Meta Quest 3 128GB + Elite Strap with Battery

I have been a fan of VR since the original Rift, indeed my most popular review on here was for just that product. I spent an age playing Elite Dangerous and various driving sims in VR and definitely got my money's worth from it.As with the Rift, I had got some vouchers from work which made this a relatively inexpensive buy. A friend had let me try his out and I had been blown away. With the old Rift, you had a 'screen door' feeling where you could see the outline of the pixels that were making up the image. It wasn't enough to spoil the experience, but was definitely noticeable. Also with the Rift, the lenses were such that you only ever looked straight ahead.The Quest is an enormous leap forward in quality. The image is clean and crisp, you are not connected to your PC by a cable so can play anywhere you want to, the movement of the image is silky smooth and the lenses are set up in a way that gives you the ability to move your eyes and see peripherally. The passthrough camera is really handy too, tap the controller twice on the side of your headset and whatever application you are using will be replaced with a view in front of you, handy for re-orienting yourself if you happen to stray outside of your gaming space. Worth noting too that the Quest has a very clever application that scans the room you are in and helps you map out your play area, if you move towards the edges, it will show you a mesh overlaid on whatever you are playing to show where you might be straying close to a wall, door or whatever. Even so, it would take a braver man than me to play in the same room as a large TV, a collection of fine china, a pyramid of champagne glasses - you get my drift.I am not going to dock any stars, but I do want to point out a few things that are important to know in advance:- Battery life, when using processor intensive applications, will give you a little over 2 hours use. This isn't really a problem as you won't often want to be strapped into the headset for that long. That said, as I do a fair bit of racing in VR which can last longer than the battery, I have dealt with by buying a replacement strap with a battery passthrough from Kiwi Design (highly recommended, and reviewed on here separately). Budget about £60 more if you want a similar upgrade.- Onboard memory - you can buy the Quest in 128Gb or 512GB versions. Given how cheap solid-state memory is, I balked at the cost uplift for the 512Gb version and bought the 128, and honestly unless you want all your VR apps stored on the headset itself you really don't need 512Gb. Save some money and buy the lower-storage version.- The headstrap that the Quest comes with is perfectly functional, but not the most comfortable for longer sessions. As noted above, I have replaced this with one by Kiwi Design which makes the whole thing much more comfortable.- If you want to play titles from your PC on the rift, check that your motherboard supports the necessary connectivity, otherwise you may have to buy a passthrough cable which will mean you are tethered to your PC (as well as out of pocket for the cable). Mine does, and I happily play Half Life Alyx and other titles downstairs in my conservatory where I have plenty of space.So that's all the consumer advice that I have to share. The gaming experience is fabulous. Half Life Alyx is mindblowing, it really feels like you are there although having life-size headcrab zombies shambling towards you is quite unnerving! Assetto Corsa looks amazing, and sitting in the cockpit of your chosen car feels so natural. Microsoft Flight Simulator - well basically you feel like you are flying a real plane.If you are considering upgrading from an older VR experience, or thinking of taking the plunge for the first time, this is a really impressive offering at a reasonable cost and one I recommend highly. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about any details I have not covered here.

VR gaming and home cinema are both incredible.This headset is a huge upgrade from the quest 2 (Q2) in terms of its visuals and comfort; greater clarity and less eyestrain. The reduction in eyestrain vs the Q2 is a huge feature for me, perhaps this is due to the proper inter-pupillary distance settings it has vs Q2. Text is easily readable and movies/video look really good on the cinema size screen.A head-strap like the Bobo vr m3 is an essential accessory as the stock one is very uncomfortable and you certainly wouldn't want to spend 2 hours plus to watch a movie with the stock head-strap but you can with a good replacement one.A proper head-strap is a game changer for comfort; with one you won't need to take the headset off because your face can't take it anymore, you just finish playing when you're bored or have other things to do (like with normal consoles) , I don't know why Meta don't stock decent head-straps as default like Sony and Valve.FYI I thought the elite head-strap wasn't much good either, defo not worth £70.Graphics are what you might expect of mobile gaming; think ps3 rather than ps5. The better chip vs Q2 hasn't really been put to much use at this point imo with only one Q3 exclusive and some OK graphics updates, hopefully in the future this will change.Haven't used MR much yet but I feel it could be quite good. The visual experience of passthrough is not that great imo (grainy) although obviously much better than the rubbish Q2 MR. Visual experience is good enough to do basic tasks like picking up objects and moving around but not typing or reading a monitor. There is not much warping and the latency is very low. Doesn't produce much eyestrain which is a game changer in usability however.Summary: actually useful VR/MR headset. The headset is cheaper than a massive TV and more useful. Gaming in VR is epic. Not much eyestrain, great clarity and is actually comfortable to wear with a decent 3rd party head-strap. VR/MR has come a long way indeed.

Meta quest 3 is a seamless VR experience, you just put the headset on and it all works.It’s a bit weird though cause if you are choosing between a quest 2 or 3, if you aren’t gonna be using it all the time I’d probably save some money and go with the quest 2 for now.At the moment most games don’t actually run much better on quest 3 since they haven’t updated the game for the new hardware. But the ones that have updated work great.Hopefully meta will prioritise the quest 3 more in the future and make more games with it in mind.The controllers are great but a little small if you have big hands.The tracking is excellent and audio is great.Game library is pretty much as good as you can get for stand alone VR.I’d recommend playing beat saber, Asgard's wrath 2, super hot VR, pistol whip and resident evil 4 VR. Maybe for a game to start though pick something chill like job simulator or super hot .It’s not the most comfy thing in the world but coming from someone who owned a quest 1 it’s so much better then that, just don’t except to be able to play for more than 1.5 without discomfort.Mixed reality is cool, but it shouldn’t be the reason you buy this, it works well enough but is by no means life like. However I low that pass-though is now by default the Home Screen. It works really well and you can move the menu around your room by just grabbing it with your hands.Overall it is a fantastic headset with some amazing games, if you’ve been wanting to get into VR for a while this is a great choice.