The Best VR Headset

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:

• I’ve spent hundreds of hours testing every major headset released since the original Oculus Rift.
• I’ve attended the annual CES conference in Las Vegas to vet dozens of headsets.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.
• In accordance with Wirecutter standards, I return or donate all products I’ve tested once my assessment of them is complete. I never hang on to “freebies” once testing is done.

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.

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

• Room-scale tracking: Whether the sensors are built into the headset or meant to be mounted on a wall, the headset you buy should come with the ability to track you across an area the size of an average living room. It should make it easy to avoid bumping into obstacles.
• Freedom of movement: The headset can switch between corded and cord-free experiences, which allows for maximum freedom of movement and portability.
• Variety of content: Games and applications should be available across a variety of genres. There should also be evidence that developers are continuing to develop for the headset.
• Comfort: The headset should sit snugly on a variety of face shapes without being painful. It shouldn’t feel too heavy or get too hot.
• Industry-leading specs: The screen resolution, sensors, weight, and size should be in line with those of other top VR headsets. Good display specs in particular assist in creating a better VR experience because they help you forget that you are looking at a screen instead of something real.
• Good controllers: The controllers should be comfortable to hold, and they shouldn’t have overly complicated button layouts.
• Built-in sound: Although audiophiles who already own high-end headphones will appreciate a headphone jack, most people don’t already own headphones that are nice enough for VR (and good sound really does make VR more immersive). Headsets with high-quality built-in headphones or speakers eliminate an extra accessory to buy and still leave open the option of swapping in your own pair if you care to.

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

Top pick

The best VR headset

Meta Quest 3S

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.

$350 from Amazon

$380 from Walmart

The Meta Quest 3S makes VR easier — and fun enough to be worth it — compared with headsets that require cables and expensive PCs. With an increased price of $350 (128 GB) or $450 (256 GB), it’s not quite the bargain it once was, 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 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 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. 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 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.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

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.

Upgrade pick

Easy to use, with better visuals

Meta Quest 3

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

$599 from Amazon

(512GB)

$599 from Walmart

If screen quality is especially important to you, or if you see this headset on sale, the $600 Meta Quest 3 is a worthwhile upgrade over the Quest 3S. Its higher resolution and better lenses produce a sharper picture with less glare.

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).

Flaws but not dealbreakers

We still don’t like the strap. As with the Quest 3S, the Quest 3’s strap has no padding, and we recommend an upgrade to the Elite Strap.

The controller tracking is lacking. While other headsets use external sensors to track your hands, both the Quest 3S and Quest 3 lose sight of your hands if you move them behind your back.

Apple’s $3,500 Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset is way too expensive for us to recommend for most people, though 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 M5 processor and augmented by the company’s 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 Apple’s updated Dual Knit strap that transfers more weight to the top of your head, and the fact that the battery pack is an external one that connects to the headset via a cable.

Apple has released software updates and new content for the Vision Pro in the nearly three years since its release, but 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 doing those things 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.

Despite a delay, Valve still plans to release the Steam Frame, a successor to the Valve Index, in the first half of 2026. It’s a lightweight, standalone headset primarily designed to stream both VR and non-VR games from PCs, though you can also play lighter-weight games directly on the headset. Like Quest headsets, and unlike the Index, it does not need base stations to track the wearer and their hands. Upload VR reports that the loss in hand-tracking accuracy is sometimes noticeable, but the headset is especially comfortable with the batteries located on the back strap.

Many of its specs are in line with the Quest 3, including 2160 x 2160 LCD panels, a 72 to 120 Hz refresh rate, and pancake lenses. But it also includes an upgraded Snapdragon chipset and a slightly larger field of view. If you’re interested in a cordless way to stream games from your PC, the Steam Frame might be the best new option — if the price is right.

Google's launch of Android XR will power a wave of AI-enabled smart glasses. It’s integrated with Gemini AI, which could offer a welcome reprieve from the tedious task of scrolling through VR menus with a controller or your hands. While Samsung remains tight-lipped on when it plans to launch its own version of smart glasses, the company did announce it will partner with eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to design them.

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.

PC headsets

The Valve Index is no longer being produced, and its successor, the Steam Frame, is on the way.

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.

Standalone headsets

If you want an AI-enabled headset and don’t mind spending more, the $1,800 Samsung Galaxy XR is your best option. It runs Google’s Android XR operating system (complete with Gemini AI integration) and features 4K Micro-OLED screens with a refresh rate of up to 90 Hz and a 109-degree field of view. It’s also lighter and more comfortable than the Vision Pro.
The Galaxy XR has AI-powered features like Gemini and Circle to Search, which are designed to make the device easier to navigate. For example, you can ask Gemini for nearby places to see in Google Maps; on YouTube, you can ask Gemini to find content or ask for information about the video you’re watching; in pass-through mode, you can use Circle to Search to draw a circle around what’s in front of you in the real world and search for more information on it.

Pairing a headset with Gemini is an interesting look into the future of VR, but at this time we still think the Quest headsets offer the right combination of price and content for how most people use VR.

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 want a PC-ready headset that can also function as a standalone option, and features like a swappable battery or eye and face tracking are important to you, you could consider the Vive Focus Vision. But it costs $1,000 and includes fresnel lenses, which is disappointing for the price. Vive also makes the Focus 3, which has a higher resolution screen and wider field of view than the Quest 3 and the smaller XR Elite. However, all of the standalone Vive headsets we tried were harder to use, had less standalone content, and cost much more than Meta headsets. The headsets might make sense for certain businesses, but nearly everyone else will have a better experience in a Meta headset.

Brenda Stolyar, Arthur Gies, Dave Gershgorn, and Caitlin McGarry contributed additional reporting.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.