Meta Quest 3S vs Meta Quest 3: Which headset is best?

While the Meta Quest 3 may be the VR and MR headset of choice for most buyers at the moment, with a starting price of £469.99 / $499.99 there’s no denying that it’s an expensive device. To remedy this, Meta has just introduced the Meta Quest 3S, which makes some thoughtful compromises to deliver a current-generation experience with a significantly lower price tag.

The most obvious difference is the Quest 3S’s revised optical stack, which saves around £200/$200 on the Quest 3’s current asking price, while still aiming to deliver a similar user experience, in terms of software and hardware performance.

How well does Meta’s latest headset achieve this intention? Let’s compare Quest 3S and Quest 3 to find out which one suits you best.

Design and construction

To help separate the Quest series from the Rift line of headsets that preceded it, Meta switched from black to a light gray plastic finish on the Quest 2, which continued with the Quest 3, and now the Quest 3S.

Aside from obvious dimensional differences (which we’ll get to in a moment), the Quest 3S features a cleaner aesthetic, with two small clusters of cameras and sensors on the front, rather than the Quest 3’s more practical triple pill-shaped camera and sensor. series.

Below that you’ll find physical volume controls, capacitive touch controls on the side and integrated speakers, in addition to a pre-installed fabric headband and facial interface. Fortunately, the selection of additional headbands that Meta sells – namely the Elite Strap and the ‘Elite Strap with Battery’ should fit both systems, however alternative facial interfaces do not.

Despite its thinner and more rounded profile, the Quest 3 clocks in at just a gram lighter than the newer Quest 3S, and the weight distribution is similar too. Both are standard front-heavy headsets (with the center of gravity being slightly further forward on the 3S), but otherwise they offer a very similar feel and level of comfort on your face.

One nice tweak that the 3S takes over the 3 is the addition of a dedicated action button on the bottom, which with a quick press replaces any VR or MR elements with a clean pass-through camera feed of your surroundings.

It’s a notable improvement over the double-tap side touch panel (which both headsets still support), which long-time Quest 3 owners have repeatedly called out as unreliable.

This Quest 3S-only convenience is offset by the fact that only the Quest 3 has a physical 3.5mm headphone jack; you’re limited to the integrated speakers or Bluetooth audio with the 3S.

Screen and lenses

The Quest 3S’s notable price difference is mainly driven by the return to a nearly identical optical stack as that of the previous Quest 2, which is also the reason for the newer headset’s extra thickness compared to the Quest 3.

Where the Quest 3 features a dual LCD setup, delivering a resolution of 2064×2208 per eye and 25 pixels per degree (PPD), the 3S reverts to a single LCD panel, delivering 1832×1920 per eye, with 20 pixels per degree.

The brightness and refresh rate (up to 120Hz) are similar for both, with the lens setup being the other obvious differentiator.

Pancake lenses are pricey, but they give the Meta Quest 3 a significantly larger visual sweet spot, which is easier to find as you adjust the headset to your head; ensures greater wearing comfort in the long term. This is also helped by the larger FoV (field of view) and wider IPD (inter-pupillary distance) range, which can be manually adjusted anywhere between 58mm and 71mm using the dial on the bottom of the Quest 3.

Not only do the Fresnel lenses require a lot more space to fit into the Quest 3S’ chassis (about 40% more), but they also come with a slightly narrower field of view (up to 97° horizontally and 93° vertically, versus 110 ° horizontal and 96° vertical on the Quest 3), as well as a shorter IPD range (58mm to 68mm), which you can only adjust in three steps by manually pushing or pulling the lenses closer together or further apart.

High-contrast images are the easiest way to emphasize how the light passing through each lens type is affected, with more distortion, blooming and chromatic aberration towards the edges from the Fresnel-based optics in Meta’s latest headset.

All in all, this means that clarity and immersion are collectively weaker on the 3S, which shows exactly where the extra money on offer for Quest 3’s standard asking price is going.

Performance and storage

Fortunately, as different as the viewing experience is between the Quest 3 and 3S, Meta has made sure that performance is as near identical as possible on both systems.

Both headsets have 8GB of RAM and run on Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset; a notable improvement over the Quest 2’s XR2 Gen 1 SoC. On paper it delivers 2.5x better graphics performance, and is currently the silicon of choice for standalone VR, delivering reliably smooth visuals and enabling more demanding effects, such as dynamic lighting and particles, while gaming.

