers that sound pretty good, though they don’t quite measure up in the more immersive experiences and I’d recommend pairing some headphones. The Quest 3S doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio jack, but the USB-C port does support audio output and can use a 3.5mm adapter.

I’ve been getting around 2 hours of battery life using the Quest 3S and I’d consider that to be adequate since being in VR for much longer than that makes me a bit nauseous anyway. The Quest 3S does include a USB-C charging cable and adapter, though I do wish the included cable was a little bit longer - it’s only about 3ft long.

Overall I’m very happy with the Quest 3S. If you’re looking to get into VR for the first time and not sure if it’s going to be for you this is the one to get. For anyone more serious about VR the non-S model might be the better buy.