Meta unveils cheaper $299 Quest 3S VR headset
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Acquired LIVE event at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta announced the Quest 3S, the latest virtual reality headset to come out of the company’s Reality Labs division and a cheaper offering than its predecessor.
The device will go on sale on Oct. 15 and will retail starting at $299, down from the $499 starting price for 2023’s Quest 3. The device can be used to watch movies, as well as run VR fitness apps and gaming, Meta said Wednesday at its Connect event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The company positioned the headset as a multitasking computer, putting it in competition with Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset that launched in February.
Meta’s previous Quest devices are the bestselling VR headsets, with millions shipped thanks to heavy marketing and a lower price than many competitors, but those efforts have yet to spark a cultural phenomenon or a mainstream software ecosystem around VR. Including its acquisition of Oculus in 2014, Meta has poured more than $65 billion in expenses into its hardware efforts.
“I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s spending as a strategic initiative to prevent Apple from controlling future hardware platforms.
Although there was hope among VR developers that Apple’s entry into the market would spur a wave of new apps and users, Apple hasn’t revealed sales for its headset and reports say that sales have been in small volumes, under 1 million units, partially due to its high price.
What it does
A Meta representative said the “S” stands for “start” — as in getting started with VR.
Many of the new Meta features that the company discussed on Tuesday for its $299 Quest 3S have counterparts on Apple’s Vision Pro, including a mode that allows for the device to be used on an airplane and another that simulates a large movie theater inside the headset.
Meta highlighted improved “passthrough,” the term used to described when a VR headset uses cameras and sensors on the outside of the device to display live real-time video inside the headset. That function is intended to make users feel like they are looking through a display and allows them to interact with the real world while keeping the headset on. For the Quest 3S, Meta added a dedicated button to turn on passthrough.
The company has emphasized the ability of the Quest 3S to multitask and run apps, positioning it as a computing device, instead of a game console.
“All the things you can do with a general purpose computer, Quest is the full package,” Zuckerberg said.
In demos provided Tuesday, Meta showcased the device running as many as four apps at one time on floating screens inside the headset, including a YouTube video, a browser, Amazon Music and Meta’s app store. Meta says the headset can handle six windows. But the demo experience was not smooth. The Amazon Music app crashed, window controls would disappear and Meta’s controllers would fall asleep after a few minutes if the user wasn’t pressing buttons.
Besides the Quest 3S, Meta also announced a price cut for last’s year Quest 3, bringing the price of the 512GB version down from $650 to $500. The Quest 3 has more advanced lenses and a superior screen with a higher resolution than the Quest 3S.
Additionally, Meta said it will discontinue the Quest Pro, its $999 headset launched in 2022 that never gained much momentum.
Eventually, glasses
Meta Orion AR glasses prototype
Meta
Zuckerberg’s justification for spending so much on VR and augmented reality is his belief that the technology will eventually end up in lightweight, transparent glasses that overlay computer graphics and information onto the real world.
Investing in VR software and hardware are early steps toward those glasses, which could take as much as a decade to develop, Zuckerberg has previously said.
Zuckerberg showed off an early concept of what those glasses could look like on Wednesday. The thick, black-framed prototype, called Orion, won’t be sold to consumers, but Meta says they will be used internally as the company continues working toward the consumer glasses it hopes to one day sell.
“This is where we are going,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said they were Meta’s first “fully-functioning” prototype of the glasses, and would be physically tethered to a small “puck.” Zuckerberg also said that it would take advantage of a wrist-based interface, which came out of stems from the company’s 2019 acquisition of CTRL-Labs.
Meta’s Orion prototype comes a week after Snap announced its fifth-generation Spectacles AR glasses. Those thick-framed glasses will only be made available to developers, who must commit to paying $99 a month for one full year if they want to build AR apps for the device.
