Meta’s new $199 Quest 2 price is a steal for the VR-curious

Enlarge / For just $199, you could be having as much fun as this paid model.

Meta has announced it's permanently lowering the price of its aging Quest 2 headset to $199 for a 128GB base model, representing the company's lowest price yet for a full-featured untethered VR headset.

The Quest 2, which launched in 2020 at $299, famously defied tech product convention by increasing its MSRP to $399 amid inflation and supply chain issues in mid-2022. Actual prices for the headset at retail have fallen since then, though; Best Buy offered new units for $299 as of last October and for $250 by the 2023 post-Thanksgiving shopping season, for instance.

And the Quest 2 is far from the company's state-of-the-art headset at this point. Meta launched the surprisingly expensive Quest Pro in late 2022 before dropping that headset's price from $1,499 to $999 less than five months later. And last year's launch of the Quest 3 at a $499 starting price brought some significant improvements in resolution, processing power, thickness, and full-color passthrough images over the Quest 2.