TheApple Vision Prois Apple’s first Mixed Reality headset, and its first new entry into a product category since the Apple Watch. It offers an experience that amazes many people who use it. But it has drawbacks, and its price not only makes it unreachable for most consumers, it forces users and reviewers to question where this product is supposed to fit in our ecosystem and daily lives.
Apple Vision Pro
The Apple Vision Pro is a remarkable piece of technology that is genuinely fun to use and put a bit of excitement back into the technology space again. But it’s not perfect, and its issues may very well question if spatial computers or mixed reality headsets deserve a place in our day-to-day lives.
A Headset Design That Is Very Apple
Let’s start with the design of the headset. Regarding the materials used, the headset is made of glass, some plastic on the front of it (JerryRigEverythingrevealed that), and aluminum. The headset clearly shows the Apple design language in multiple ways.
For example, the orange pull tabs for removing the bands remind me of the orange on the Apple Watch Ultra and the Digital Crown and side button of the Apple Watch. Even with those design features from other Apple products, the headset still looks new, futuristic, and sleek. It feels high-quality, which it should, since it costs a lot.
The Vision Pro is a beautiful piece of hardware, and I really like how it looks.
Comfort and Fit That Can Hit and Miss
There has been a lot of reporting and discussion around the comfort and the weight of the Vision Pro online. Arguably, the most critical aspect of this headset is how comfortable it is for people. Because if it’s not suitable for you, you will not want to use it for long sessions, or at all.
There are two bands that come with the Vision Pro: the Solo Knit Band and the Dual Loop Band. The Solo Knit Band is by far the coolest-looking one and uses an incredibly soft material. However, the Dual Loop Band might be the most comfortable because it helps with the weight of the headset. In my use, the Solo Knit Band put a fair amount of pressure on my forehead to keep the headset snug, so for longer periods of use, the Dual Loop Band was better for me.
There are three components to the Apple Vision Pro that need to align with the individual to make it comfortable: the Light Seal, the Light Seal Cushion, and the band. If you try the Vision Pro or decide to buy one, you will have to play around with all of these components to find the right fit. When you do a demo or go on Apple’s website to order a Vision Pro, you have to do a scan of your face with an iPhone or iPad that uses Face ID to find the right Light Seal.
When I ordered my Vision Pro, I was given the 21W Light Seal, which appears to be a popular one. Don’t worry if you are concerned you will be given the wrong Light Seal, though. You can swap it out in an Apple Store. I swapped mine out for a 22W Light Seal, thinking it would be a better fit, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.
So I had another 21W on order, since that’s the one that seemed to be the best fit for me and was told Apple would refund me once it received the 22W Light Seal. I can’t stress enough that if you plan to buy a Vision Pro, get it fitted in an Apple Store when you pick it up and take your time to make sure it fits you well.
One thing many people have noted when trying the Apple Vision Pro is the device’s weight. Since the headset is mainly made of glass and aluminum, it certainly isn’t light. The Vision Pro can weigh 600-650g (depending on which headband and Light Seal you use). While it wasn’t a dealbreaker, at least for me, I want to see Apple reduce the weight for the second generation because I still felt it in my usage.
Ultimately, comfort with this headset is not universal. It depends on the person, which band works for the user, the Light Seal and Light Cushion. Either way, the headset is not light. You feel it, and overall, wearing the headset can make you feel uncomfortable over a long period, as it did for me.
Eye and Hand Tracking That Is Impressive, but Not Perfect
To navigate through the Vision Pro’s operating system, you use your eyes and hands to point and click around and use your voice to fill in text. To select something, you tap your thumb and pointer finger together while looking at what you want to choose. you may also just tap on an application to navigate it, similar to using an app on a touch screen. The eye tracking in the Vision Pro is on point. I didn’t experience much delay when trying to select something.
However, that’s not to say there isn’t a learning curve. When I started using Vision Pro, I would notice that I sometimes would accidentally select something, even if I took a quick glance at it.
