Yahoo Finance Meta unveils Meta Quest 3 headset, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at his company’s Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, unveiling two new high-tech headsets: the AR/VR-powered Meta Quest 3 and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
Both headsets are important steps in Meta’s push to become a metaverse-first company. The Quest 3 offers a glimpse at how Meta will blend the virtual and physical worlds, while the smart glasses show how it can pack high-end technology into a lightweight pair of glasses.
Meta, however, is spending a fortune on getting these devices out the door. The company’s Reality Labs business segment loses billions of dollars each year, including $3.7 billion in the most recent quarter. If Meta is ever going to be a metaverse company, it needs these headsets to succeed.
I spent time with both the Quest 3 and smart glasses during a preview event ahead of Wednesday’s show and came away impressed by the improvements Meta has made to them. But the company has stiff competition from traditional gaming platforms, not to mention other headsets, including Apple’s (AAPL) upcoming Vision Pro.
Starting at $499, the Meta Quest 3 boasts a slew of upgrades over the Quest 2, including a thinner design and sharper visuals. The $299 Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, meanwhile, sport a new look and upgraded cameras for better photo and video capture. The Quest 3 hits online and brick-and-mortar stores Oct. 10, while the glasses go on sale Oct. 17.
Unlike prior versions of Meta’s Quest headsets, the Quest 3 is designed with both virtual reality and augmented reality in mind. To that end, the company has improved the headset’s passthrough mode, which uses a series of external cameras to generate a live feed of the world around you on the Quest 3’s internal displays.
The idea is to let users interact with digital objects that appear as though they are a part of the real world. During one demo, an alien ship crashed through the ceiling of the room I was standing in, landing directly on the floor in front of me. Several other aliens began breaking through the room’s walls, revealing an alien world behind them.
In another demo, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters” ripped the roof off of the building I was in, making it appear as though he were staring down into Meta's makeshift living room setup from some nether dimension.
The company has also added what it calls augments so that you can personalize your mixed reality space. Think of them as digital versions of tchotchkes that, rather than sitting on your shelf or desk, can appear as though they’re floating in the real world. Augments include everything from bobbleheads to weather forecast widgets. The Quest 3 will also remember where you place your augments in your digital space, so even if you take off the headset, your augment will be exactly where you left it when you log back in again.
Overall, the visuals were sharp and colorful. Meta says the Quest 3’s display resolution is 30% better than Quest 2’s. And that improvement was clear during one demo in which Meta showed how a game looked on the Quest 2 and then on the Quest 3. On-screen text was easier to read, and small flourishes like the texture of a control panel popped more. The passthrough feature also adds a new dimension of possibilities to the Quest 3’s capabilities.
But the graphics still don’t match anything you’d see on modern game consoles or PCs. And at $499, the Quest 3 is competing on price with the likes of Sony’s (SONY) PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox Series X, both of which are well into their respective lifecycles and have a collection of impressive games under their belts.
What’s more, the market for mixed reality headsets is still a relatively small space. Meta is the industry leader thanks to its various Quest products including the Quest 2, which was released in October 2020 and sold particularly well during the pandemic. But the company has sold just 20 million units to date, according to The Verge. Sony, meanwhile, has sold 40 million PS5 consoles since November 2020.
Smarter glasses
In addition to the Quest 3, Zuckerberg also announced the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The follow-up to Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are essentially a pair of glasses or sunglasses outfitted with cameras, speakers, and microphones.
The second-generation smart glasses sport improved 12-megapixel cameras for higher-resolution photos and videos, and an updated speaker setup, as well as a new Headliner style in addition to the original Wayfarer design.
Meta says you’ll get four hours of mixed use out of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses’ battery, which could include taking photos and videos, listening to music, and more. I used the original Ray-Ban Stories and loved that they allowed me to take photos without having to break out my phone.
But the Stories’ charging case was finicky, and if the Stories weren’t positioned just right, they wouldn’t charge up. Thankfully, Meta has updated the case to include a magnet-style charger, ensuring the glasses will charge up without issue.
As for safety and security, Meta says it has increased the size of the outward-facing LED that lets people know when you’re taking photos or videos. The company also says that because the LED is tied to the camera’s hardware, there’s no way to tamper with it so that you can take photos without the LED lighting up.
We’ll have to see how the Quest 3 and smart glasses, both ambitious products, will help carry Zuckerberg’s dream of the metaverse forward. The company just needs to ensure consumers stay interested.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
Click here for the latest technology business news, reviews, and useful articles on tech and gadgets
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
