A Great Value, but With One Big Tradeoff

Microsoft and Meta opting for the Quest 3S rather than the Quest 3 makes the bundle cheaper, but it’s less effective for game streaming. I’ve become very intimate with the Quest 3S since it hit the scene last year, and it’s what I usually suggest to anybody who wants to try VR without breaking the bank. However, the $500 Quest 3 has a wider, 110-degree horizontal FOV (field of view) compared to the 3S at 96 degrees. The more expensive headset also uses better-looking pancake lenses compared to the older and lesser-quality Fresnel lenses on what’s normally a $300 headset. While they both have the same internal specs and performance, there’s a clear visual quality difference between both VR headsets. If you were planning to buy a VR device mainly to do game streaming on a giant, virtual display, I would normally suggest you go for the one that will help your games look their best.

The Quest 3S lenses are equivalent to what was on the Quest 2, and the resulting image quality is slightly more grainy than what you get on a Quest 3. The Fresnel lenses combined with limited FOV can result in blurred images around the periphery of the display. This can make some text on notes in a game like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle nearly indecipherable unless you’re directly looking at that memento directly in front of you and from close up. It’s not unplayable, but it could make some games potentially annoying.

While Game Pass is easily one of the best game streaming services available, the Quest 3S makes streaming pitfalls a little harder to navigate. Chief among them is lag. Games on Quest stream at 1,920×1,080 resolution, and Xbox Cloud Gaming suggests you have at least 20 Mbps internet speeds and a 5GHz Wi-Fi connection. Anything less, and you’ll experience input lag and blurred visuals. On the Quest 3S screens, any loss of visual clarity is so glaring that normally beautiful titles like Clear obscure: Expedition 33 appear like a pixelated mosaic. Speaking of Clear obscure, you need very stable gameplay to hit those tight dodge or parry timings. I’m already terrible at hitting a parry, so suffering a team wipe because of lag is worse than agonizing.

If you don’t own a controller that pairs well with Quest 3S, the Xbox Edition has a fair amount of value for what you get. The Elite Strap—which offers better comfort than the default headband—normally retails for $70. The controller’s suggested retail price sits at around $65. Three months of Game Pass Ultimate would set you back another $60. Overall, you save $95 compared to buying everything separately, though you’ll need to spend $20 per month later to maintain access to game streaming. If you were buying outside the bundle, you could get a $400 Quest 3S with 256GB of storage compared to 128GB. If you plan to use your headset for game streaming—whether through Xbox or Steam Link to hit up PCVR titles—you won’t have many issues with running out of storage. Most games on the Meta Store don’t take up much space either, so you should feel safe sticking with the smaller storage option.

Beyond a good deal, what you really want from this special edition are the Xbox colors. Black and green are far more striking than the bland white of the last several Meta Quest headsets. The neon accents help sell it as a “gamer device,” enough that it shouldn’t stick out standing shoulder to shoulder with your typical Razer PC gaming gear. The stock-standard Xbox controller is an oldie but goodie, and the green accents added to the joysticks lend it a little extra flair without being too overt.

Outside of Apple with its $3,500 Vision Pro, Meta is one of the few players still interested in doing large-scale, cheap VR/XR headsets. In the same vein, Game Pass is still one of the best deals in gaming, though it has become more expensive as of late. Now that hardware like the Xbox Series X and individual games cost more, streaming is starting to appear more enticing. Even then, Microsoft has promised a whole “family” of new hardware devices that includes an Xbox-branded handheld PC made by Asus. In that case, Microsoft is reengineering its Windows operating system to provide a more console-like experience. That can’t be the case with a Meta Quest that uses the company’s own Horizon OS. Until we see where Microsoft next takes us on its grand gaming journey, we’ll probably see even more devices that look a little more like an Xbox.