🥽 Standalone XR Headsets in 2025: Which One Is Right for You?

Adrian Bartoň
Oct 27
3 min read

XR technologies are becoming increasingly accessible — and thanks to that, you no longer need to connect a headset to a powerful computer to experience fully immersive virtual reality.

Standalone headsets are entering the stage — devices that work completely independently, with no cables, no external sensors, and no complicated setup.

So who are the main players in the standalone headset market in 2025? And which one is best suited for development, gaming, or productivity?

🔝 The Most Popular Standalone Headsets

1. Meta Quest 3

Manufacturer: Meta (Facebook)

Price: around 15,000–18,000 CZK

Compact, wireless, and powerful.Supports both VR and MR (thanks to full-color passthrough).

The Quest 3 is currently the gold standard. It offers an excellent price-to-performance ratio, a massive community, stable development tools (Unity/Unreal SDK), and thousands of available apps.

👉 The best choice for developers who want to create their own XR experiences, as well as for everyday users who want entertainment without compromise.

2. Pico 4

Manufacturer: ByteDance (owner of TikTok)

Price: around 12,000–14,000 CZK

Lightweight and excellent for content consumption.Particularly strong in Asia and Europe.

The Pico 4 aims to compete with the Quest mainly through its lower price. It offers solid hardware and a crisp display, but its game library is smaller and the developer community is less active.

👉 A great option for companies or educational institutions looking for a more affordable solution for viewing XR content.

3. Apple Vision Pro

Manufacturer: Apple

Price: over 100,000 CZK

A technological masterpiece with premium build quality.Designed primarily for work, productivity, and MR entertainment.

The Vision Pro isn’t your typical “gaming” headset. It’s an elegant professional tool built for the Apple ecosystem. It delivers stunning visuals, a spatial operating system, and highly precise eye tracking. However, development is done mainly in Swift within Apple’s environment.

👉 Perfect for tech enthusiasts and professionals, but the price is extreme, and it doesn’t make much sense for everyday development or entertainment.

🛠️ What if I want to create my own XR applications?

Here, the choice is quite simple:

✅ Meta Quest 2 / 3 / 3s — The Best Option for Developers

Open ecosystem with a large, active community.
Development tools available for Windows and macOS.
Tons of tutorials, guides, and examples online.
Full support for OpenXR, Unity, and Unreal Engine.

❌ Apple Vision Pro — Significant Limitations

Requires macOS and development in Swift.
Development is currently focused more on professional tools than on gaming or creative XR content.

⚖️ Pico 4 — Potential, but...

Development is possible, but documentation is limited.
Better suited for enterprise and educational use rather than creative development.

📊 Summary

Headset	Price	Best For	Dev Support	VR/MR	Community
Meta Quest 3	💰💰	Gaming, development, all-around use	✅ Strong	✅ VR + MR	🔥 Active
Pico 4	💰	Content consumption, business use	🟡 Limited	✅ VR + MR	🟡 Smaller
Apple Vision Pro	💰💰💰💰💰	Productivity, MR applications	🟡 Limited	✅ MR	🟢 Growing

🧠 Conclusion

If you want to create, experiment, and play with XR without spending a fortune, Meta Quest is the safest and most flexible choice.

If you’re more interested in spatial productivity and love the Apple ecosystem, Vision Pro will impress you — but be ready for a serious price tag.

And if you’re looking for a more affordable option for everyday XR content viewing, Pico 4 might be the right fit.