SynergyXR's CTO and in-house gadget wiz Sune Wolff takes the latest VR headset through the ropes for an exhaustive review.
A lot of mystery, guesswork, leaks, and opinions always surround new and important hardware releases – especially from a big player like Meta. This is especially true for a device like the all-new Meta Quest Pro, which many hoped would deliver more and finally bring true innovation to the XR space.
Meta recently revealed the new Meta Quest Pro at this year’s Meta Connect event, and we of course pre-ordered one right away. Upon arrival and after a speedy unboxing, our CTO Sune Wolff took the device through the ropes for an exhaustive test. He looked at things like build quality, comfort level, screen resolution, battery life, and much more. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy this hands-on review of the newest exciting XR device on the growing VR headset market.
Build quality
The device is very well-built and has a heavy, premium feel to it. The weight might worry some new users, but you can read more about this in the “Comfort” section. The controllers are a completely new design, are heavier than the previous versions, and have a quality feel to them. I absolutely love the added heaviness, but a few of my colleagues found them to be too heavy, so this might just be a personal preference at play here. Lastly, even the small connectors for the wrist straps are made of metal (vs plastic) and ooze quality.
Comfort
Compared to the Quest 2, the Quest Pro rests on your forehead and not on your nose, allowing you to wear it without tightening it a great deal (and avoiding red VR face). This means it stays comfortable for longer than other VR headsets.
There is a soft sturdy padding on the headrest on your forehead as well as on the back of head. This gives it a comfortable fit and makes it easy to wipe off. The spring mechanic inside the head strap lets you adjust the headset quickly and easily. It is a bit heavier than the Quest 2 (722g vs 503g) but thanks to the front/back weight distribution, it does not feel heavier.
Screen
The new “Pancake” lenses make for an amazing viewing experience. The narrow focal point and slightly blurred image created by traditional “Fresnel” lenses are gone, and the user is left with a very pleasing viewing experience. It is also much easier to adjust the headset, since you do not need to find that single sweet spot where the image is clear (i.e. the whole screen is clear). It also allows you to look around on the screen to explore the virtual world in a more natural way instead of having to move your entire head to look around maintaining that sharp image focal point. I really like this feature.
The image quality is sharp and clear, making it much more usable for things like reading text. However, the screen resolution is still comparable to the Quest 2. This means that the slight flickering (aliasing) of, for instance, the edges of UI elements that we experienced on the Quest 2 is unfortunately still an issue.
A new, and much-welcomed feature is that you now can adjust how far away from your eyes the lenses are placed. Users wearing glasses – like yours truly – can adjust the Quest Pro lenses further away from the eyes allowing them to easily keep using their glasses while wearing the headset. For a more immersive experience, users can choose to move the lenses closer to their eyes to get a better field-of-view coverage.
Speaking of field-of-view and peripheral vision – the design of the Quest Pro, unfortunately, allows for a lot of light bleeding since your entire peripheral view is not covered. Using the light blockers that come with the devices helps a bit, but especially the area below your eyes is wide open. Since you tend to look around with your eyes and not your entire head (due to being able to focus on the entire screen) you often see your real surroundings when looking down which really breaks the immersive feeling of VR – maybe the extra-large light blockers will help here?
Battery
Meta reports that the Quest Pro has an estimated battery life of 1-2 hours when using all the new sensors and features – and significantly longer when these are not used. This has been highly criticized in the XR community for being way too short compared to the 3-4 hours for the Quest 2. The reality is, for many use cases, you tend to use the headset for shorter stints, after which you can easily leave the headset and controllers in the new charging dock to keep them topped up.
While testing the device and writing this review, I found the short battery life to be a non-issue. I generally used the headset to test certain features and then leave it in the charging dock while writing up parts of the review. After testing out several different apps, including SynergyXR, Meta Horizon Workrooms and Wooorld for approximately an hour total, the headset still had 65% battery remaining – definitely enough to support normal VR use cases.
