At Meta Connect 2022, Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s latest virtual reality headset. The newly announced Quest Pro is all about pushing the limits of what they can do. It’s a more robust device, versus Facebook’s initial approach of providing low-cost VR.
The new Quest device promises to become an all-in-one immersive experience – a headset, an interface, and computing system in one. It shares the Quest name but has little in common with the more mass market Quest 2, which Meta will continue to sell, albeit at its newly reduced price of $399 (previously $499). With a much higher price point of $1,499, the company is pitching the Quest Pro as a productivity device for professionals.
The headline feature of the Quest Pro is full-color passthrough. This allows a user wearing the headset to see their real-world environment, but with digital content overlaid on top of it. Black-and-white versions of this feature are available in the Quest 2.
These use cases are made possible by the new hardware changes.
The Quest Pro includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chipset, 1800×1920 per-eye mini-LED displays, and 12 GB of RAM. Plus, it comes with eye-tracking.
The controllers have been redesigned to include three onboard cameras that keep track of the controller’s location by referencing points on the headset instead of using large tracking rings.
This is one of the largest drawbacks to the headset. Meta claims that it will only last for 1-2 hours, which could be problematic as it would require charging during a workday.
