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To persuade people to wear a bulky headset like the Quest is a big lift, Munster said. It’ll also take some doing to get people to wear glasses, like Orion, but it’s less of a lift, he contended.
He said that’s why he likes Zuckerberg’s vision of more easily wearable tech, like Orion.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post appears to agree. He reiterated his “buy” rating for Meta stock and wrote in a note to clients that investors are more likely to be interested in the Orion glasses than the Quest headset.
Mixed reality and augmented reality share some similarities since they involve digital elements overlayed with the real world. But in MR, the physical and digital world can interact. Virtual reality completely immerses a user in a digital world.
For now, Meta has no release date for Orion and the glasses cost around $10,000 to build, according to The Verge — a figure Meta hasn’t commented on.
Still, the presentation of the glasses is enough to get some tech analysts excited. In an interview with Ben Thompson, host of tech podcast Stratechery, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said the company is “definitely looking in the next three to five years” for a consumer launch of Orion.
A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
In the meantime, Munster told BI that given the timeline to get Orion to market, it makes sense that Meta would update the Quest.
“If Orion was going to be out in two years, it would not make sense for them to be investing in Quest,” he said.