The 3 Best VR Headsets for 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Signe Brewster

Signe Brewster is an editor focused on technology. She also writes about virtual reality and has tested everything from robots to 3D printers.

After a new round of testing, the Meta Quest 3S is our new top pick.

It has never been cheaper or easier to access high-quality virtual reality. It’s still far from being a “most people” purchase, but for the right person, it’s an arresting way to play games and even work out. We’ve found that the Meta Quest 3S is the best headset for most people because it’s inexpensive, easy to use, and offers access to the widest range of games and experiences.

This headset offers a cord-free design and convincing hand tracking, with the added option to plug it into a PC to access more-powerful games.

The Quest 3 looks and performs similarly to the Quest 3S but has an upgraded screen and lenses.

This headset’s screen handily beats the competition, but you need a high-end computer to make the most of it.

This headset offers a cord-free design and convincing hand tracking, with the added option to plug it into a PC to access more-powerful games.

You can spend thousands of dollars chasing the best specs in a VR headset, but we think comfort and ease of use are more important elements for most people who want to explore VR. With that in mind, the Meta Quest 3S is the clear winner. It combines good-enough specs with the ability to use it cord free. Yet you can also plug it into a computer, which opens up even more options for how and where you can use it. The controllers are intuitive and easy to hold. It can track you as you move around a room, and it comes with some of the best mixed-reality abilities we’ve experienced. Additionally, the Quest 3S has a wide selection of compatible content, since you can play games, movies, and other experiences from the Meta Quest Store, SteamVR libraries, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

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The Quest 3 looks and performs similarly to the Quest 3S but has an upgraded screen and lenses.

If a better visual experience is worth $200 to you, the Meta Quest 3 is worth a look. Its lenses don’t introduce as much distortion, so images look crisper with less blurring. It also has a higher-resolution screen with a wider field of view. It’s otherwise nearly identical to the Quest 3S and can play all of the same games. But its screen and hand tracking aren’t as good as those of our pick for PC gamers.

This headset’s screen handily beats the competition, but you need a high-end computer to make the most of it.

For players searching for the latest and greatest VR headset for playing video games, the HTC Vive Pro 2 headset paired with Valve Index Controllers and two HTC SteamVR Base Station 2.0 units is the best combination. The Vive Pro 2 has the crispest screen we’ve tried (though you need a powerful computer to max out its abilities), while the Valve Index Controllers combine comfort with the best hand tracking we’ve experienced. Together, they provide an especially immersive VR experience.

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I’m an editor on Wirecutter’s tech team. For more than a decade, I’ve chronicled the rise of virtual reality for publications such as Wirecutter, Wired, TechCrunch, and MIT Technology Review.

For this guide:

Virtual reality can make you feel like you’ve been transported to another world—or at the very least like you are experiencing a wonderfully novel piece of technology. Short films, puzzles, social networks, and other types of VR entertainment are available. But if you’re not into video games, the only VR-ready medium that can offer hours of immersive entertainment, you may grow bored fairly quickly.

Virtual reality games are different from games on traditional consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation. Motion-tracking controllers, which bring your hands into the virtual world, are more intuitive for beginners: Swinging a sword feels more like swinging a sword, and ducking for cover can require real ducking.

If you want to use a Quest or PC headset to its full potential, you need a powerful gaming computer and, ideally, an empty room to set everything up in. Both Meta and HTC have pages featuring compatible VR-ready PCs and bundles, and both have minimum and recommended PC specs (for details, see Meta’s list and HTC’s list) for use with their systems. Both headset makers also offer tools that you can download to test whether your current PC is VR-ready.

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We’ve concluded that the best VR headsets have the following features:

We evaluate each headset for its controllers, screen, and fit for comfort. We play a mix of action and puzzle games to evaluate performance.

This headset offers a cord-free design and convincing hand tracking, with the added option to plug it into a PC to access more-powerful games.