If the Quest 3 is already the benchmark for standalone VR, the Quest 3S is just as capable in terms of performance, with the same level of smoothness and reliability, and enough resources to keep minimized apps in the background and multitask.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

At launch, the Quest 3 arrived in 128 and 512GB storage configurations, but the arrival of the Quest 3S just over a year later heralded a shift in storage options across the range.

The Quest 3S is available in 128 and 256 GB variants, while the Quest 3 is now available in a single 512 GB model (stock of the 128 GB Quest 3 has now been exhausted).

However, Meta has at the same time slashed at least a decent chunk of the price of the top-spec Quest 3 (£150, in the UK). For reference, 128 GB is enough for about 30 standalone games – according to Meta, while 20 experiences took up 100 GB of storage in the units used in this feature.

Cameras

A huge improvement between the Quest 2 and Quest 3 was the upgrade to the headset’s pass-through cameras.

Although both generations supported stereoscopic pass-through, the improved resolution and shift to RGB sensors (rather than monochrome) gave the Quest 3 legitimate viability as a mixed reality system.

The Quest 3S features a similar sensor array on the front, allowing full-colour pass-through at 4MP resolution and the same level of support and reliability for mixed reality experiences as on the Quest 3.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

The ToF (time-of-flight)/IR sensors on the front of both headsets also make for quick and painless room-scale installation; scanning your environment and ‘remembering’ where the boundaries are, making both systems considerably more convenient to use than the Quest 2 in this respect.

Battery life and charging

The Quest 3 has a 4879mAh battery rated for up to 2.2 hours of use per charge, while the Quest 3S has a smaller 4324mAh battery.

However, despite this smaller capacity, Meta’s latest headset lasts longer, up to 2.5 hours on a charge; at least that’s the idea. In my tests, both headsets lasted the same amount of time, just over two hours on a charge, based on mixed use.

About 50% of a single charge was spent on VR gaming, 20% on mixed reality and 30% on immersive video. So while the Quest 3S should last longer, there’s little in real life depending on the experiences you dive into.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Both headsets come with an 18W power adapter in the box, which Meta says fills the Quest 3 in around 1.75 hours, while the Quest 3S should clock in around 1.6 hours. Once again, tests show that charging is a little slower than promised, with the Quest 3 taking exactly 2 hours to charge, while the Quest 3S was just 5 minutes faster.

The caveat to these numbers is that it takes a long time to reach that final percentage, while the majority of both headsets’ batteries are charged much sooner. After 90 minutes, the Quest 3’s battery was at 93%, while the Quest 3S’s had reached 95%.

Another minor hardware difference that affects power management is the absence of the Quest 3’s proximity sensor on the Quest 3S. Likely caused by both cost and a design issue with the proximity sensor on the Quest 2 that allowed moisture to get behind the optics and cause a short circuit, the lack of this sensor means you have to manually tap the power button when using the 3S turns off to put the system to sleep.

If you forget, it will remain fully powered on for a while, sapping precious battery life. The Quest 3 doesn’t suffer from this problem, as once the sensor detects that you’ve removed the headset, it turns off the displays and automatically enters sleep mode.

Software and apps

The compromises Meta chose for the Quest 3S mean it’s no less capable than the Quest 3 when running standalone games.

As such, you’ll have full access to the 600+ games and nearly 3,000 total apps in the Meta Horizon store, across both headsets.

The 3 and 3S are also compatible with the Meta Quest Link Cable for wired PC VR experiences, as well as a wireless alternative: Air Link, and since the launch of the Quest 3, Steam Link can now run natively on both of Meta’s headsets, with included hand tracking support to boot.

Price and availability

The Meta Quest 3 launched in 2023 and is now available directly from Meta in a single 512GB configuration for £469.99 / $499.99, while the Meta Quest 3S went on sale on October 15, 2024 for a price of £289.99/$299.99 for the 128GB model and £379.99/$399.99 for the 256GB variant.

At the time of writing, a new purchase of both headsets will also include Batman: Arkham Shadow.

Third-party retailers may still have stock of the 128GB Meta Quest 3, if you’re looking for the best of Meta without having to pay top dollar.

There aren’t really any secrets as to why the Meta Quest 3S is the more affordable headset here, apart from the odd perk – the dedicated action button, to quickly access pass-through and slightly longer battery life – it resorts to a lesser optical stack, while otherwise delivering the same performance as the standard Meta Quest 3.

The Quest 3 is the more compact system, with more forgiving lenses, more storage and the convenience of wired audio, but you’ll pay at least £90/$100 more.

For most people, the cheaper Meta Quest 3S will be the more affordable VR headset purchase.

See also: Samsung confirms Galaxy S25, XR headsets and cheaper foldable models for 2025.