The “year of virtual reality” shaped up
to be “the run up to mixed reality” and today we’ve got Meta’s mid-range XR competitor
on our teardown table: the Meta Quest 3. A key feature that was missing on the Quest
Pro, the depth sensor or time of flight sensor, is front and center on the Quest 3. And by adopting the Quest Pro’s pancake
lenses, the Quest 3 presents a substantially thinner profile when compared to the Quest
2, and yet manages to weigh 10g more than its predecessor. And if you found the Quest Pro to be a tad
too heavy at 722 grams, you’ll be happy to hear that the Quest 3 is a full 200 grams
lighter while maintaining a less bulky profile than its older sibling. Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's the fine folks at Creative Electron
casually dropping another superhuman x-ray, like it’s no big thing. Thanks guys! There’s a lot of screws in there and I’m
guessing that big old black rectangle in the middle is our battery. So here’s what I want to know: at half the
price of the Quest Pro, are we buying half the functionality and performance of the Quest
Pro? Let’s take a look inside and find out. Before we get started, I need to remove the
head strap which loops through the headset and clips on to the speaker arms. The face cushion is also clipped on and comes
away easily enough. Which is a huge plus as both these parts need
to be replaceable because sweat is gross, and these parts are going to get sweaty. Underneath those parts, there’s an additional
rubberised layer that’s designed to block any light leakage. This is clipped in too but while making my
way around, I hear a distinct snap of plastic near the proximity sensor at the top. Turns out the clips securing the rubber faceguard
to the frame are stubborn around this area, probably to ensure the whole thing doesn’t
just fall off, but clearly I broke something as a result. A bit of cosmetic damage might not be the
end of the world but it’s annoying nonetheless. Popping off the plastic lens covers reveals…nothing
at all. Which shouldn’t be too surprising. Since the Quest 3 didn’t inherit the fabulous
eye tracking the Quest Pro got, we’re not seeing any of the IR emitters or sensors we
found in that premium headset. Meta hasn’t made any repair manuals public
for any of their Quest headsets, so it’s hard to know what to go for next. My instinct is to get every screw around the
lenses, around the edges, and on the nose bridge. Removing them is easy enough, but having a
fixed blade driver handy is a huge bonus as ‘I needed help to reach the more recessed
screws. And there are a lot of screws. A lot. Lots of screws. There are so many screws here. One more. I’m willing to bet the faceplate is now
only held in place by clips. Right enough, it pops off with a bit of help
from my trusty spudger and a bit of elbow grease. Once open, I have a series of camera and sensor
cables snaking up to the mainboard. I need to get that front faceplate off and
that means removing the antenna bracket. Now we have access to the press connectors
leading to the time of flight sensor, cameras, and microphone mounted to the faceplate. Let’s take a look at that new time of flight
sensor. This little marvel of technology continuously
measures distance to an object and is a key component in mixed reality hardware. Aside from being instrumental in hand and
controller tracking on the Quest 3, it’s also the reason why you no longer need to
specify a safe space. The depth sensor takes care of that by auto-magically
mapping out the room and any objects around you. What I found most interesting about this sensor
is that it fits perfectly in the recess where the Quest Pro’s depth sensor should have
gone. And though it has a shorter cable and sits
sideways, it also fits the press connector on the Quest Pro. We’ll have to wait and see if this turns
out to be significant in any way but as of right now, the Quest 3 is the only Meta headset
to boast a depth sensor. With the faceplate out of the way, I can proceed
to remove the heatsink bracket and the fan that’s helping wick the heat away from the
headset. The heat profile of the headset is interesting. While the small gap around the edges of the
faceplate allow for airflow, most of the heat escapes through the thin plastic of the faceplate
itself. There’s various press connectors and coax
cables to remove and a few screws holding the mainboard in place. The Quest 3’s mainboard boasts the latest
iteration of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 SoC, the XR2 Gen 2. Leaked benchmarks suggest that this newer
