Meta have finally announced their latest headset – The Meta Quest Pro. The announcement comes after months of rumours and speculation about what the tech giant has been working on since the release of the Quest 2.
The headset was initially codenamed Project Cambria and was previously leaked after an engineering sample was left behind in a hotel room and was subsequently found by a worker who then posted it online.
Meta have improved the specifications of the Quest Pro across the board when compared to the Quest 2. The headset boasts the newly released Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 chipset, double the RAM of the Quest 2 (increased from 6GB to 12GB) and more storage to match (increased from 128GB to 256GB).
Meta have decided to make the transition from fresnel lenses to pancake lenses with the Quest Pro. Pancake lenses do not require as much distance between the wearer’s eyes and the display, therefore allowing the headset to be both thinner and lighter. Using pancake lenses in virtual reality headsets is not a new development, with Pico recently releasing the Pico 4 which also uses these lenses.
The headset also features a whopping 10 cameras, 5 on the front of the headset looking out and 5 on the inside of the headset looking in. These are all colour cameras which are 4x the resolution of the cameras used on the Quest 2. This allows for more accurate scanning and full-colour passthrough, not surprising seeing as the headset has been designed specifically for mixed reality use.
Additionally, the cameras on the inside of the headset will allow the wearers facial expressions to be tracked. These facial expressions will then be mimicked by their avatar.
The Meta Quest Pro will be priced at £1499, considerably higher than the Quest 2 and a lot of the competitors already on the market. Time will tell whether or not this price point is a wise choice when the headset officially releases on 25th October.
