Facebook leaks its Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset

It's lighter, more powerful and has a sharper display.

Facebook appears to have leaked its all-in-one Oculus Quest 2 headset, with the company boasting that it will be “our most advanced all-in-one VR system yet” (via Aiman Farooq). According to several videos leaked on Facebook Blueprint, the headset will be smaller and lighter and come with a soft-touch fabric, rather than a hard plastic strap as before. That addresses the lack of comfort, one of the main issues we had with the first Oculus Quest.

The Quest 2 would also be significantly more powerful, with Qualcomm’s VR-oriented Snapdragon XR2 processor instead of the Snapdragon 835. It comes with 6GB of RAM, up from 4GB, and 256GB of storage for games and other apps, rather than 128GB. Most importantly, the Quest 2 should be the highest-resolution Oculus headset yet, with 2K per eye — 50 percent more pixels than before. Facebook didn’t reveal the refresh rate, though rumors have pointed to 90 Hz rather than 72 Hz with the Quest.

The controllers are also new, with updated ergonomics “for an even more comfortable experience,” the company said. What’s more, you can “ditch the controllers” entirely for some games, as the Quest 2 also supports hand-tracking. Finally, the Quest 2 will offer 3D audio capability to help you identify where objects are coming from while gaming.

While it was originally released as a standalone headset, the original Quest was eventually updated to support Oculus Rift PC content via the Oculus Link cable. The Quest 2 will have that feature from the get-go, letting you play advanced PC-oriented games like Stormland.

The Quest 2 should also work a lot better in standalone mode thanks to the stronger specs, as the original model tended to chug along for certain titles. While Oculus seems to have addressed our comfort complaint, we still don’t know if it addressed our other main gripe about the original’s steep $499 price. The biggest buzzkill might be that you now need a Facebook account to use any new Oculus products — something that the Oculus community was not thrilled about.