The Oculus Quest 2 was released on October 13, 2020, and it’s currently the most popular VR headset, according to latest the Steam Hardware Survey.
Many people were expecting Meta (then Facebook) to announce a new Quest headset last year at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference, but that didn’t happen.
Instead, Meta announced Project Cambria, a high-end VR headset that will likely hit the shelves in Q2 2022 to be sold alongside the Quest 2. During his Connect session and Q&A, Oculus Consulting CTO John Carmack explained that the Quest 2 won’t be replaced anytime soon because the company wants to give developers time to explore the potential of the hardware.
In other words, the Quest 3 headset almost certainly won’t be announced until 2023, and it could then be released in Q3 or even Q4.
If you don’t own any VR headset, then waiting almost two years for the Quest 3 to be released doesn’t seem like an attractive option because you would miss out on a lot of virtual reality fun.
But what about Project Cambria, you ask? Well, that depends largely on your budget. Meta has made it clear several times that Project Cambria will be an expensive, high-end headset. It’s possible that it will cost above $1,000, which would make it more than 3x as expensive as the 128 GB Quest 2 ($299). There’s also the fact that there are plenty of lightly used Quest 2 headsets available for under $200 on sites like eBay.
Given all this, we believe that buying the Quest 2 now instead of waiting for the Quest 3 or Project Cambria is a good decision, and you have no reason to feel bad about it, especially if you don’t own any VR headset and can’t wait to finally experience what the technology has to offer.
