New Meta Quest and next-gen AR glasses leak – this is what they may seem like

Meta is in an odd place proper now, the place VR is worried. It’s coming off the again of plenty of years of {hardware} dominance, during which its Quest headsets have been clearly essentially the most mass-appealing strategy to get into VR.

Its newest launch, the Quest 3S, nabbed a five-star verdict from yours really once I examined it at first of 2025, in spite of everything – however the previous couple of months have been turbulent. While it is adamant in public that it is not pulling again from VR, Meta has nonetheless slashed plenty of studios engaged on software program for the headset, together with video games.

Still, that does not imply the {hardware} conveyor belt is static. There’s virtually little question we are going to get extra Quest gadgets down the road, and the rumours and leaks point out that at the very least certainly one of these could possibly be manner smaller than you may assume (with a serious asterisk).

The headset is reportedly codenamed Phoenix, and this week a few distinguished leakers have uploaded mock-ups of what it’d seem like. One exhibits the headset itself compared to the Quest 3, and the opposite exhibits the battery pack that can partly clarify how the headset’s so small.

If these mock-ups are correct, the Meta Phoenix headset could possibly be not like the rest on the market proper now. It seems to be like an honest-to-goodness cross between a VR headset just like the Quest 3S and a few AR sensible glasses, in a position to be worn way more comfortably and with lighter weight.

It’ll in fact additionally apparently be tethered to a battery pack, one with a clip designed for waistbands. That’s paying homage to far dearer XR choices just like the Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, each of which outsource the battery away from the headset to maintain it comfy.

It’ll be fascinating to see if we get any noise from Meta about this system any time quickly, and never simply so we are able to see if these leaks are correct (because the leakers declare to have seen bodily prototypes).

We usually solely get product bulletins from Meta on the annual Meta Connect occasion, and the subsequent iteration of that is not due till October this yr. That units us up for an extended wait within the meantime, though the expectation and leaks point out there will probably be a extra regular Quest VR headset to accompany Phoenix, too.

Who is aware of, although – maybe that point will assist Meta to determine a extra elegant resolution for its battery goals than a tethered one. That method has all the time felt like a little bit of a cop-out to me, and undermines the slickness of given headsets fairly noticeably.