Meta Quest 3 Lite Leak Reveals Upcoming Budget VR Headset's Key Specs

Late last year, Meta introduced the Meta Quest 3, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 and retailing for $499.99. Despite how cool virtual reality is, that price is still a bit exclusive for some, and though there are sales, that still isn’t enough. Thankfully, it would seem Meta may have had its hand tipped with new rumors of the Meta Quest 3s, a "lite" version of the Meta Quest 3. It takes a decent downgrade to its specs that should afford room in the cost for a reasonable price drop.

On X, user @Lunayian posted a note about the Meta Quest 3s, which appears to be a preliminary name. This unannounced device will reportedly still be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 but drops the resolution to 1832x1920 per eye, down from the Quest 3’s 2064x2208 pixels per eye. Thankfully, the refresh rate stays the same, but Meta may be swapping out the pancake-style lenses and variable IPD adjustment for Fresnel lenses with three positions of IPD adjustment. For those unaware, the difference in lenses effectively comes down to what kind of displays you can use in the headset. Overall, pancake lenses are a better solution, but Fresnel lenses are generally cheaper.


Beyond the changes to the headset, the kit will purportedly keep the standard Meta Quest Touch Plus controllers that are packaged with the Quest 3. For all intents and purposes, this is the Quest 3 internals crammed into a Quest 2. With this in mind, we are still missing the price. The Quest 2 came out at $299.99 for the 64GB model but was cut more recently to $249.99, then to $199.99 as of late. This leaves some room around the $299 price point, but given the Quest 3 internals, it would not be surprising to see an introductory price of $349.99 or even $399.99 and a subsequent announcement sunsetting the Quest 2.

The other item to consider is that we do not have a launch date for the Quest 3s. If we can don our tinfoil hats for a moment, the Quest 3s could be designed to use leftover parts from the Quest 3 when it is replaced by the Quest 4, perhaps in the Fall once again. This is pure speculation, but the timing would be plausible. We will have to see what happens, though, and perhaps we will get some announcement sooner rather than later. As such, stay tuned to HotHardware for the latest updates on the upcoming Meta Quest lineup.