Where the battery might fall short, however, is for the proposed mixed-reality use cases. Meta suggests using color passthrough and spatial anchors, allowing users to use the Quest Pro away from the office for use cases in the real world. This is especially true for things like remote maintenance of a production line which is usually reserved for mixed-reality devices like the HoloLens 2. The fact that you might only be able to squeeze out 1-2 hours battery time in scenarios like this and the dependency of the charging dock to extend that battery life is a real hinderance in using the Quest Pro for such use cases.
Color passthrough
Speaking of the new color passthrough capabilities – it is definitely better than what was offered on the Quest 2 – but not amazing in any way, shape, or form. The image quality is rather low resolution and has a very grainy texture to it. When looking at surroundings further away the quality is ok, and there is no denying that the image stitching technology is impressive. But when objects or persons or even the user’s own hands come into the field of view, there is a lot of warping and distortion of the passthrough around the objects.
In my opinion, this is far from ready to compete with current mixed-reality devices like the HoloLens 2 for use cases where the physical surroundings are of the main importance, and virtual objects are just an overlay – e.g., doing maintenance on a production line while accessing virtual user manuals.
Price
Another area that has seen a lot of heated discussions is the price, which is set at $1,499 USD. The Quest Pro is a premium device and comparing it to the Quest 2 ($499), which Meta currently sells at a loss, is not really fair or even relevant in my opinion. A more accurate and direct comparison would be the Pico 4 Enterprise that is priced at $899 – which is very competitively priced! I would love to get my hands on this device to compare it with the Quest Pro.
Another device you can fairly compare to the Quest Pro is the HTC Vive Focus 3, which is priced at $1300 + $250 for eye tracker + $100 for face tracker = $1650 total. Again, the price point of the Quest Pro seems to be on point.
Finally, if you want to compare it to other high-end XR devices like the HoloLens 2 ($3500) and MagicLeap 2 ($3300), the price of $1500 is reasonable. But as mentioned above, I do not see the Quest Pro as a direct competitor to these MR devices – they simply serve different purposes at this point in time.
Eye and facial tracking
I used Meta Horizon Workrooms to test out the eye and facial expression tracking capabilities of the Quest Pro. The full integration of facial and eye tracking with the Meta avatar system makes for some very expressive avatars. This will definitely support better avatar-to-avatar interaction and will help break down the barrier of communicating and collaborating in VR.
The drawing and writing experience in Workrooms is similar to what is offered on the Quest 2, even though the new drawing tip for the Pro controller increases the level of control and realism a bit.
Workrooms is really well executed, but apart from the more expressive avatars, it is not significantly improved over the Quest 2 experience.
Overall assessment
For an XR enthusiast like myself, it is always exciting when new hardware hits the market. There will always be the discussion whether this is an incremental improvement or more radical innovation, and voices in the XR community will always be left wanting more. I feel a lot of unfair and even irrelevant comparisons with the Quest 2 are being made, as I have also made clear throughout this review.
What I feel is missing from the discussion is the future potential of the Quest Pro. For example, when the Quest 2 was launched, there was no hand-tracking supported. This was later added through software updates. The fact that the Quest Pro has a faster system-on-chip (SOC) in the XR2+ and even has dedicated SOC in each controller will allow for some really interesting future feature expansions.
One thing that is missing to support the enterprise tag of the Quest Pro is Meta Quest for Business, which Meta has assured will be made available next year. This will allow enterprises to use the device without a Meta account, and even allowing IT departments to manage the device through mobile device management (MDM) tools like Intune. Once Meta Quest for Business launches, Meta can finally deliver the complete enterprise package, which in its current form fails to deliver.
There is no denying that the Quest Pro is a great device for enthusiasts, prosumers, and larger enterprises wanting a durable, quality device with future proof sensors and features. I cannot wait to start working with the device and see what we at SynergyXR and the XR community at large can develop for this exciting new device. But for now, most users will probably be content with what the Quest 2 has to offer.
Media Contact: Corey Morris, co@synergyxr.com.