SoC improves on the XR2+ found in the Quest Pro both in performance and power efficiency. Immediately next to that we have one of two
SKHynix 4GB RAM modules totalling 8GB compared to the Quest Pro’s 12GB and the Quest 2’s
6GB. After all this digging, I’ve finally reached
the battery sitting snug under this metal plate. It’s taken me three Fixmats, a single tray
of plastic, and very careful organizing of about 50 screws to get this far. I’m glad to see that the battery is replaceable
but my word it’s as much of a pain to get to as the Quest 2’s battery. No improvement in design there. No curved battery fancy pants shenanigans
here. It’s a bog standard lithium polymer battery
with a capacity of 19.44 Wh. By comparison, the Quest Pro has a 20.58 Wh
battery and the Quest 2 has a 14 Wh battery. That goes some way towards explaining why
the smaller Quest 3 packs more weight than the Quest 2. The last thing I want to see is the new 2064x2208
LCD panels running at 120 Hz. That’s right folks, forget micro-OLED. We’re still running on LCD’s here. And while these are an improvement over the
Quest Pro, they’re still a far cry from the micro-OLED panels we expect to see in
the Vision Pro. We need to apply a little heat to loosen the
glue securing the LCD to the pancake optics. Too little and it won’t separate, too much
and I’ll destroy the LCD. Let’s get up close with our microscope from
our friends at Evident Scientific. With your eyeballs close enough to the panels
to be on a first name basis with them, it’s only fair to know a little about those panels. Manipulating the intensity of red, green,
and blue clusters results in a “mixing” of colours at our puny human 1x perspective. Zooming out a little, we can clearly see the
45 degree diagonal lines running across the panel. That’s because these panels are mounted
at an angle to increase the headsets field of view, but that comes at the cost of this
tearing effect, a direct result of using the cheaper LCD panels. With the headset out the way, let’s see
how difficult it is to remove the batt—and out it comes easy peasy. Nifty design. I could probably stop the teardown here but
I’m curious to see what else is in there. There’s a single Torx screw inside the battery
compartment, which is weird as up until now we’ve almost exclusively had Phillips screws. A few more Torx screws are hidden under the
battery sticker. That’s a tad naughty, it wouldn’t kill
them to mark where the screws are hidden on the sticker. The Quest Pro controller had a glued on top
so I’m guessing we’re dealing with the same design here. A bit of heat and it feels like my pick is
making light work of the glue. Lifting the top plate away reveals a bunch
of IR emitters. It seems they only used Torx screws on the
controllers and I’m removing a few more before I decide to try to pry the handles
apart. To my surprise it separates quite easily revealing
another a magnet on the hall effect trigger, and a haptic motor. More good news, the handle simply separates
from the top once the ribbon cables are disconnected. This gives me a full view of the controller
mainboard which is significantly simpler than the Quest Pro controller mainboard. Meta saved some money here and given the accuracy
of these controllers, I’d say it’ll be a good long while—if ever—before we see
another complex controller in next generation virtual reality headsets. There’s just no need for that level of expense
and complexity when the depth sensor can do the same thing for much less cost and effort. Overall, it wouldn’t be accurate to call
this headset a compromise between the Quest Pro and the Quest 2. It beats the Quest Pro in display resolution,
boasts a superior pass through capability backed up by a Time of Flight sensor that
doesn’t exist in either of the previous headsets, and tops it all off with a better
processor. The main trade off is the loss of eye tracking
and Meta clearly made some cost savings by reducing the overall complexity. Moreover, the design is a significant improvement
over the Quest Pro when it comes to repairability—especially where the controller is concerned—though
it clearly has it’s design philosophy firmly rooted in the Quest 2’s construction which
means it’s complicated to dismantle and the battery is far more difficult to reach
than it should be. Combine that with a lack of repair manuals
and the unavailability of OEM spare parts to the general public, we’re giving the
Quest 3 a provisional score of 4 out 10.