The Meta Quest 3S makes VR easier—and fun enough to be worth it—compared with headsets that require cables and expensive PCs. At $300, it’s also a bargain, yet it still supports all of the best games and experiences you can find in VR. Its visuals aren’t as good as those of our upgrade pick, the Quest 3, but it’s otherwise nearly identical. For most people, this headset will be a good-enough entry point into the world of VR.

The Quest 3S has two capable controllers and is compatible with our favorite games. It’s also small enough to toss into a tote bag or a backpack, so you can break it out at the office or a party. You can set it up and start playing in less than a minute; thanks to built-in sensors that track the two Touch Plus controllers and your other movements, you can navigate an entire room, and the headset won’t ever lose your location. As a result, we consistently reach for it over headsets that cost two or even five times as much.

It’s cordless, which makes it easy to use. Sensors for tracking your head and hands are built into the headset and controllers, which means you can walk around the entirety of a room and your virtual body will do the same. Although a PC headset with more-precise tracking, such as the Valve Index or the HTC Vive Pro 2, can better replicate your movement and avoid reality-breaking glitches, like your hands floating away, we found the Quest 3S convincing enough to cross that initial threshold into “realness.” The ability to play without a cord also means you aren’t pulled out of a game when you inevitably trip on the cable tethering you to a PC.

You can wirelessly connect a Quest headset to your PC to play Steam games with Steam Link or Air Link. However, games look and play better with a Meta Quest Link cable.

It has all the games we love to play. We particularly enjoy the addictive Beat Saber, which on its own could be justification to buy the Quest 3. We also like the escape-room-style I Expect You to Die trilogy, the relaxing Walkabout Mini Golf, the battle royale–style Population: One, and the adventure-puzzle game Moss: Book II. If you have a PC, you can play the critically acclaimed first-person shooter Half-Life: Alyx. You can also play Xbox games like Halo Infinite on a virtual screen with Xbox Cloud Gaming.

It’s easy to set up boundaries. When you’re immersed in a virtual world, it’s easy to forget about walls, tables, and other obstacles. Like the PlayStation VR2, the Quest 3S scans the room and builds virtual fences into your play space so you don’t accidentally punch the TV or run into the couch. Other headsets require you to draw these boundaries yourself.

It’s the easiest route into mixed reality. Mixed reality, which lays the virtual world over the real world, still feels like a gimmick. But the Quest 3S’s ability to map games onto the room around us worked well; when we played First Encounters, a virtual spaceship landed on my dining table. Then cracks appeared on the windows and aliens poured into the room, challenging me to race around the room shooting them with my virtual ray gun. It’s also a nice way to be able to still interact with the real world from inside the headset (no more stepping on the cat or worrying about falling through the window!).

Its lenses are a downgrade from those of the Quest 3. The Quest 3S is equipped with fresnel lenses, which are generally found in older styles of VR headsets. If you look closely, you might notice more blurring at the outer edges of your field of view. Images appear less sharp, with a halolike effect that’s especially noticeable on white text. The Quest 3 has pancake lenses, which show a crisper, more accurate view of the screen.

The Quest 3S’s LCD screen is good enough. It has 1832×1920 pixels per eye, compared with the Quest 3’s 2064×2208 pixels per eye. The Quest 3’s screen is noticeably sharper, but in resolution both Quest headsets lag behind the HTC Vive Pro 2 and Apple Vision Pro. The Quest 3S also has a 96-degree field of view, while the Quest 3 has a 110-degree field of view. The Quest 3 and 3S both have a maximum refresh rate (think of this as the VR way of saying “frames per second”) of 120 Hz, matching the Vive Pro 2. Higher refresh rates are generally believed to reduce motion sickness while you’re using a VR headset. Overall, looking at the Quest 3S’s screen is comfortable, but if you were to compare it directly with the Quest 3, you’d miss that headset’s higher resolution and wider field of view.

