Meta's next $1,000 headset could be called Quest Pro

Meta’s next Quest VR headset could be decidedly more…professional than its other efforts.

That’s the word coming out of Bloomberg this week, anyway, as Mark Gurman reported on Wednesday that the company formerly known as Facebook is planning on calling its next high-end headset the "Meta Quest Pro." This is according to code found in the Oculus iPhone app. Gurman said we could get official confirmation of the name and release availability later this year.

Gurman’s sources said the target price for Quest Pro is $1,000, putting it far beyond the $300 price tag for the Quest 2. Of course, there’s a reason for that: Its graphics processing power, screen resolution, controllers, and onboard storage will all be upgraded from the Quest 2. It will also include eye tracking and external cameras for seeing the world outside the headset in color for AR applications. 

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This Quest Pro would be the headset that was announced last year with the codename Project Cambria. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently appeared in a video showing off the headset behind a blanket of pixels, so it definitely exists. The video also confirms that it’s a free-standing headset without the need to connect via wire to a gaming PC, true to the Quest moniker.

Meta’s VR business has so far operated without serious competition from other big tech companies and, barring any huge surprises, that will remain true through the end of this year when we presumably will know more about the Quest Pro. However, one of the worst kept secrets in tech is that Apple is working on a mixed-reality (in that it does both AR and VR) headset of its own. It likely won’t make its originally reported launch window of 2022, given that we haven’t heard about it officially yet, but it could launch next year, putting a dent in Zuck’s domination of the space.

Or it could just be its own thing entirely. Another Gurman report from January indicated Apple has no interest in doing the same kind of metaverse applications as Meta. That’s a shame, as we’d all really like to go virtual surfing with Tim Cook after work meetings.