Oculus Quest is the company’s first mobile headset to offer full positional tracking, and also its first to be able to run a handful of top PC VR titles that have been ported to work with the headset. To do so, Oculus managed to cram everything needed for the experience inside a shell that’s hardly larger than the original Rift headset. A teardown of Oculus Quest shows how it all fits inside.

Jad Meouchy, co-founder & CTO of BadVR, shared with us high-resolution photos of his Oculus Quest teardown. In his own words: “Been waiting years for a device like this to exist. So of course the moment it arrived, I tore it apart. Didn’t even turn it on first.” Let’s just hope he had another one on hand….

Image courtesy BadVR, Jad Meouchy

In addition to serving as a useful disassembly guide for would-be tinkerers or DIY repairs, the teardown gives us a close-up view of the headset’s vital components.

With no obvious screws to be seen, Meouchy unceremoniously sliced the headset’s fabric cover off to reveal screws underneath. After removing a panel, he found that the battery is actually stored in the forehead portion of the headset. While there’s limited room for expanding the battery, it looks like it’s fairly accessible without bothering the other components (aside from disconnecting it from the mainboard), which should make battery replacements viable (the specific part, he found, is the Fujian YU10850–18001A, 3.85V / 3648 mAh / 14.0 Wh).

The battery is hiding in this metal assembly tucked into the forehead of the headset. | Image courtesy BadVR, Jad Meouchy

The front portion of the headset houses almost everything else, with ~15% of the space being dedicated to a fan which serves to cool the components and allow the Snapdragon 835 processor to punch above its weight-class in performance. Interestingly, the fan doesn’t appear to be directly connected to the heatpipes or any other component on the headset, but instead appears to serve as a general purpose cooler to keep air moving across all of the components, with the gap between the fabric portion of the headset and the front shell apparently being a key pathway for airflow.

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Image courtesy BadVR, Jad Meouchy

Though powerful for a mobile VR headset, this is still a smartphone processor we’re talking about here; Oculus has previously compared it to an Xbox 360 or PS3 in terms of performance.

Image courtesy BadVR, Jad Meouchy

Around the mainboard we can also see the headset’s four cameras mounted at very purposeful angles at the corners. The cameras are essential to enabling 6DOF tracking on both the headset and the controllers; their views are also merged together to allow a pass-through vision mode on the headset which is used to trace the boundary of your playspace.

Image courtesy BadyVR, Brian Wong

Meouchy’s colleague Brian Wong also cracked open the quest controllers apart and detailed the process here.

Update: Reddit user Przemo-c pointed us to a very cool ‘inside’ look at Oculus Quest via CT scan:

You can also see a scan of the Touch controllers here.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • JesuSaveSouls

    Imagine your in 2013 around the time the first vr unit came available,the dk1 and along side it was a prototype quest available for 10000 loaded with only two games.It would probably go quick or get auctioned for a million or billions.Now we have what could only be imagined.Only what is more real than seen is what is written in the bible.Jesus is the same yesterday,today and forever.Jesus is mankind’s sole hope !

    • MC AZ

      Seriously dude

    • dk

      so u r saying if u imagine magic stories being real it could be true …yep make believe is the strategy of every religion

    • oompah

      ur body is the vr suit

  • Adderstone VR

    Any idea of possibility to DIY upgrade a 64Gb version to a 128Gb?
    Or….perhaps even higher?

    • Shawn MacDonell

      Doubtful, likely uses soldered-on NAND flash memory storage not unlike all smartphones where you’d also need to source a supplier for said flash memory in order to replace it yourself + soldering it in-place on the Quest’s main board.

      It could possibly be achievable but would be a massive headache of a process.

      • helldude_impersonator

        thanks king, been looking for someone to spit some technical shit out about how this defo will not be happening

        • Steamrot

          That and you need to figure out a way to extract and flash the Quest’s ROM and similar software onto it which is possible but is also a pain in the ass.

          Yeah, you need a hot air gun to unsolder it. Just spend the extra $50-$100 depending on the supplier and you should be good.