It’s heavy but still comfortable. At a claimed 513 grams (1.1 pound), the Quest 3S is 2 grams lighter than the Quest 3. It’s a hair heavier than we prefer our VR headsets to be (the experience is like hanging a half-liter bottle of water from your face). But due to cushy foam padding that rests on the face and adjustable straps that reach around to the back of the head, we found that the Quest 3S is fairly comfortable to wear for hour-long play sessions, though we had to fiddle with the fit to get it to sit correctly. If you care enough to want to change it, you have to shell out $50 extra for the halo-style Elite Strap.

Its Touch Plus controllers rank among the best. The two controllers are molded to sit in your hand, with your pointer fingers resting on triggers and your middle fingers resting on “grip” buttons. Your thumbs can reach a small joystick, plus A, B, and home buttons. Sensors built into the headset track the location of the controllers, so moving your hands physically moves them in VR. The Quest 3S’s controllers are intuitive to use and easy to hold for long periods.

Its audio is good enough for immersive VR. The Quest 3S has built-in speakers that direct 3D sound toward your ears. We like the open-ear setup in a social setting, where the speakers can clue onlookers in on what the person wearing the headset is seeing, but audiophiles are likely to want to use their own headphones; the Quest 3 has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, while the Quest 3S does not.

The battery life is just okay. Meta says that the Quest 3S’s battery lasts 2.5 hours, slightly longer than the Quest 3’s 2.3 hours. Many people can’t comfortably play VR for more than two hours anyway, but we did find ourselves draining the battery regularly, and playing with the headset plugged in annoyed us. If you’re upgrading to the Elite Strap, we recommend the version that tacks on up to two hours of additional battery life.

No one has gotten the strap quite right on a VR headset. I have yet to use a strap that doesn’t slide around or bunch up my hair. The Quest 3S’s strap lacks padding and doesn’t distribute weight on the back of the head as well as a halo-style strap, and we think many people will choose to upgrade to the Elite Strap. However, the Elite Strap is uncomfortable to wear with your hair up, whereas the included strap comfortably wraps around a high ponytail.

The Touch controllers have a flaw. While they are the most comfortable controllers to hold and use, they lost sight of our hands more often than headsets with exterior sensors that you place around the room to track the location of your body and hands. The Quest 3S is built with inside-out tracking, which means the headset uses cameras to track lights that the controllers emit. Throw your hands behind your back, and you might find that your virtual hands no longer respond when you move the controllers.

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The Quest 3 looks and performs similarly to the Quest 3S but has an upgraded screen and lenses.

If screen quality is especially important to you, or if you see this headset on sale, the $500 Meta Quest 3 is a worthwhile upgrade over the Quest 3S. Its higher resolution and better lenses produce a sharper picture with less glare—though anyone chasing the best VR specs should take a look at the HTC Vive Pro 2.

It has a better screen and lenses. The Quest 3 and 3S look and feel nearly identical to one another, and they can both play the entire library of Meta games and experiences with many of the same accessories. But the Quest 3 has a wider field of view and a higher-resolution screen than the cheaper Quest 3S. The Quest 3 also includes pancake lenses, instead of the Quest 3S’s fresnel lenses. In the Quest 3S headset, the fresnel lenses made the edge of my field of view look blurry, and white text and objects had a more noticeable glare. The pancake lenses in the Quest 3 made everything clearer with less distortion. The pricier headset also produces deep blacks and vivid colors that do their best not to remind you that you’re in a virtual world.

However, most people aren’t likely to notice the difference. If you’re new to VR headsets, you wouldn’t miss the visual upgrade by choosing our top pick instead. The Quest 3S is good enough to make VR comfortable and fun (though we acknowledge that there are many people who think no headset is comfortable or fun).

This headset’s screen handily beats the competition, but you need a high-end computer to make the most of it.

