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4 headset replacements in 4 months

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 28, 2024
86 replies
15540 views

Can anyone let me know if you have had to return your Brand New Meta Quest 3 Headset to Meta because it just stopped working for no reason? I am literally now on my 4th headset replacement (all refurbished replacements) in 4 months of buying my original! The last replacement lasted for exactly 4 days before it stopped working. 4 days of use and now it has to be returned again. I am wondering if I am the only one experiencing this or is it something that is happening to others?

Best answer by MainMan68

I think the issue is with sweat getting into the sensors of the headset. I use mine primarily for Les Mills Body Combat. Has Meta looked into sweat as the root cause of these types of failures?

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T

teesnjeesAuthor

Participant

I agree with you all CosmicMeerkat5770 and rightdoc -- Meta should let people know if they are using for activities that produce sweat to insure moisture does not touch the headset in any way, shape or form. It's could save a lot of people from returning multiple headsets. Thanks for your feedback - hoping Meta will either fix the issue or at least make usage recommendations based on our experiences.

A

Anonymous

It's clear that to keep costs down on the headsets, meta's cheaping out on the environmental protection aspects of the electronics. Perhaps the individual sweaty game manufacturers should highlight the best practice to ensure headset longevity.

Game/exercise in a cool room.

Game/exercise with a fan blowing at you.

Have a fan extraction interface, or an open interface, or a mesh interface, or remove the interface and have it floating on a halo strap.

caesarrom

Participant

these memory chips are of very poor quality. You can check it yourself by disassembling your headset. so I think everyone will have the same problem in the future. It's just a matter of time.

Are you kidding? Are you probably an employee of the meta company? Do you understand what you are writing? Pay 550 dollars in order to then run around with a fan to cool the headset? It seems that you, Mark Zuckerberg, are defending your company here when thousands of people who suffered from this company write complaints on all sites about the poor quality of the headset

Choleni

Honored Contributor

caesar_rom not to cool the headset.....to cool yourself, so you are not sweating as hell and prevent the headset from the sweat.

caesarrom

Participant

Yes of course. and also not to breathe)). why other brands do not have this problem and here it is a very serious problem

Choleni

Honored Contributor

Maybe other headsets aren't used for doing sweaty workouts as much as Quests??

But I also think that the headset should be better protected against damage caused by moisture.

caesarrom

Participant

other brands just have better quality chips. they don't break down as quickly as quest. I repeat that for that kind of money they could have made a better quality headset and not this junk. it's just a scam I took apart the motherboard circuit there are a lot of cheap low-quality parts. as proof we have thousands of victims with broken headsets. if you compare with other brands there are no such number of victims in any other brand of virtual reality headsets

caesarrom

Participant

that's the whole point. I've disassembled and repaired various headsets. headsets of other brands and non-brands. But I can say that there is much better quality for this money. I won't name the brand. And as for the number of victims, you just don't want to accept the truth and don't want to do an analysis because everything is fine with you and you were lucky with the headset. As an electronics engineer with many years of experience, I can say that there are successful models that came out with good quality, but in this case there is a lot of product with a defect. If you need evidence, then turn on the analysis and go online and see how many complaints and victims there are with a similar problem. You need evidence for everything, but you can't just analyze it yourself?

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1hdau8h/oculus_quest_2_bricked_after_updating_to_meta/

On this site and on similar forums you can find thousands of complaints thousands of victims you just do not want to accept the truth and continue to defend the interests of the META company. You are probably a seller or manager of the META company.. but this does not give you the right to justify the company. there is a problem and it needs to be solved and not look for excuses. the company received money for its product but the quality leaves much to be desired. and the company is obliged to eliminate this problem. if the company ignores this problem then in the near future it will face bankruptcy.

Choleni

Honored Contributor

Okay, you are experienced and I guess you know what you are talking about.....so I accept, when you say the components could be better...

....but what has the bricked headset issue to do with cheap components on the headset?
That was a software problem.

