Project Phoenix: Everything We Know So Far About Meta's Next Headset

What the report says

It has been widely reported by multiple reputable sources that Meta is working on a premium, ultralight, open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck, intended to occupy a similar high-end position to Meta Quest Pro, but in a much sleeker form factor.Here is everything we know so far about Meta's next VR/MR device.Phoenix Is A Passthrough VR (Mixed Reality) HeadsetThe headset project now known by the codename Phoenix was initially reported by The Information all the way back in 2024. In that report, an earlier prototype known as Puffin was described as "a bulky pair of glasses" that weighed less than 110 grams, yet was an opaque VR-style headset with pancake lenses and passthrough cameras, with its light weight being achieved by offloading both the battery and computing hardware to an external tethered puck.

This is distinct from devices like Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, which only offload the battery. The report describes Puffin as not including controllers, instead leveraging Eye and Hand Tracking to use the gaze-and-pinch input scheme introduced by Apple Vision Pro, and later utilized by Meta's own Orion AR Glasses prototype. Meta reportedly hoped to ship the device in 2027.This came shortly after The Information's reporting that Meta had canceled a more direct Quest Pro successor and Vision Pro competitor codenamed La Jolla due to concerns over the costs of the micro-OLED displays and other components.

This was later confirmed by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in an interview with then–The Verge reporter Alex Heath.In essence, Meta made a choice to prioritize comfort and wearability, rather than having the best possible specs in its next high-end VR/MR device. When Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth was asked “What do you think is a worthy tech tradeoff to get VR headsets smaller and lighter?” during a November 2025 Instagram "Ask Me Anything" session, his response strongly hinted at this shift in philosophy:"You know, I love this question because so often the features I get asked for are more features.

Key details

People want to know, when’s this feature I want coming, and when’s that coming, and when’s this coming, and when can I get more field of view and more of everything?And I always try to tell you, well, these are real trade-offs, and be careful what you wish for, because there’s headsets out there that deliver the thing that you want and nobody’s using them, and this is why I think a lot of them are not being used:I think lightness is premium on the headset. I think it’s more important than a lot of other features.John Carmack used to say, “Simplicate and add lightness,” which is, uh, from an aeronautical engineer, if I recall correctly.So, yeah, this is the right question to ask.

And the answer is, like, I think we can. I think there’s a lot of trades that we can make. Instead of taking the wins from each generation and pouring it into more features, you can take those wins and pour it into lightness and smallness, and that’s probably the right call."Phoenix Comes Into Focus Reports regarding the device were quiet for some time, but in June 2025 UploadVR learned from multiple people familiar with the matter that Meta was prioritizing an ultralight open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck for 2026 over a traditional Quest 4.Before this, in July 2024, The Information reported on a 2026 Quest 4 product line that would have a budget model and a premium model, codenamed Pismo Low and Pismo High, and a focus group listing found in October 2024 suggested that at least one of these models would have both Eye and Face Tracking.

Both of these devices were effectively canceled, and the existing prototypes became internal development units.At that point, the ultralight open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck became Meta's focus, with the goal of shipping it in 2026. It was reported that the device would run the same Horizon OS as Quest headsets, but be strongly focused on virtual screens for productivity and entertainment, and other seated mixed reality and VR use cases. A new prospective traditional Quest 4 was planned to ship no earlier than 2027.Just days later in June 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta plans to release a "premium virtual-reality headset" codenamed Loma in 2026, which looks "similar to a large pair of eyeglasses" with a puck — clearly referring to the same headset.

More from the announcement

Meta often uses separate codenames for projects and the hardware candidates within those projects.