Tuesday, March 7th 2023
Meta drops the price of Quest 2 and Quest Pro VR headsets
Meta has announced a price cut for its Quest 2 256 GB and Quest Pro VR headsets, reducing the price by $80 and $500, respectively. The latest price cut puts the Meta Quest 2 256 GB at $429 and the Quest Pro at $999.99.
Unfortunately, Meta is still keeping the price of the Quest 2 128 GB VR headset at $399.99, which now puts it in a rather difficult position. Bear in mind that the Meta Quest 2 VR headset does not feature support for microSD cards, so $30 gets you double the storage, making the slightly more expensive model a better deal.
Meta already increased the price of Quest 2 headsets by $100 back in July 2022, mostly due to increased component prices.
The Meta Quest 2 features Fast-Switch LCD displays with 1832x1920 resolution per eye, and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2 platform with 6 GB of RAM. Meta even runs a limited time offer, bundling the Quest 2 with two games, GOLF+ and Space Pirate Trainer DX.
The Quest Pro VR headset is Meta's high-end VR headset which launched at $1,499.99 back in October last year. Described as Meta's "most advanced headset yet," the Quest Pro comes with two LCD panels with 1800x1920 resolution per eye and uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ platform with 12 GB of RAM. It features five infrared eye and face tracking sensors as well as ten advanced VR/MR sensors for 6 degrees of freedom inside-out SLAM tracking, as well as color mixed reality and eye/face tracking.
The new price for the Quest 2 256 GB is already in effect as of March 5 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the US. The Meta Quest Pro price drop will take effect on March 5th in the US and Canada, and on March 15th in all other countries where Meta Quest Pro is supported.
Source:
Meta.com
Unfortunately, Meta is still keeping the price of the Quest 2 128 GB VR headset at $399.99, which now puts it in a rather difficult position. Bear in mind that the Meta Quest 2 VR headset does not feature support for microSD cards, so $30 gets you double the storage, making the slightly more expensive model a better deal.
The Meta Quest 2 features Fast-Switch LCD displays with 1832x1920 resolution per eye, and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2 platform with 6 GB of RAM. Meta even runs a limited time offer, bundling the Quest 2 with two games, GOLF+ and Space Pirate Trainer DX.
15 Comments on Meta drops the price of Quest 2 and Quest Pro VR headsets
I believe it would make sense to sell a cheaper, memoryless version for PC use only. :p
The 128 GB of storage isn't what makes these things expensive.Same here, but not one of these, it would have to be something that connects to a PC over a proper interface.
Everyone is shifting from VR to XR. It's not true AR but it's really the only way to move forward right now. Really AR is just really hard to do ATM. The Pro's XR is OK at best. The tracking cameras are black and white but the singular pass-through camera is color. How they are doing XR is it uses the tracking camera to capture the world and then they do a color overlay using the single color camera. The issue there is the delay. Users are experiencing a few seconds of black and white video and then the color kicks in.
This is the same as how they did Quest 1. It came out as a high-end headset then the next year they released the Quest 2 which was much better. The Pro is using a newer XR2+ chip which is roughly 1.5 times faster than the Quest 2 XR2 Gen1. The Quest 3 will be using the XR2 Gen2 which will be 2.5 times faster than Quest 2, says Brad Lynch. I'm holding off for the Quest 3 if the Valve Deckard doesn't release this year.Meta has already confirmed that Quest 3 will be this year.
Because the Quest headsets are so popular, most VR games and apps are actually pretty lightweight and are designed to run on these low-power devices. This means that you can run the vast majority of VR stuff just fine on one. It will be straight-up incompatible with many of the heavier VR games though, it's true. PC VR is like a separate ecosystem of its own with higher-fidelity games that can't really run on a Quest, though the market is much smaller so there's not much investment happening in this space from developers.The Vive XR Elite seems somewhat interesting, but what I want to know is how anyone is releasing a $999 headset in this day and age without eye tracking. That's a minor crime in of itself.
I actually don't really use Quest2 to play PC games. I don't care to sit in my computer chair to play VR. I am either missing out on some experience where I need to move my entire body, or I would rather be on the comfort of my couch for games I can stay stationary. You could do wireless, but for me the latency is too noticeable and reduces the overall experience.
What I would rather see and would love to buy, is a Quest2 like product running SteamOS with Steamdeck performance.
The more visual breathtaking games (Half Life Alyx, Star Wars Squadrons, Flight Simulator VR, Skyrim VR) require you to connect it to a PC and have beefy specs.