If you want a more powerful headset that pushes VR closer to its current bounds (or want to avoid a headset affiliated with Meta), we recommend buying the HTC Vive Pro 2 Headset and pairing it with Valve Index Controllers and two HTC SteamVR Base Station 2.0 units. You’ll need a fast gaming computer—and you need to be willing to spend many times more than it would cost to buy a Quest 3 or 3S—but you’ll be rewarded with the crispest screen, detailed position and motion tracking in a whole room, and access to VR’s best games. This headset isn’t a level-up for the VR industry as a whole, but it does offer a step forward in specs at a price that would have been a dream just a decade ago.

It most convincingly brings your body into VR. Setup involves placing two HTC SteamVR Base Station 2.0 devices in elevated locations; you can either mount them on a wall or set them on a shelf. Then, they communicate with your headset and controllers to create a strong sense of presence within VR. When you move your hands or take three steps, so does your in-game body.

Using the Vive Pro 2 and the Base Station 2.0 devices, our hands never disappeared or floated away like they sometimes do while using a Quest headset. If you have four base stations, your VR play space can expand to as large as 33 by 33 feet. There’s also the option to add a wireless adapter to the headset for $350, though it limits the Vive Pro 2’s resolution and refresh rate.

The VR game library is enormous. SteamVR, which you can access on your headset or computer to easily download games, has a huge library for the Vive Pro 2, including the adrenaline-pumping Half-Life: Alyx and the perennial favorite Beat Saber. For those already accustomed to using Steam, it’s an especially easy way to manage a library of VR games.

It has an especially high-resolution screen. Each of the two LCD screens that float in front of your eyes has a resolution of 2448×2448 pixels, making it a 5K headset. The Pro 2’s field of view is particularly wide at 120 degrees, and it can reach a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz (or 90 Hz if you’re using the headset wirelessly). In practice, that means you’ll still be aware that you’re staring at a screen; we sometimes noticed flares of light when we looked at high-contrast images like white text on a black background. But the colors and blacks look crisp, in-game action is smooth, and the experience is convincing enough that you can focus on what you’re doing instead of what you’re seeing.

It’s heavy, which makes it uncomfortable to wear for long periods. The Vive Pro 2 weighs 850 grams, and as a result, we noticed its bulk more than we did that of the 515-gram Quest 3 and 3S. We’ve also seen complaints online that some face shapes don’t mesh well with Vive headsets, though we didn’t have a panel of testers with more physical variations try this one out because of pandemic restrictions at the time of our testing. However, we find halo-style headsets especially helpful for adjusting fit.

We recommend upgrading the controllers. The wand-style controllers included with the full Vive Pro 2 Full Kit are a bit awkward to use. We think it’s worthwhile to spend a bit more and buy Vive Pro 2 accessories à la carte so you can swap in a pair of Valve Index Controllers instead. The Valve Index Controllers can track each individual finger, have both a joystick and a trackpad (most controller sets have only a single trackpad), and are more comfortable to hold. They’re widely considered the best VR controllers made.

The headset comes with on-ear headphones. They’re good enough for an immersive VR experience, and we didn’t think twice about using them. But if you’re an audiophile, it’s possible to remove them and use USB-C headphones instead. Or, you could consider getting the cheaper Valve Index headset for its slightly superior audio quality.

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Apple’s $3,500 Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset went on sale February 2, and while it’s way too expensive for us to recommend for most people, the technology is impressive.

The Vision Pro looks like a pretty standard virtual reality headset, though with some Apple flair — its rounded glass visor and aluminum chassis take design cues from the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, and the MacBook. The headset is powered by Apple’s M2 processor and augmented by the company’s new R1 chip to speed up the Vision Pro’s five sensors, 12 cameras and six mics. Apple created a new operating system, visionOS, to run on the Vision Pro, and if you’ve used a Mac or even an iPhone, the interface will feel familiar. Instead of using mouse clicks or taps to navigate, you use your eyes, hands, and voice. We found the eye tracking to be particularly impressive—you select an icon or menu item by simply looking at it, and then you tap your fingers together to open it. The process is quick, seamless, and becomes intuitive after just minutes with the device. You can also use Siri to navigate visionOS, which can be helpful as you’re learning how to use gestures and eye-tracking and aren’t sure where to find things.

