Meta's Black Friday sale gives you $50 credit after purchasing a Quest 2 until next Tuesday.
Last week Meta cut the price of Quest 2 for the rest of the year, to $250 for the 128GB model and $300 for the 256GB model. The Black Friday deal stacks with the temporary price cut, so if you use the credit the deal effectively values Quest 2 at $200.
The form the $50 credit takes depends on where you buy the headset. On Amazon it comes as general Amazon Credit, for example, whereas on Meta Store it's Quest Store credit to spend on games and apps.
Quest 2 launched over three years ago at $300 for 64GB or $400 for 256GB. The base model saw a storage bump to 128GB in 2021, but the price of each model was raised to $400 and $500 last year, which appears to have tanked sales.
In March this year Meta cut the 256GB model price to $430, and when announcing Quest 3 in June it cut the 128GB model back to $300 and the 256GB model to $350, lower than it originally launched at.
In terms of value, Quest 3 comes with Asgard's Wrath 2, a $60 game, so if you were going to buy it otherwise you could describe Quest 3 as being effectively $440. In comparison, the combination of the price cut and $50 credit means Quest 2 is effectively available for half the price through November 27th.
But even with this strong deal, you may want to hold off on buying a Quest 2.
David Heaney
A leaked Meta roadmap from earlier this year revealed Meta planned to release a new headset after Quest 3 in 2024 "at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market". Reports from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and a Chinese analyst who has been reliable in the past suggest this headset will replace Quest 2 in Meta's lineup and feature the new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset from Quest 3, though with Quest 2's fresnel lenses.
XR2 Gen 2 has a more than twice as powerful GPU, which some developers are already using to achieve dramatically better "console quality" graphics. As Quest 3 and the cheaper headset gradually transition the active user base of the standalone VR market to the XR2 Gen 2, developers may put less focus on making their games look good and run well on Quest 2.
Still, if you absolutely want a VR headset for this year and don't want to wait, Quest 2 currently plays all the same games as its successor, and this is by far the best value deal for a VR headset with tracked controllers we've ever seen.
