Entering the chat is meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has more at stake than anyone on earth if Apple does to headsets what the iPhone did to smartphones. In a video posted to his Instagram account on Tuesday, Zuckerberg gives his official verdict on the Vision Pro against his company's latest Quest 3 headset: “I don't think the Quest is the best value, I think the Quest is the best product, period.”
While the Quest 3's video is shot in his living room with a passthrough system, Zuckerberg highlights the tradeoffs Apple has made to get the imaginative display on your head in an acceptable form factor. The Quest 3 weighs less at 120 grams, which he says makes it comfortable to wear for long periods of time. He also says it allows more mobility due to the lack of a wired battery pack and a wider field of view than the Vision Pro.
He thinks the Quest's physical hand controllers and the option of hand tracking for input are great, though he's a fan of eye tracking for certain use cases and teases that it will return to future Meta headsets after its debut on the Quest Pro. He says the Quest has a better “more extensive” content library than Apple's, which is technically true now, though he admits the Vision Pro is a better entertainment device. Granted, the Quest 3 is, as Jug puts it, “like seven times less expensive.”
At the end of the video, Zuckerberg thanks his team, which has been developing VR headsets for a very long time — and it has a message. We can rest in peace, folks Vibration. As I discussed with Zuckerberg recently, it's true that the Meta has a huge head start and will be the uncontested leader in headset sales for some time. You can make a strong argument, as Zuckerberg does, that today, the Quest 3 is a better headset for most people than the Vision Pro.
But what Zuckerberg didn't say in his video is that Apple has obvious hardware and developer ecosystem advantages that will take time to innovate with a new product category like this. Meta is now breathing a sigh of relief. But this is a game of endurance. The headset wars are just beginning.
