I am truly tired of hearing everyone drool over the Meta Quest Pro headset. If you think spending $1,500 is an amazing investment with barely any upgrade to the Quest 2, your insane, not a savvy consumer at all, and are probably the same people that go bat shit crazy over the new iPhones.
There is a TikTok’er (omgitsnikefinesse) that really sums up this weird obsession over obsessing with buying the newest item the minute it drops.
@omgitsnikefinesse Mfs really be buying the same phone #iphone14 #apple #iphone ♬ original sound - OmgItsNikeFinesse
And that’s you (if your obsessing over this “New & Improved” Oculus Pro!
Let’s start with the technical mumbo-jumbo (and I’ll even throw in the other competition to compare).
Did you get through all that?
WONDERFUL!
Now look! I know everyone is going nuts for Facial Tracking, Eye Tracking and… legs… however the price tag doesn’t add up to what they truly “upgraded” from the already popular Quest 2.
The lens are the same megapixels, infact, your losing 32pixels in each eye. And they say “NEXT-GENERATION OPTICS” and they sell it with the following excerpt:
VR is all about the visuals, and Meta Quest Pro features several big improvements over Meta Quest 2. Meta Quest Pro’s entirely new optical stack replaces the Fresnel lenses in Meta Quest 2 with thin pancake optics that fold light several times over, reducing the depth of the optical module by 40% while providing clear and sharp visuals. The two LCD displays use local dimming and quantum dot technology to provide richer and more vivid colors. Our custom local dimming tech, powered by specialized backlight hardware and accompanying software algorithms, can control more than 500 individual LED blocks independently, giving the displays 75% more contrast.
Meta Quest Pro also has 37% more pixels per inch and 10% greater pixels per degree than Meta Quest 2, making everything from reading text to playing games look better. Additionally, there’s a 25% improvement in full-field visual sharpness in the center view, 50% improvement in the peripheral region, and 1.3X larger color gamut than Meta Quest 2.
“accompanying software algorithms”
Meaning, some of those “added” resources will be used in conjunction with your game/app your running to provide a SENSE of enhanced lighting and color due to algorithms. Your basically running an OLED emulator that I guarantee will not provide the same results as simply using OLED lenses like Playstation does.
It does stop there!
It’s a new sleek design right? Well that sleek design eliminates the padding from below your eyes, you know so light can enter and reflect to allow those amazing Facial and Eye recognition you all are creaming over. And while that’s cool, that’s also a huge distraction by seeing the full view of your floor below you, not to mention worse on your eyes long run by having your pupils work twice as hard to adjust to lighting.
They have a solution… it’ll cost you $50 more… a FULL LIGHT BLOCKER! Oh boy! That $50 eliminates my previous issue however creates a new one… you must REMOVE the Blocker in order to use your Charging Dock.
By the way… while the Charging Dock is a huge improvement from plugging in the headset and changing AA batteries in the controllers… it creates a few new issues.
One… that internal battery will break down over time much like your cellphone does. Using an external contact charging station has been proven to deplete and dry up battery cells quicker than a direct link of energy through a charging cord.
Two… you leave your entire headset out exposed to the elements at all times. Sure you can get the Carrying Case for an additional $120, but who needs that mess right? You don’t plan on taking your headset places are you?
Look, I’m not saying it’s not a nice piece of machinery, I think the upgrades it has is wonderful.
I’m just saying it’s not worth being 3x as much as it’s predecessor.
Be more savvy, that money could have went to a VR-Ready PC or a PC upgrade and hard wiring the headset (as annoying as that sounds and completely contradictory to what makes the Quest so good in the first place [I’m talking about the internal hard drive]). You would get the same results in quality by doing so with your Quest 2. Only missing the Eye Tracking, Facial Tracking and of course… the legs they promised. But if we’re being honest, the eye tracking is unnecessary as the Avatar clicks to what 80% of your vision is looking at already, the facial tracking is wonky and could really expose any defect you might be self conscious about (and you wouldn’t be able to hide your disgust towards a fellow player). And legs… LEGS!?!?!? That’s not a flaw of the headset, that’s a flaw in Horizon Worlds. VR Chat has legs. VR CHAT!
Ugh… rant over.
