At its Join 2022 occasion in the present day, Meta unveiled its new premium VR headset. The Quest Professional sits alongside the remainder of the Quest vary, providing VR headsets at totally different value factors. Lengthy-awaited by followers, this new headset shapes itself as a productiveness instrument moderately than for gaming in digital worlds. Able to ramp issues up? Meta reckons strapping these goggles to your face will assist.
For the Quest Professional, Meta has taken the lower-tier Quest 2 headset, and turned issues as much as eleven. All the way in which right down to the lenses, Meta has redesigned the headset. The lenses themselves use 40% thinner tech than the earlier headset, leading to a major discount in measurement. This could make the headset lighter, however this stays to be seen.
Additionally new to the Quest Professional is a full-colour Passthrough mode. This is identical Passthrough function that allows you to see your environment from different Quest headsets, however now in color moderately than black and white. Meta’s new headset does this because of the 4 on-board cameras. You’ll have the ability to use this in blended actuality experiences, utilizing AR tech to embed digital parts on high of actual life.
Powering the headset is a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chipset, the newest and best out there. Every lens boasts a 1800 × 1920 mini-LED show, for extra immersive graphics. The Quest Professional gives 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, providing extra flexibility. You’ll additionally discover eye-tracking along with the suite of different sensors earlier headsets have packed in. The controllers that go alongside the headset have additionally been redesigned, as anticipated from earlier leaks. Gone are the monitoring rings, as a substitute changed with cameras to trace the controls’ place.
Nevertheless, the Quest Professional comes with a giant black mark in opposition to its identify – battery life. Meta reckons you’ll get between one and two hours of battery out of the brand new headset (which is a best-case-scenario). That is round half that of the Quest 2, which positively irks on the greater value level. That is clearly as a result of new {hardware} inside and further options, but it surely looks like a giant trade-off to make. We see this inflicting issues, particularly for any productiveness workflows as meant.
If Meta’s Quest Professional catches your eye, you possibly can pre-order the headset from Meta beginning in the present day. It retails for $1500/£1500, and can start delivery on 25 October. The headset is dubbed for professionals, however such a excessive price ticket is likely to be a tricky capsule to swallow this early in VR’s life.
