Meta Quest 3’s more affordable sibling may have leaked in a new render
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority TL;DR A leak of Meta’s budget VR headset has surfaced online. The render lacks the Quest 3’s front pass-through camera array. The headset is rumored to be called Quest 3 Lite. This year could be the year that AR/VR headsets finally enter the mainstream. While Apple’s Vision Pro offered […]
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A leak of Meta’s budget VR headset has surfaced online.
- The render lacks the Quest 3’s front pass-through camera array.
- The headset is rumored to be called Quest 3 Lite.
This year could be the year that AR/VR headsets finally enter the mainstream. While Apple’s Vision Pro offered a glimpse into a futuristic mixed reality (MR) world – at an extremely high price – Meta appears to be focused on making VR more accessible as it runs on what could be its Quest headset the most affordable to date. A new render may have just shown us the design of this cheaper headset.
As reported The edge Last year, Meta’s VP of VR, Mark Rabkin, talked about plans to launch a more affordable headset in 2024. Known internally as the Ventura, Rabkin said the company aimed to “deliver the biggest punch at the most attractive price point among VR consumers.” “For months, rumors have been circulating about this headset. Now we could take a first look at it.
A recent leak on (formerly Twitter) from VR accessories seller VRpanda may have revealed the possible design of the next headset. The message adds that this new headset could be called Meta Quest 3 Lite.
Although it looks similar to older Meta Quest models, the rendering seems to lack the passthrough camera range of the more expensive Quest 3. An affordable “lite” version of the Quest 3 should cut corners somewhere to bring the price down. However, we don’t expect Meta to try to save some money this way.
Ultimately, the cost of the headset is more associated with the expensive chip processing the huge amount of pixels per frame rather than the cameras. Several reliable sources in the past have claimed that the upcoming Quest Lite headset will use the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as the more expensive Quest 3. Reality Labs Director of Engineering for XR Tech, Paul Furgale also hinted in a blog post that “Passthrough and MR will be a standard feature on all future headsets” after the Quest 3.
Additionally, these details contradict some previous reports. We therefore recommend that you take this rendering with a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s not yet clear where Meta will try to cut costs, but rumors suggest the headset could ship without controllers.
