Meta’s venture into prosumer VR with the Quest Pro didn’t exactly set the market ablaze, prompting them to halt production a bit over two years after it hit the shelves. Now, news is surfacing thanks to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that Meta isn’t just working on a Quest 3 for consumers, but they’re also eyeing a new “high-end” model, one that could potentially take over where the Quest Pro left off.
In Gurman’s weekly updates, he dives into all things XR, mentioning how Meta might add a screen to its next Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and discusses rumors about Apple dialing down its Vision Pro production due to flagging demand for the $3,500 gadget. According to insiders, Meta’s also hard at work on some new tech: Quest 4 VR goggles alongside a premium model that might be the next in line after the Quest Pro in the mixed-reality headset race.
When the Quest Pro launched in late 2022, it marked a bold move away from Meta’s more budget-friendly headsets that were typically priced around $300 at the time. Initially priced at $1,500, the Pro had quite a few tricks up its sleeve compared to the Quest 2. It boasted color-passthrough, special lenses called pancake lenses, and managed both face and eye-tracking. But by April the following year, the price was slashed to $1,000 in a bid to tempt more prosumers into taking the plunge.
Fast forward to July 2023, The Information spilled the beans that Meta was nixing the Quest Pro line altogether. Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, though, swiftly countered that revelation, cheekily advising, “don’t believe everything you read.” Then came another scoop from The Information a year later in July 2024, suggesting Meta was pivoting their ‘Pro’ efforts towards a lighter mixed reality device codenamed ‘Puffin’. Apparently, this device is styled like “a bulky pair of glasses” and might see the light of day in 2027. Meanwhile, Meta has ambitious plans to roll out AR glasses before 2030, echoing the functionality of their Orion AR glasses prototype.
Adding another twist to the tale, soon after that report, further insights from The Information uncovered that a Quest Pro 2 prototype, tagged as ‘La Jolla’, also got the chop. Bosworth later confirmed that La Jolla had indeed been shelved in favor of developing Puffin, although he left everyone hanging on whether the Quest Pro lineup was truly done for.
Meta’s way of rolling—spinning up projects then hitting pause—is all about discovery before diving into commercialization, as Bosworth has pointed out in the past. Whether the likes of Quest Pro 2 or others are merely paused on their journey or are indeed done for is anyone’s guess. Bosworth’s comments when addressing the supposed cancellation were cryptic as ever, teasing, “there might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you, but I will say don’t believe everything you read about what’s been stopped or started.”