This isn’t the first time Meta publicly revealed a prototype of a future devices or research projects to signal to investors and employees where VR and AR technology is headed. The Orion glasses are an improvement on Project Nazare, prototype smart glasses that Zuckerberg announced in 2021, when the company changed its name from Facebook.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta does sell a pair of glasses with a built-in camera in partnership with EssilorLuxottica called Ray-Ban Meta, which start at $299. While these glasses don’t have any displays, they do have tiny speakers that allow the device to play music or interact with Meta AI, the company’s voice assistant.
For example, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can now detect when a user is looking at a sign in Spanish and, if asked, can translate in the user’s ear, a new improvement, Meta said. The camera can scan QR codes, and it can also extract information like book titles out of photos it takes. Plus, they’re stylish and look like a pair of typical sunglasses.
“One of the most important things about this is they’re just good-looking glasses,” Zuckerberg said.
Another new capability for the glasses is the ability to remember facts like where the user parked.
Li-Chen Miller, the vice president of product in charge of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, told CNBC that when she travels, she uses the glasses to take photos of her hotel room door, and later, she asks Meta AI to recall the number.
Zuckerberg is excited about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which have sold more than 730,000 units in their first three quarters, according to market researcher IDC. In July, he told investors that they were “a bigger hit sooner than expected.”
Last week, EssilorLuxottica and Meta announced that they had extended their partnership to develop more smart glasses.
AI that speaks
Zuckerberg also introduced improvements to its Meta AI chatbot that will allow people to interact with it using their voice instead of written text.
Users will now be able to have natural voice conversations with Meta AI, which is accessed through Meta apps like Messenger and Instagram. Users will be able to perform actions using their voice, such as telling Meta AI to take a photo by talking to their smartphone.
For Meta AI’s new feature, the company is using computer-generated voices from celebrities including Awkwafina, Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key and Kristen Bell.
The new Siri-like Meta AI voice feature will be available over the next month for U.S., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand users of WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
The feature comes one day after rival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, announced an advanced voice feature for people who pay its premium service.
The company said that the new chatbot features are based on Meta’s AI model, Llama. The company also announced a newer version of Llama, called Llama 3.2. This updated model can understand both images and text, an upgrade from its predecessors which generated responses to people’s written prompts.
US President Joe Biden, left, and Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, speak on the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, in the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal, bringing at least a temporary halt to the war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people in the last 15 months and touched off broader turmoil across the Middle East.
Aaron Schwartz | Sipa | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Biden administration on Thursday announced an executive order on cybersecurity that imposes new standards for companies selling to the U.S. government and calls for greater disclosure from software providers.
The White House is looking to put in place new rules “to strengthen America’s digital foundations,” Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for cybersecurity and emerging technology, said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday.
Cyberattacks have caused an increasing number of disruptions inside federal agencies and companies in recent years.
Attackers have pulled off ransomware attacks at Change Healthcare, the operator of the Colonial Pipeline and the Ascension health care system. And Microsoft said in 2023 that Chinese attackers had broken into U.S. government officials’ email accounts, prompting a critical federal report and a series of changes at the software maker.
Companies selling software to the U.S. government will have to demonstrate that their development practices are secure, according to a statement. There will be “evidence that we post on a government website for all software users to benefit from,” Neuberger said.
The General Services Administration will have to make policy that makes cloud providers provide information to clients on how to operate securely.
Companies selling products and services to the U.S. government must adhere to a new set of security practices as a result of the executive order.
Last week the White House announced the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark label to help consumers evaluate internet-connected devices. The executive order states that the U.S. government will only purchase such products if they carry the label, starting in 2027.
The order also directs the National Institute for Standards and Technology to come up with guidance for handling software updates. In late 2020, hackers gained access to Microsoft and U.S. Defense Department systems by targeting updates to SolarWinds‘ Orion software.
It’s not clear if President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration will uphold the executive order. Biden’s cybersecurity officials have not met with those who will take up the work for Trump.
“We haven’t discussed, but we are very happy to, as soon as the incoming cyber team is named, of course, have any discussions during this final transition period,” Neuberger said.
WATCH: Fmr. CISA Director Chris Krebs on cyberthreats: Expect an increase of offensive cyber activity
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