Meta Quest Pro in the test: Unfinished harbinger

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting Meta's future on virtual reality. His latest showpiece is the Quest Pro, a high-end headset for 1600 francs or 1800 euros. It is not in the Digitec Galaxus range because Meta only sells it directly in this country. I'm testing the device anyway to find out what advances VR technology is making. If the Quest Pro is the benchmark for development, I see black.

Initial wow effect

When I put on the Quest Pro for the first time, I am impressed: several cameras on the headset film my surroundings and play them back in real time on the displays. This is called pass-through mode. The physical reality of my living room is enriched with virtual elements. A menu console and a dialogue window float in front of me - fixed in position in the room. I can move freely and go around them, they don't move a millimetre. I control the menus with hand gestures. Minority Report sends its regards.

What I experience in my first minutes with the Quest Pro is Mixed Reality (MR). A mix of physical and virtual reality. This feature is one of the biggest innovations compared to Meta's last headset Quest 2, which also has a passthrough mode, but only in black and white and very poor quality. The controllers of the Quest Pro are also new, they now each have their own processor and several cameras for tracking. This makes them more compact, precise and reliable than the Quest 2, where the cameras in the headset have to track the controllers. The Pro not only tracks hand movements, but also facial expressions with cameras on the inside. The resolution of the two screens in the headset is 1800 × 1920 pixels each at 90 hertz refresh rate. This is practically identical to the Quest 2.

Virtual office: idea good, implementation poor

The Meta Quest Pro is - as the name suggests - not intended for gaming, but for professional applications. I should be able to be productive with it at a virtual workplace. I do meetings in the metaverse instead of in the physical world. Social interactions are supposed to feel more real than in a video chat: my virtual avatar keeps eye contact thanks to facial expression tracking and can smile. These are interesting concepts, they fail in practice because of hardware limitations and bad software.

Meta's virtual workspace is called "Horizon Workrooms" and initially creates wow moments for me. It's cool to suddenly sit in an 80-square-metre office. With a view of the lake. Although the graphics don't seem quite contemporary, I feel transported to another place. The connection between the workrooms and my Macbook works without a hitch. For this, the laptop and headset have to be connected to the same network and I need an app on the computer. Then the screen content is mirrored into virtual reality - onto a huge curved monitor that hovers at a comfortable distance in front of me. If I wish, I can extend the work surface with two more screens of the same size. This turns a laptop screen in a small office into a huge control centre.

So far so impressive. But the devil is in the detail. First of all, there is the input delay and the sporadic dropouts in transmission. This is probably due to the fact that the devices are connected to each other via the router instead of directly via Bluetooth or cable. The next problem is the tracking of the physical keyboard. My Logitech MX Keys is one of the few predefined models that the Quest Pro supports. The cameras track their position and the headset projects a virtual copy into my "workroom". Since physical and virtual reality match, I am supposed to keep hitting the keys. Unfortunately, this does not work reliably and the real keyboard is often a few centimetres further to the right of the virtual one. The remedy is the partial passthrough mode, which switches the table area to Mixed Reality. However, this is less elegant.

The biggest obstacle to working in "Horizon Workrooms" is the Quest Pro's low resolution. It is fine for pictures, but far too poor for text. White areas also flicker like on an old tube TV. I can't stand being in the virtual office for more than an hour at a time before I get a headache. At least I never reach the limits of the battery life of around two hours.

Virtual meetings bring additional hurdles besides the comfort issues. For the kick-off sequence of our podcast, I want to meet virtually with my editorial colleagues Philipp Rüegg and Luca Fontana. Phil has a Quest 2, Luca has no headset. The first question that comes up: How do I even open a meeting? As it turns out, this is not possible in Quest Pro itself, but only in the browser on the computer. If I call up my meeting room there, I can invite people. But sometimes the invitations don't arrive. Sometimes their link leads to an error message. And if they don't, it's unclear how the other person is supposed to join the meeting in the headset. Meta's disastrous software deals a death blow to the Quest Pro's professional pretensions.

After more than half an hour we make it and sit in my test room in a Greek beach house. Phil and I as avatars, Luca on a virtual TV. The figures have a Sims aesthetic, but the graphics are even worse than back then. Besides, we have no legs. At least the sound quality is okay and the tracking of hands and facial expressions works well for me. My avatar, however, always has his eyes half-closed - as if he were extremely bored. We all agree: a feeling of real presence doesn't come up like that. We also talked about our experiences in the podcast:

Virtual social media: Impressive and scary

What does this look like in other social interactions? Meta's in-house social VR network "Horizon Worlds" is not yet available in Switzerland. I am therefore testing the cross-platform VRChat. Here I can immerse myself as an avatar in different worlds in which other people move. I find it difficult to orient myself and I don't really know what I'm supposed to do here. I try different worlds. Finally I end up in "No Time Two Talk", a VR version of "Chat Roulette", so to speak. I am randomly put in a room with a different person. After a few minutes, I can extend the time if the other person wants me to. Otherwise, I am connected to someone new. The concept feels far more intimate in VR than in a chat or via video.

