Meta Quest 2 Price Drop, Performance Upgrade Incoming This Month
Meta's latest VR headset, the Quest 3, has been officially announced days ahead of Apple's hyped AR / VR headset, and will hit the shelves later this year. However, Meta won't be discontinuing or ending support for the Quest 2 headset. Instead, the company is keeping it as an affordable entry point for virtual reality experiences, and has also decided to give it a price cut to sweeten the deal.
The base 128GB storage variant of the Quest 2 headset is getting its price slashed to $299, down from the current asking price of $399. The 256GB storage variant, which used to cost $499, will soon be up for grabs at $349. The new prices for Meta's VR headset will go into effect starting on June 4.
Interestingly, this technically isn't a price cut, but a price rollback of sorts. The Quest 2 initially arrived carrying a price tag of $299 back in 2020, but in August of last year, the price of each storage configuration was unprecedently raised by $100. Compared to the previous prices, only the 256GB storage variant of the Quest 2 headset is getting a $50 price cut this time around.
Performance upgrades to boost market relevance
While a price cut is definitely welcome news, Meta has more plans for the Quest 2. Meta will soon roll out a software update that will boost the CPU performance by up to 26%, while the graphics processing power goes up by 19%. As a result of the performance boost, Meta says Quest 2 users will be rewarded with a more fluid and responsive UI, improved content visuals, and overall smoother gameplay.
Meta is also bringing Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) tech to the Quest 2, allowing apps and games to leverage the improved pixel density, while steering clear of frame drops. DRS is already deployed in console and PC games, and it uses a game engine to automatically adjust the resolution to deliver a smoother performance, without having to change other crucial controls like shader quality and environmental detailing.
DRS is also being enabled for the Quest Pro, Meta's flagship mixed reality (MR) headset. Moreover, an incoming software update will also boost its graphics rendering performance by 11%, says the company. The Pro headset is the only peripheral not getting a price cut, and will remain on the market at $1,499.99 MSRP.