You can use the Vision Pro to access apps and websites, just like you would on an iPhone or a Mac (but blown up to a screen that can feel 100 feet wide). This is the augmented reality part — using the Vision Pro as a display overlays open apps or browser windows on top of the real world around you, which you can see in a pass-through video feed, and you can use a virtual keyboard or pair a physical one to interact with the device. You can also use the headset for immersive virtual experiences like watching a movie on the moon. The two microLED displays (one for each eye), which are packed with 23 million pixels, are truly incredible, and the pass-through video feed that allows you to see your surroundings in real time is also very cool. But while having a workstation and a home movie theater in one portable device is very cool, we’re not convinced it’s $3,500 cool — especially when you can buy an excellent computer, 4K monitor, or high-end TV for less than the cost of an Apple Vision Pro. The headset is also isolating, because it’s difficult to share the experiences you have in virtual or augmented reality with other people in your life. And it feels heavy to wear on your face, despite the fact that the battery pack is an external one that connects to the headset via a cable.

We’ve been testing the Vision Pro for eight months now, and although Apple’s visionOS 2 software upgrade has delivered improvements such as new gestures for controlling your experience and a way to personalize the Home View, we still can’t recommend the headset for most people. Unlike with an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch, or AirPods, you have to look for reasons to use a Vision Pro, when grabbing another device would simply be easier. Putting it on to take meetings, edit articles, or write isn’t easier or more intuitive than on a Mac. Using it to watch movies or browse the web isn’t easier or more convenient than on an iPad. When safely ensconced in its $200 carrying case (sold separately, of course), the Vision Pro isn’t even close to portable, so it’s a nuisance to travel with.

We’d be hard-pressed to recommend that anyone spend $3,500 on anything that isn’t a life-changing trip or a buy-it-for-life item. But if you’re interested in technology—or just interested in Apple—and if you get the chance to try on the headset, we recommend giving it a shot. It really is a compelling experience—at least for a few minutes.

If you want to spend less on a PC-tethered headset: We think the Valve Index offers a great middle ground between price and performance. For $1,000, you get a headset, the widely beloved Valve Index Controllers, and two base stations, allowing for a more accurate and immersive room-scale VR experience than a Quest headset can provide. We also think the Index audio sounds a hair better than the HTC Vive Pro 2’s. However, the Vive Pro 2 has a better screen and added options like the ability to go wireless. There’s also some evidence that an Index 2 is on the way.

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The PlayStation VR2 is comfortable and easy to set up, it looks great, and it comes closer than any other cabled headset to bringing console-level simplicity to VR. But at $550, it’s much more expensive than the even easier-to-use Quest 3S.

Windows Mixed Reality headsets, in our experience, have less reliable tracking and less content, and worse controllers than Meta and HTC headsets. Microsoft will stop updating the headsets in 2026, so we don’t recommend buying them.

Pimax headsets have impressive features that match or beat the competition. But in our experience these headsets are bulky, suffer from screen flaws, and are among the most expensive VR options out there.

Meta discontinued the Quest Pro and Quest 2. We recommend buying the Quest 3 or 3S, as they will continue to be compatible with the entire Meta library.

If you can swallow spending $1,000 more to avoid a Meta-branded gadget, you could consider the HTC Vive Focus 3, which has a higher resolution screen and wider field of view than the Quest 3. There’s also the $1,100 Vive XR Elite, which has some of the better passthrough we’ve seen and a smaller profile, but we found it uncomfortable and difficult to use compared to Meta headsets. For the price, the Quest 3S is still an easy pick.

Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry contributed additional reporting.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.

Signe Brewster

Signe Brewster is an editor on Wirecutter's PC team. She also writes about virtual reality. She previously reported on emerging technology and science for publications like Wirecutter, MIT Technology Review, Wired, Science, and Symmetry Magazine. She spends her free time quilting and pursuing an MFA in creative writing.

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