At long last, Meta has unveiled its Quest Pro VR headset during its annual Connect conference.

The new headset combines both virtual and mixed reality, with the aim of being a productivity device for the creative professional.

In addition, the devices release is an important stepping-stone for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future and work and play through the integrated network of 3D virtual worlds he calls the Metaverse.

Meta, which was renamed from Facebook to mark the new vision, entered into the VR headset market with it’s purchase of Oculus in 2014

Initially referred to as ‘Project Cambria’ when it was first announced, the Quest Pro is the successor to the company’s Meta Quest 2, which has established itself as the most popular headset for the consumer VR market due to its balance of low price and substantial features.

The Quest Pro boasts several major upgrades over the previous headset, being a lighter and smaller build, with the battery moved to the back to improve weight balance and comfort.

As a device that incorporates both virtual and mixed reality, the Quest Pro sports outward facing cameras that capture and display the outside environment for the user, blurring the lines between the digital worlds and reality.

The wearer can then do things such as draw digitally on real surfaces, or in the case of the picture below, create 3D drawings in front of their eyes.

The Quest 2 has a similar feature called passthrough, however this is much more elementary, greyscale version.

Whilst Meta has said that the Quest Pro won’t be a replacement for the Quest 2, the new device has been designed to be much more ready for the metaverse, with tracking sensors that can have a user’s avatar replicate eye-movements and facial expressions, adding to the realism of this new virtual world.

At this stage, the Quest Pro is aimed at the consumer market rather than enterprise, but at $1,500 USD (roughly $2,390 AUD), it is quite a jump over the Quest 2 in price, which starts in Australia at $679.99 AUD.

That being said, it is a far cry cheaper than enterprise-oriented devices like the Microsoft Hololens 2, which starts at $5,599 in Australia.