Meta Quest 3 512GB + Carrying Case for Meta Quest 3

I have been a fan of VR since the original Rift, indeed my most popular review on here was for just that product. I spent an age playing Elite Dangerous and various driving sims in VR and definitely got my money's worth from it.As with the Rift, I had got some vouchers from work which made this a relatively inexpensive buy. A friend had let me try his out and I had been blown away. With the old Rift, you had a 'screen door' feeling where you could see the outline of the pixels that were making up the image. It wasn't enough to spoil the experience, but was definitely noticeable. Also with the Rift, the lenses were such that you only ever looked straight ahead.The Quest is an enormous leap forward in quality. The image is clean and crisp, you are not connected to your PC by a cable so can play anywhere you want to, the movement of the image is silky smooth and the lenses are set up in a way that gives you the ability to move your eyes and see peripherally. The passthrough camera is really handy too, tap the controller twice on the side of your headset and whatever application you are using will be replaced with a view in front of you, handy for re-orienting yourself if you happen to stray outside of your gaming space. Worth noting too that the Quest has a very clever application that scans the room you are in and helps you map out your play area, if you move towards the edges, it will show you a mesh overlaid on whatever you are playing to show where you might be straying close to a wall, door or whatever. Even so, it would take a braver man than me to play in the same room as a large TV, a collection of fine china, a pyramid of champagne glasses - you get my drift.I am not going to dock any stars, but I do want to point out a few things that are important to know in advance:- Battery life, when using processor intensive applications, will give you a little over 2 hours use. This isn't really a problem as you won't often want to be strapped into the headset for that long. That said, as I do a fair bit of racing in VR which can last longer than the battery, I have dealt with by buying a replacement strap with a battery passthrough from Kiwi Design (highly recommended, and reviewed on here separately). Budget about £60 more if you want a similar upgrade.- Onboard memory - you can buy the Quest in 128Gb or 512GB versions. Given how cheap solid-state memory is, I balked at the cost uplift for the 512Gb version and bought the 128, and honestly unless you want all your VR apps stored on the headset itself you really don't need 512Gb. Save some money and buy the lower-storage version.- The headstrap that the Quest comes with is perfectly functional, but not the most comfortable for longer sessions. As noted above, I have replaced this with one by Kiwi Design which makes the whole thing much more comfortable.- If you want to play titles from your PC on the rift, check that your motherboard supports the necessary connectivity, otherwise you may have to buy a passthrough cable which will mean you are tethered to your PC (as well as out of pocket for the cable). Mine does, and I happily play Half Life Alyx and other titles downstairs in my conservatory where I have plenty of space.So that's all the consumer advice that I have to share. The gaming experience is fabulous. Half Life Alyx is mindblowing, it really feels like you are there although having life-size headcrab zombies shambling towards you is quite unnerving! Assetto Corsa looks amazing, and sitting in the cockpit of your chosen car feels so natural. Microsoft Flight Simulator - well basically you feel like you are flying a real plane.If you are considering upgrading from an older VR experience, or thinking of taking the plunge for the first time, this is a really impressive offering at a reasonable cost and one I recommend highly. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about any details I have not covered here.

Having been a VR enthusiast since the Rift development kit days, I have been through a few headsets at this point. And this is the best all rounder I've owned so far.My only negative comments would be that it (like it's predecessor the Quest 2) is not very comfortable and therefore additonal comfort items like a new face cover and headstrap such as the Bobo VR M3 is basically a required purchase. The same applies to an extra battery as the battery life is not great if you don't add some extra power.With the negatives out of the way, the positives are plentiful so I'll just summarise a few:- The new pancake lens are great and so clear. I only realised just how clear when I put back on my old Quest 2 and it looked awful by comparison!- The resolution has been bumped up a bit and at this point it's perfectly fine for reading pretty much anything in VR and the resolution is nice enough that 4K movies now look somewhere between 1080p and 4K to your eye. Pleasing image quality, if not quite at Blu Ray levels just yet!- On that point, you can also play 3D movies in your Quest! :)- Quest 3 has received upgrades to its connectivity so you can now play even better wireless PCVR via Wifi 6E. Lots of technical detail behind that, but it's quite critical to anyone that is investing in the headset to play with a PC- However, I'm also pleased to say that the Quest 3 is quite a capable standalone device now too. The new chipset means it can actually play reasonably complex games (e.g. Assassin's Creed Nexus) at a nice quality and decent framerate. To be honest, the Quest 2 just wasn't powerful enough. It really struggled with anything beyond simple stuff like Pistol Whip or Walkabout Minigolf. Quest 3 however, actually feels like something you would choose to play bigger games in!- Final comment: If you install the OculusGameOptimizer, you can get even nicer resolutions and framerates (at the expense of battery life) and I highly recommend any Quest 3 users look into that option!All in all, I'm very pleased I upgraded to the Quest 3. It's really re-energised by passion for VR!