Btw. I'm just a forum member😅.... not paid by Meta in any kind.

caesarrom

Participant

that's the point. the problem of a brick headset is directly related to low-quality microcircuits, namely the memory chip where the operating system firmware is stored. the memory chip is overheated and fails. accordingly, the memory does not work correctly, accordingly, the operating system of the headset cannot boot. the Meta company installs a memory chip from the Hynix company on the motherboard. Hynix makes very bad chips that have a large number of defects. a normal manufacturer installs a memory chip from the Samsung company. As practice has shown, Samsung has good quality and is more resistant to overheating

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TheDude55327

Participant

Yes, Meta are liars. They have stolen from all of us, and don't care. I'm on my second sorry excuse for a replacement myself, and i LITERALLY only cycled my battery in my unit 7 times. I don't have a car, so I have to take a taxi to FedEx every time; and IM DONE WITH THIS!!!! STOP ABUSING YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!!!😡

They LOVE taking our nice new units away, and giving us garbage 🗑 They're thieves. They have ruined VR for me.

caesarrom

Participant

that's why my friends and I have given up on Meta products and are now using another brand

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TheDude55327

Participant

I've MORE than given up. I HATE META'S GUTS!!!! THEY. HAVE ROBBED US!!

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SpaceBass11

New Participant

TL;DR Had black screen tracking error. Controllers not detected. I factory reset my headset, then stripped the headset and controllers down to bare bones. No head strap, no face plate, no controller covers, no controller battery covers. Booted headset to initial setup screen. Put brand new batteries in both controllers. Rebooted headset. Initialized headset and everything worked.

Posting here as I also ran into this infamous black screen with no tracking error, but I was able to fix my headset, which I'll get to. During troubleshooting I had hand tracking enabled so I was able to click use without tracking options, but controllers were not detected. For my case I learned both my controller batteries were dead. I had only replaced one controller battery but could not get it detected. Hand tracking worked fine and pass-thru would only work if I put headset in travel mode. You could see in settings menu headset tracking was toggled off and could not be toggled on. However, if in travel mode you could try and turn it on but it would take you back to the black tracking error screen. I used developer mode adb while hooked to PC to pull logs. Tried couple of adb commands like toggle boundary and clear cache, then factory reset the headset. Upon setup it would not detect my controllers, even the one controller with good battery.

At this point I took the custom head strap off the headset and the face plate off, so it was just the headset itself. I took the rubber covers off the controllers and left the battery covers off. After that, I put a new battery in my second controller (still no detection in headset) and rebooted the headset. Upon reboot both controllers were detected and I was able to initialize the headset. Was it because I took everything off the headset/controllers, or because both needed new batteries at same time, or a combination... I don't know. Haven't seen that error before with dead controllers though.

I'm interested in the sweat and/or condensation theory. I haven't seen a single photo or video to show moisture on the headset itself.

Condensation occurs when humid air contacts a surface that is colder than the air's dew point:

- Warm air (like vapor from your skin) carries moisture.

- When it touches a cooler surface, the air cools down.

- Cooler air can’t hold as much moisture → moisture condenses into water droplets on that surface.

Inside the Quest 3 = Warm/Hot

- Internal components generate heat (from the SoC, sensors, displays).

- Limited airflow and close skin contact raise internal temperature even more.

- As a result, the interior surfaces are typically warmer than your face.

So if the surface (like the Meta Quest 3) is hotter than your face:

- No condensation will occur.

- The water vapor stays in the air.

- It may evaporate even faster due to heat.

What COULD Cause Moisture Issues

- Using the headset in extremely humid environments (e.g. 100% humidity in Florida summer)

- Rapid temperature changes (like moving from cold air conditioning into a hot space instantly)

The "Capillary Sweat Damage" Claim:

"The reason for the failures seems to be that sweat seeps between the two parts of the facial interface due to capillary action. It collects there, eventually penetrating through the mounting holes into the headset and can damage the electronics."

This theory, while technically plausible, lacks direct evidence such as photos or videos. If sweat is the issue here due to CAPILLARY then for this to be true:

- Sweat would need to visibly accumulate between the layers of the facial interface.

- You would expect the area behind the interface to be noticeably wet upon removal.

- A substantial amount of liquid would be required for capillary action to draw sweat through the interface seams and into mounting holes — then somehow reach and damage internal circuitry.

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