  • Ted Joseph

    Unfortunately, the strap is way too uncomfortable for me. I wish they released it with the Rift S halo design. Haven’t used it much either than VR Boxing…

    • Kappa Chino

      I did the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap swap and it’s like a whole new headset. I went from it being uncomfortable after an hour to playing until the battery dies. It’s night and day.

      • Ted Joseph

        Do you have a video how to do this?

        • kuhpunkt
          • Ted Joseph

            Nice! Just ordered it from Amazon! Thanks. This may get me back on the Quest again!

          • Rinnsi

            i went from barely using it, due to headache issues, to playing VR poker last night for 6 hours before realizing i spent 6 hours on it with this new strap

    • Przemo-c

      The flexibility of the back part of the strap with the added weight in the front makes it less comfortable for me as well the back part doesn’t grab my scull as well as Rift OG did.

  • Justin Davis

    Can I take the battery out and move it to the back of the strap with some sort of extension cable?

  • Moe Curley

    That’s not a tear down… that’s a vandalization ;)

  • Ratm

    Battery should had been at the back of the head outside the strap a smart end eazy to replace position,they got greedy and payed for it.

    • Przemo-c

      Yeah I’d love to see a version like early santa cruz with compute unit and battery on the back. For balance. But it’s a tradeof when sitting down and resting your head. and everything packed into a single body so no ribbons/cables just a “dumb” strap.

      • Ratm

        Wouldn’t be much to make it grab -on-off from the back of the headset so you can rest and also replace the battery ,maybe even -on the fly using a small reserve…
        To much they could do…They just wanned it to last just 2 years ;)

        • Przemo-c

          Simplifying the design by pavking everything in one shell was probably a cost cutting measure and a way to increase relianility and allow to be used for media as go is. It would be nice if the battery was under a door for replacement or to connect a cable and place it elswhere but that would requre stronger shell introduces codts of manufacturing and likelyhood of users scrreing somethomg up . Personally I’d love morr options slightly higher cost. But o can understsnd their current approach

          • RANDOMPLAYER717

            Read before you press “enter”

        • WyrdestGeek

          Generally I’m against planned obsolescence, but if VR and AR don’t keep moving fast enough to make this obsolete in two years, then the industry’s in trouble anyway.

    • Zbyszek

      There is always a problem with cables breaking. If you don’t have stiff head band, the wires are constantly being mangled and this doesn’t bode well for their longevity.

  • bud01

    That scan at the end which showed the inside was impressive. (in the vid)

    • Przemo-c

      They really crammed a lot in there.

  • Bear Cat

    That’s good the USB-C connector is not on the main-board and can be replaced when broken (I think from the look of it) if you still have the “violated” Quest lol can you take a few more closeup shot of the USB-C connector? I am preparing to re-engineer that flaw port. Honestly wireless charging should have been added to the Quest, or we can do it ourselves.

    Thanks

  • Pesoen

    so i should be able to create a small cooler fan on top, blowing down the crack to keep it cool when it’s stressed from charging and playing at the same time..

    found a blower style cooler i had from an old laptop, and gonna make a small 18650 cell holder on the back of the straps, and wire it up with a switch.

    i don’t expect any overclocking(don’t think it’s even possible), but i hope there will be no slow downs on the games i play when i play for 2+ hours.

    this is also very DIY, with tape being my first way of mounting it, no 3d printer(not working yet) so no professional mounts or anything, just gonna slap it on, and see if it works first.

    • Pesoen

      looking at another post i see the front is just pure plastic, so maybe adding holes(carefully or by taking it apart first) and a fan will work better. gonna look into it. guessing the plastic is at least 1mm away from the parts inside, so gonna use something to prevent holes from going too deep, and start with 1mm holes, then up it by 1 until i am through the outer layer.

      this is however my backup plan in case the blower fan on top idea fails horribly.

    • Pesoen

      and just in case someone asks, i use an 18650 cell outside because i don’t want more leads going to the quest, and i don’t intend on opening it up, and taking 5 volts from somewhere inside. the blower will simply attach outside, maybe clip on. and be easy to remove with no visible modifications to the quest(easy to sell it later if i need to)