Meta Quest 3S review: probably the one we’ve been waiting for

Yes, the Quest 3S is Meta’s step-down headset from the Quest 3, but it can play all of the same games. Meta mostly made the right tradeoffs with its newer and cheaper headset, so being Batman will ultimately feel pretty similar across both devices. The Quest 3 is a better headset, to be clear. It’s also $499.99. At $299.99, the 3S is the better buy.

So if you don’t already own a Quest 3 but want to dabble with VR, save $200, get the Quest 3S, and hop into Gotham. And then check out everything else you can play. There’s more to do than you might think.

The Quest 3S itself is more or less the body of the Quest 2 and the guts of the Quest 3, including the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor, the same cameras for full-color passthrough, and the same Touch Plus controllers. Like other Quests, it’s a standalone device that doesn’t need to be plugged into anything to work, which I think gives it a leg up on the PSVR 2.

At 514 grams, the Quest 3S is essentially the same weight as the 515-gram Quest 3. But the Quest 3S is noticeably bulkier than the Quest 3 because of the two places Meta found to save money: the lenses and displays.

The Quest 3S, like the Quest 2, uses Fresnel lenses, whereas the Quest 3 uses pancake lenses. Not only are pancake lenses thinner, but they can also have better image quality and bring the headset closer to your face, which makes it feel more balanced. The Quest 3S also has the same resolution (1832 x 1920 pixels per eye) and field of view as the Quest 2, meaning you won’t see quite as much in front of you as you would with the Quest 3’s 2064 x 2208 resolution and slightly wider field of view.

That said, I’ve always felt that the Quest 2’s display was perfectly fine for playing games and general web browsing, and I think it’s still acceptable for the 3S, especially at this price. And it’s been fine in Arkham Shadow. Sure, the graphics aren’t anywhere near as good as a PS5, but on the Quest 3S, everything looks good enough to make skulking through sewers and ducts and taking out waves of bad guys a total blast.

Of course, the Quest 3S’s graphics aren’t as good as a PS5’s, for a lot of reasons other than just the lenses — one is a giant home console and the other is a face computer, you know? — but the Quest 3S is more than serviceable. If you want Quest games to look as good as possible, you should get the Quest 3, and that’s fine. But I don’t think you lose all that much opting for the 3S and saving $200.

I should say here that if you have a Quest 2, the Quest 3 will feel like more of an upgrade. Yes, the hardware on the Quest 3S is much improved, meaning things are generally snappier and that you can play better-looking games. But, at least for the moment, there are only a handful of games that you can only play on the Quest 3S and Quest 3 — one of which is Arkham Shadow — and the Quest 3 also has a visibly better display and field of view.

The best argument for the Quest 3S, and maybe for VR as a whole right now, is Arkham Shadow, which is free with the headset until the end of April. No matter which headset you play it on — it’s bundled with both the Quest 3 and 3S — there’s something really cool about playing as Batman in VR. Hiding in the rafters and swooping down on a baddie is Batman’s whole thing, and this game lets you do it from the first-person perspective of the Caped Crusader. Meta is bundling the game for a reason: beyond just the Arkham lineage, the game is that good. We’ve been waiting for a truly great VR game for a long time, the one that sells the whole setup all by itself. Arkham Shadow might be that game.

If caped crusading isn’t your jam, though, you’ll also have access to the huge library of Quest VR games, like Beat Saber and Resident Evil 4. I really enjoyed Maestro, a recently launched music game where you conduct an orchestra. As of last year, you can also wirelessly stream VR games on Steam from a PC to your Quest headset. 

The VR app situation is getting pretty good on the Quest. But while Meta has also pushed hard on the augmented reality and passthrough elements of the Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets, I haven’t seen any mixed reality games or apps that seem worth playing over something that’s fully immersive VR.

Passthrough — which lets you view the world around you while you have the headset on using its cameras — still seems like a small feature to me. While I love the “action button” on the Quest 3S that lets you easily switch between passthrough and immersive modes, it’s something I’ve only used to type a note about a game I was playing or check Slack on my laptop before pressing it again to go back into VR. The ability to put windows wherever you want in space is nice (and is something you can do with other Quest headsets, too), but I don’t do any Serious Work in a headset that would require that level of organization.

And sure, you could hang out and play games in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. But every game I’ve played in Horizon Worlds has been terrible, so I wouldn’t recommend it. I could maybe give Meta a pass here if Horizon Worlds was brand new. But Meta has been pecking away at Horizon Worlds for years, and I still don’t think there is any point to using it.

The Quest 3S doesn’t fix some of the problems inherent to VR: you’re still putting on a big headset that covers your eyes and largely shuts you out from the world around you. Hand tracking is just okay — you’re probably still going to want to use the controllers to actually interact with things while wearing the headset. After spending 45 minutes or so playing a game like Arkham Shadow, I start to feel the weight and need to pull up the headset to give my head and neck a break. The Quest 3S, at least, comes with Meta’s Y-shaped top strap, which is more comfortable and more configurable than the Quest 2’s standard strap.

I also noticed that I was largely only picking up the Quest 3S for the purposes of writing about it for work; after work or on the weekends, I preferred to play games on my Steam Deck or PS5. I think there are a few reasons for this. One is that those other devices let me more easily chat with my wife while I play, instead of shutting her out. We have a new baby crawling around, so when I get some time to play a game while the baby is asleep, I’m tired enough that I’m not looking for the physicality of VR. And the games, for the most part, don’t interest me like the games I can play on my non-VR gaming devices. (If you read my article about regretting buying the PSVR 2, these arguments may sound familiar.)

The cheaper Quest 3S doesn’t solve VR’s inherent tradeoffs and limitations. And if you already have a Quest 2, you’re not missing out on too many games. But $299.99 for the same chipset as the Quest 3 but with slightly worse displays makes the Quest 3S the best headset to buy right now.

Even if it’s just an Arkham Shadow machine, it’s probably worth it.