Quest Pro review: stay out of the Metaverse

The Meta Quest Pro is a business-oriented virtual reality headset with face tracking and passthrough mixed reality, designed to kickstart Meta's Metaverse vision. But with clunky software and limited applications for its big new features, it doesn't capture the Quest 2's magic. #questpro #meta #vr

0:00 Intro
0:39 State of Meta
1:22 What is Quest Pro?
1:42 Quest Pro Specs & Controllers
2:13 Headset hardware and accessories (wings & mask)
2:50 What’s new? Cameras, color passthrough, face tracking
3:58 Eye tracking, foveated rendering, MR
4:42 Meta Workrooms
6:56 Meta Horizon Worlds
9:12 Chat with Adi Robertson, Alex Heath and Nilay Patel
11:32 Quest Pro hardware (comfort, battery life, screen)
12:30 Conclusion

[Crushenator]

The most important line 'I can't imagine ever making a serious business decision in this software'.

[imperialexecutioner]

Ooph. This is brutal. Thank you Verge for powering through this on our behalf. Appreciate the perseverance.

[BitsBytesBobs]

I have to just say. This is the funniest review of the Quest Pro I've seen. Rightly laughing at how ridiculous some of the user experiences are in real-time. Gold.

[hestonroberts]

“The software version of hell” 😂😂😂 Quote of the year!!

Zuck: the max they can say is that they didn't like it...
The Verge:

[justind]

Nilay just losing it with laughter is pure gold.

[TianZhaoHeavenlyFortune]

As a digital product designer myself I’m appalled at the user experience of this.

[RubmaLione]

My biggest issues with this are the price, screen resolution, and marketing. First of all, the Quest 2 is only $400 and has a majority of the features of the Quest Pro, which is over $1k more. Second, why does the significantly cheaper Quest 2 have a higher res display? Finally, it’s obvious Workrooms VR is still in its infancy and the hardware just isn’t powerful enough to support higher quality graphics yet. They should have marketed this as a developer device to test and create new experiences and saved the rest for the Quest 3. I don’t think this will be ready for normal professional use for a few years, and even then, the hardware will need to be much lighter and smaller.

[benmoorhouse]

Excellent video. I've watched the funniest moments three or four times already. This looks truly horrible. I'd love to experience it, for about fifteen minutes.

[CalienteFrijoles]

Despite the bugs and poor reviews though, so many kids want/have these VR headsets now that it’s hard to say with precision that Meta fumbled the execution. They already managed to capture the next generation of consumers, and that could mean in 10-12 years the metaverse has a much bigger role in work and play. Certainly boomers gave traditional computers a lot of hate back in the day but look at the workspace now.

[ASLUHLUHCE]

The cinematography of this video was particularly beautiful

[BitsBytesBobs]

I had one and sent it back. Wanted to use it for both personal gaming and work from home. The crux of it came, that I was trying to make the Quest Pro work for me, rather than the Quest Pro working for me.

[JoshsBookishVoyage]

Finally a review that reviews the _product_ and not the _idea._

[DragongeekAndCo]

Lol, I wouldn't say Adi looks "sleepy", "stoned out of her mind" seems more apt. For what is supposed to be a "business experience" this is truly embarrassing, and makes me think Meta is "sleepy"

0:14 Expectations vs 0:23 reality. That’s why this will fail

[lamentedZebra]

Incredible video. Seeing this on screen brought home just how much work remains for this theoretical metaverse vision. But damn if it wasn’t entertaining to watch. Great work to the Verge team as always!

[chrisjung]

I think Zuck’s vision for the future of VR is correct, but the software and hardware needed to realize that vision is still at least 5-10 years away. Eventually the tech will get to the point where it is seemless, comfortable, and compelling. It just isn’t there yet. I think the wise strategy would be to continue to iterate on the software and hardware while making the needed improvements in the technology and let adoption take place naturally over time. Right now the killer app is in gaming, and if that were more robustly supported then the industry would grow faster in that dimension for now. Zuck is just overanxious and thinks the kind of wild success he had with Facebook can be duplicated if enough money is thrown at the problem.

In the business world simulation and design are still the best use cases for VR. The “holodeck” kind of experience needed to make VR the go to for communications and collaboration isn’t any where near what it needs to be for adoption in that sphere. I bought one of the meta quest pro headsets and returned it after only a few hours of use simply because it caused discomfort on my forehead. I’ve owned the Rift, Rift-S, Quest, Quest 2, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and the HP Reverb G2, and I’ve never had a headset that caused me the pain the Meta Quest Pro did. It makes me wonder how the headset managed to get through the development process. It seems like Meta just wanted to be the first through the gate and in the process allowed too many design flaws and shortcomings. It is too bad, because I’m one of the few actually rooting for Zuck. When this technology reaches its potential it really will be world changing. I just hope people don’t sour on all of VR because of this botched launch. Time will tell.

[pnwmeditations]

Good lord, what was Meta thinking, launching *that bad* of an early metaverse environment. Feels like they really poisoned the well for a long time.

[RetroGamerTy]

Thank you for the insightful review. I just can't get my head around how this is supposed to be useful for anyone, especially for anything work-related when I think they're trying to compete with meeting platforms like Zoom, FaceTime, Teams, and Google Hangouts. VR is interesting but I can't see myself using it for longer than 15 minutes.

[VREmirate]

Just review the Quest Pro. Parts about Horizon Worlds are funny but it does look like a deliberate "top fails" montage.