Meta unveils Quest Pro VR headsets at $1,499. Here’s why it's priced so high

Meta has unveiled its Meta Quest Pro Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, which are the company's most advanced yet. Many might be wondering about the need for a Pro VR headset when Quest 2 seems to be doing pretty well. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the company's intentions to replace PCs with its VR headsets in an interview with The Verge.

Meta Quest Pro is priced at a whopping $1,499, and the company is very well aware that the users would be keen to know why the headset demands such a steep price tag to experience the metaverse. The Valve Index is the only VR headset with a $1,000 price tag, while Sony and even Meta's own Quest 2 VR headset cost only $400.

What you can expect with Meta Quest Pro

In what might be a way to justify the price tag of the Quest Pro, Meta has compared its features with the Quest 2 on multiple occasions. For instance, the mixed reality experience on the Pro comes with a 4x higher resolution than the Quest 2, while the optical stack has been slimmed by over 40 percent on the Pro. The LCD display packs 37 percent more pixels per inch on the Pro while the vibrance of colors is 1.3x more on the new device, the technical specifications page claims.

If the hardware configuration is more important to you than the company's marketing talk, then the Quest Pro 2 comes with 12 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, a Snapdragon XR2+ processor, and ten advanced VR/ MR sensors. The controllers are packed with three cameras, a Snapdragon 662 mobile processor, haptic feedback, and precision pinch to deliver an intuitive VR experience.

Why not a Quest 3?

Meta's decision to launch a Pro version of its VR headset with a sky-high price is questionable when its Quest 2 seems to be doing pretty well. Although Meta hasn't divulged the exact sales numbers, the Quest 2 is estimated to have recorded over 10 million sales to date.

If Meta is looking at the metaverse as the next iteration of the world wide web where everybody will come to work as well as for entertainment, then it needs to enable a lower barrier to access this digital world. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not look at the Quest Pro as an enabler for that.

Speaking to The Verge, Zuckerberg said that the Quest Pro was aimed at the 200 million people who buy new PCs every year and as the company builds the product line of its Pro VR headsets, there will be more things that people will be able to do in the VR than on the PC.

Zuckerberg also insisted that the Quest Pro was still far from being a mature product and it would take a few years for it to reach a V4 or V5. Meta is eyeing high-end professionals who are willing to pay $1,500 - $2,000 for a workstation and hope employers also dole out these devices to see a slight uptick in people's productivity.

The Quest Pro could also be a competitor to Apple's much anticipated VR headset, which the company has been tight-lipped about. If it never arrives, Meta hopes to have a free run while also working on Quest 3, which will be released next year.