While a faster chip and a slimmer chassis are solid talking points, it’s the optic hardware that sets the Quest 3 apart from its predecessor. The latest Meta offering comes equipped with a pancake lens kit — which is also seen on the far pricier Quest Pro — that allows the Quest 3 to trim down the optic profile by 40%.
The lenses offer a resolution of 2064×2208 pixels per eye, which is about 30% higher than the Quest 2. Numerically, those figures translate to a density of 1,218 pixels per inch and 25 pixels per degree. The Quest 3 defaults to a 90Hz refresh rate, but there’s also an experimental 120Hz mode available. The horizontal field of view stretches to 110 degrees, but Meta says it has also enhanced the sharpness at the periphery by 70% this time around.
Another standout feature is passthrough, which allows the user to the real around them. Meta has enabled this convenience by fitting the Quest 3 with a pair of RGB cameras and a dedicated projector with depth sensing. Meta is claiming 2.2 hours of usage on a single charge, and 2.4 hours while gaming, while the bundled 18W charger is said to juice up the battery within 2.3 hours.
On the software side, the entire Meta quest catalog is backward compatible. Alongside existing titles, there are some new additions as well, such as “Lego Bricktales,” “Stranger Things,” and Xbox Cloud Gaming, among others.