CT scans of the Meta Quest Professional (left) and Meta Quest 3 (proper).
Lumafield
We have all seen these teardowns of the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional and Meta’s Quest 3 and Quest Professional headsets, the place they’re dismantled all the way down to their part bits and items. Whereas this method provides us a peek at what’s inside, it is powerful to know how every little thing comes collectively. Plus, many new merchandise do not precisely come out of those teardowns unscathed.
To really perceive how all of the components match and work collectively, we’d like a technique to peek contained in the gadgets with out inflicting any injury.
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Lumafield, a Massachusetts firm specializing in AI-assisted CT scanning, makes use of the facility of business X-ray scanners to see what’s actually occurring inside tech merchandise — with out taking something aside.
This time, the two hottest digital and augmented actuality headsets get the non-destructive teardown remedy. We’re diving into the variations between Apple’s $3,500 Imaginative and prescient Professional headset and Meta’s $500 Quest 3 headset — all with no single screw being undone or a fragile display being cracked.
The scans reveal how a lot tech is crammed into these gadgets, and all of it begins with the design. A headset must look, nicely, like a headset, which suggests every little thing have to be meticulously organized to suit inside that particular form.
The respective approaches taken by Apple and Meta to pack every little thing into their headsets are fairly hanging of their variations. As an example, Apple’s engineers concluded that utilizing an exterior battery was probably the most easy answer, whereas Meta’s crew used a novel curved battery to energy its headset.
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Squeezing a lot know-how into a tool meant to sit down proper in entrance of your face introduces some tough thermal challenges. These CT scans provide a glimpse into the modern cooling applied sciences used to maintain issues snug.
Meta selected a extra conventional path with followers and copper warmth pipes for cooling, whereas Apple opted for micro followers to maintain the Imaginative and prescient Professional’s internals cool. Regardless of their variations, each methods purpose to make sure the headsets are cool and do not roast the wearer’s face.
Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional micro-blower (left), Meta Quest Professional warmth pipe and followers (proper).
Lumafield
So, which is the higher headset? That is the place these non-destructive teardowns come into their very own as a result of when you take a look at the machine merely from the attitude of its elements, then Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional appears to be like just like the winner. However as Lumafield says in its weblog: “Meta’s two headsets exhibit a hanging financial system of means,” and, “the frugal development and best-in-class worth of the gadgets is as spectacular a feat as Apple’s elegant imaginative and prescient assertion.”
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This class turns into clearer once you view the headset as an entire, particularly once you peer via its outer shell and see the inside workings that make it tick. The know-how provides us an X-ray view into the beating coronary heart of the know-how.
Wish to see extra? Lumafield has detailed 3D reconstructions of the headsets on its web site you could discover.