I have a few conversations in No Time Two Talk. For example, a 16-year-old Hungarian girl tells me that she practices her English in VRChat. Because most of the people here would be from America. I have the same impression. A student from Tenessee plays me a song on his ukulele. Why is he here? Grounded. He is jealous when I tell him I am Swiss. "At least there I wouldn't have to be afraid of being picked off at school. With us, that's a real problem." The most common reason why people seem to spend time in virtual reality: they're bored in their real lives.

What I notice in my non-representative visits to VRChat: It is teeming with children. A perceived 80 per cent are not of age, with the youngest girl saying she is only seven. This highlights one of the biggest problems of social VR media: What laws apply here? Who sets them? Who enforces them? What are the consequences if someone doesn't abide by them? My personal experiences so far have been chaotic, virtual reality seems anarchistic. At the same time, experiences get under your skin much more than in a computer game or on classic social media platforms. This combination of anonymity and intimacy can be great or traumatising - especially for children. One thing is certain: If the popularity of such platforms increases, moderation will become a Herculean task.

Design and comfort: head press

Besides such ethical problems, I must also talk about the unsatisfactory hardware. At 722 grams, the new high-end headset is significantly heavier than the Quest 2 at 503 grams. On the other hand, the weight is better balanced. The battery sits at the back of the head and is connected to the front part of the device with two rigid brackets. There are pads at the back and front. You pull the Quest Pro apart, then put it on and can make it tighter like a ski helmet. The headset is open to the sides and downwards. Meta supplies magnetic blinders that can cover the openings on the left and right. A larger cover, which also closes the lower gap, is available as an accessory.

The Quest Pro has no built-in dioptric correction. Thanks to the design, that's not necessary either. Because it only rests on the back of your head and forehead, you can wear it with your glasses on. Even my large, round model fits underneath - I can adjust the distance between my face and the headset lenses by turning the dial on the top. However, this moves the displays a little further away from my eyes. The balance is good, the headset doesn't pull the head forward like the Quest 2, where all the weight is concentrated on the front. There are microphones and loudspeakers in the side arms for spatial sound reproduction. The quality is okay and I find it convenient that I don't need additional headphones.

The problem with the Quest Pro: it gives me a headache. To keep the headset from slipping despite the weight, I have to adjust it tightly. It feels like a head press that squeezes my skull. Thanks to the padding, this is fine for short sessions, but after an hour at the latest it becomes uncomfortable. My second point of criticism is the open design. In mixed reality applications, it is pleasant to see a bit of the physical world without detours through the glasses. As soon as I dive into a completely virtual reality, I find it irritating - and I get sick after a short time. The problem has not subsided even after many hours of getting used to it.

Conclusion: At this rate, it won't work

The obstacles to Mark Zuckerberg's vision seem insurmountably large. The meta-CEO is a rock-solid believer that virtual reality can secure the future of his company. His conviction is so great that he is burning 10 billion dollars this year in the "Reality Labs" - Meta's division for virtual, mixed and augmented reality. The Meta Quest Pro shows: A lot has to happen for this bet to work out. I have great doubts whether Zuckerberg's old platforms Facebook and Instagram can cross-subsidise the development long enough.

The progress from the two-year-old Quest 2 to the new professional model is disappointingly small. Picture quality has not improved significantly and is still far too poor. Form factor and weight also remain big problems. Only in terms of mixed reality and tracking is a development noticeable. But that is not enough by far. Once the initial wow effect of the new experience has fizzled out, I hardly spend any time voluntarily in virtual reality - it's too uncomfortable and the software is unsatisfactory.

Meta's concepts of virtual and mixed reality are not uninteresting. Things like
. "Horizon Workrooms" could be very useful for certain people. But they fail miserably because of the current state of technology. Meetings in the metaverse are also a nightmare - a video conference works much better and a face-to-face meeting beats nothing anyway. Things like VRChat and games are the most fun. I won't go into the latter in this test; I'll leave that assessment to the specialists on our editorial staff. But in both applications, the Pro hardly stands out from the Quest 2, which costs a third.

For end customers, the new headset is a disaster. At 1600 francs or 1800 euros, it is positioned in the professional segment, although the device is completely unsuitable for professionals. I can therefore not recommend it to anyone. The Meta Quest Pro is nothing more than an unfinished harbinger of Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the future.