Every VR Headset From DK1 to Quest 3S — What Actually Changed in Twelve Years

2026年8月29日

I have been writing about VR on this site since 2019. The first Quest landed, it knocked me sideways, and before I knew it there were 136 VR articles here. Then the site stopped in 2021 and roughly five years went by.

Bringing it back in 2026, the first thing I wanted to do was look again at where VR headsets have gone over the last decade or so. Laying it out, resolution has gone up more than tenfold, the cable to the PC has disappeared, and prices have swung from over half a million yen down to units in the thirty-thousand range. I have not seen another category move at this pace.

This article organises the major headsets from the 2012 Oculus Rift DK1 to the 2024 Meta Quest 3S as a timeline, and looks at what changed — both in the numbers and in how each generation was received at the time.

Headset timeline (2012–2026)

Major products in order. Prices are at launch.

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Five generations

Looking at the timeline, the progression falls into five generations.

Resolution over time

Here is how quickly per-eye resolution climbed.

Launch prices

What actually changed, according to the reception at the time

2019: the Quest cut the cord to the PC

This is the headset that got me writing about VR in the first place.

Before it, PC VR meant a gaming PC north of a hundred thousand yen with a GTX 1080 or RTX 2070, constant awareness of the cable running off your head, and working out where to mount base stations. The distance between “I want to try VR" and actually playing was long.

The Quest collapsed all of that into one device. Reviews at the time widely report roughly fifteen minutes from opening the box to launching Beat Saber. No cable, no PC — that was read as the thing that would change VR.

2020: Quest 2 put VR in ordinary hands

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What Quest 2 achieved was getting VR into the hands of people who were not looking for VR.

¥37,100 put it roughly level with a Nintendo Switch. Resolution rose to 3664×1920, refresh to 90Hz and later 120Hz, and the Snapdragon XR2 was a large step up from the original Quest.

2023: Quest 3 and passthrough changed what “wearing VR" means

Users trying Quest 3’s colour passthrough for the first time widely reported that it changed their definition of VR.

Until then, putting on a headset cut you off from the room entirely. That is correct for immersion, but for anyone not already interested in VR, “you cannot see anything" reads as either frightening or simply inconvenient.

2024: Vision Pro proposed “spatial computing"

At $3,499 (about ¥600,000 in Japan) the Apple Vision Pro is not a consumer VR headset. But Apple flatly stating “this is not a VR headset, it is a spatial computer" mattered.

It offers something closer to spreading a Mac desktop infinitely in front of you: window management in visionOS, gaze control through eye tracking, pinch to select. Apple is the first to position a headset as a productivity tool rather than a games machine.

Where things stand in 2026

Meta Quest 4

Rumoured for late 2025 into 2026. Specifications are unconfirmed, but expectations point to a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 or later, thinner pancake lenses, and deeper AI assistant integration. Meta appears to be staying on the mass-market path, with pricing expected around $499–599.

Apple Vision Pro 2

The obvious targets are the weight (~650g) and the price ($3,499). Reports point to a lighter design and a sub-$2,000 bracket, with most expecting late 2026 at the earliest.

Elsewhere

• Samsung shipped the headset built with Google on Android XR as “Galaxy XR" (codename Project Moohan) in October 2025, at $1,799
• Sony released a PC adapter for PSVR2 in 2024, making it usable beyond the PS5
• Pico (under ByteDance) continues in Europe and is still exploring the high end with the PICO 4 Ultra

What to buy in 2026

For anyone asking which one to actually get, by use case (as of April 2026).

If you just want to try VR, Quest 3S at ¥48,400 is a good product that keeps MR while holding the price down.

The specialist metric: PPD

Comparing headsets on total pixel count alone is not enough. Field of view differs, so the same resolution spread over a wider view gives fewer pixels per degree and a coarser image.

[kimono_bar title="PPD by generation" unit="PPD" color="#1976d2″ highlight="7″ max="65″ note="60 PPD is human acuity (20/20). Field of view estimated from manufacturer figures"]
Rift DK1 (2012)|5.8
HTC Vive (2016)|9.8
Quest (2019)|14.4
Quest 2 (2020)|18.9
Quest 3 (2023)|18.8
PSVR2 (2023)|18.2
Vision Pro (2024)|36.6
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The DK1 at 5.8 PPD is about a tenth of the human eye. Quest 2 and 3 reach roughly 19 PPD — “you can find the dots if you look for them, but content pulls your attention away". Vision Pro’s 36.6 PPD is 61% of human acuity and the first headset where reading text became practical.

[kimono_bar title="Horizontal resolution per eye over time" unit="px" color="#1976d2″ highlight="16″ max="4000″ note="Vision Pro’s Micro-OLED is the outlier"]
DK1 (2012)|640
HTC Vive (2016)|1080
Quest (2019)|1440
Quest 2 (2020)|1832
Quest 3 (2023)|2064
PSVR2 (2023)|2000
Vision Pro (2024)|3660
Quest 3S (2024)|1832
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[kimono_bar title="Weight compared" unit="g" color="#78909c" highlight="5,7″ max="900″ note="Quest line highlighted. 500g is the design target for standalone headsets"]
HTC Vive (2016)|555
Valve Index (2019)|809
Quest 2 (2020)|503
PSVR2 (2023)|560
Quest 3 (2023)|515
Vision Pro (2024)|650
Quest 3S (2024)|514
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Why 90Hz is the threshold for comfort

A major cause of VR sickness is a low refresh rate. At 90Hz a frame lasts about 11.1ms. The threshold at which people perceive display latency is generally put at 13–20ms (source: Jerald, 2015, The VR Book), so at 90Hz the frame time sits below that threshold and tracking feels natural to most people.

In summary

About fourteen years since Palmer Luckey put a $300 DK1 on Kickstarter in 2012. Headsets have gone from developer toy to consumer product to spatial computing device.

Looking back, there were three turning points.

1. 2019, Oculus Quest: freedom from the PC and the cable
2. 2020, Quest 2: ¥37,100 broke the price barrier
3. 2023, Quest 3 and Vision Pro: MR and spatial computing

Resolution went from 640px per eye to 3660px. Tracking moved from external sensors to inside-out. Connection went from a wired PC to standalone. Everything has pushed in the same direction: easier to reach, better to look at.

What the next decade holds is an open question. Merging with AI, further weight reduction, and a genuinely glasses-shaped form factor are the obvious themes. Watching Meta’s Orion project and the rumours of lighter Apple devices, the day the “headset" shape itself changes may not be far off.

Coming back to VR after five years away, the pace is genuinely surprising. I hope this is useful as a way of organising where headsets have been.

Information as of April 2026. Prices and specifications are subject to change.