Meta continues its reign as the XR industry’s dominant player, with its most recent moves signaling a shift into a new era for the company—and thus the industry at large. This year saw the introduction of the Meta Orion AR glasses prototype and the Quest 3S headset—two pieces of hardware that are not only crucial

If the Apple Vision Pro’s eye-watering £3,499 price tag has got you questioning the affordability of mixed reality tech, you’re not alone. Apple’s struggling to shift its expensive headset, and Meta’s taking its chances to get ahead.

When you consider the Meta Quest 3S and its compromises, a few key questions arise.

The first hint of that is the headset’s Fresnel lenses, which iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari writes in a blog post are “100% compatible” with those used by the Quest 2. The headset has the older headset’s IPD adjustment mechanism, as well; and it shares the same single LCD panel, rather than using one panel per eye, like the Meta Quest 3.

As part of our initial Quest 3S testing, we checked how long the Quest 3S will last. Thankfully, it appears Meta was honest when it gave its battery life estimate.