The hand tracking is pretty good, too, but it’s not bulletproof. I would say it works 85% of the time. Essentially, your hands need to be in view of the cameras on the headset; otherwise, they can struggle with registering a tap. There were also times when, even if my hands were in the general area where the headset should pick it up, the Vision Pro would sometimes just not register anything.
Does it ruin the overall experience? Not for me, but it was annoying when I encountered it. Hopefully, it’s something related to software and can be improved in the future. Regardless, the hand gestures you use to navigate Vision Pro are intuitive, and you’re able to pick up on them fairly quickly.
Vision Pro Experience: A Sneak Peek of the Future
The Augmented Reality experience that Apple Vision Pro provides is the flagship attraction. Being able to grab and move applications with your hands in your space instantly feels like you’re living in the future. And that feeling leaves an imprint on you slightly. When I stopped using the Vision Pro, I wanted to grab the windows on my monitor to move them around and bring them closer to me.
The Vision Pro does make you feel like your apps are in your environment. For example, you’re able to be working at a standing desk with windows all around you, and when you move the desk up, your apps can move with it, which is incredible. They also project shadows in your space underneath them. The quality of the displays in the Vision Pro helps the experience make it as good as it is. There are two displays, one for each eye and they use mico-OLED technology.
They are above 4K in resolution too, so applications and text in apps look great when you focus on it. It’s a major reason why watching content on the headset is very enjoyable, especially 3D movies via Apple TV.
One area that I truly wish was better with the Apple Vision Pro is the field of view (FOV). Apple’s ads and marketing will make you think that when you put on the headset, you see everything like you do in the real world. That’s simply a stretch, in my opinion.
When you put on the headset, you basically see a black border surrounding the screens. And it’s not discrete, it’s instantly noticeable. It simply doesn’t do this headset justice.
The Vision Pro’s productivity features are what initially attracted me to owning the headset. To be able to work with your existing setup, alongside applications floating around your space, to me, is a case for the future of productivity. However, the headset didn’t fully live up to my expectations in this area.
When you look at another display with the Vision Pro’s passthrough (which we will cover later), text can be fairly blurry unless you are pretty close to the monitor. Also, the discomfort of wearing a headset can come into play if you plan to work for multiple hours. I think if you really want to work in the Vision Pro and have a good experience, you have to use the apps in the headset.
I didn’t end up using the Vision Pro for productivity much because of the above passthrough issues, missing apps (likeUlysses), and the burden of having a headset on your face. However, I have no doubt that Augmented Reality will have more of a role in productivity at some point down the line.
On the flip side, one feature I truly enjoyed about the Vision Pro that I didn’t expect was using it to view photos and videos. I had a feeling of being more connected to my memories when viewing them in the headset compared to on a regular display. Using the Vision Pro for this reinforced my love for technology, since it can enhance the human experience when used properly.
In addition to taking photos and videos from your phone to view on the headset, the Vision Pro can take 3D spatial pictures and videos. Taking videos on the Vision Pro and playing them back is another experience that is a bit difficult to describe. It almost feels like you are truly reliving the moment you captured.
I took a video of myself walking around my office, picking up my phone, and opening a closet door; it felt like it was actually happening again. But it’s not perfect. I could still see part of my environment fade in during the video, which reminded me that it was not real.
There is one fatal flaw with creating these kinds of videos though: you must wear the Vision Pro to take videos like this. In myiPhone 15 Pro Max review, I said that the iPhone needed the ability to take spatial videos and that most people wouldn’t want to wear the Vision Pro to take photos and videos, and I still stand by that.
Videos taken on the Vision Pro are noticeably more immersive, certainly credited to the difference in hardware. It’s great that the ability to take these kinds of videos is fantastic. However, its Achilles heel is that you must wear a relatively heavy and delicate headset to get the same quality.
Lastly, the Vision Pro features Virtual Reality environments that let you visit places such as Yosemite, the moon, and more. Even though the Vision Pro is mainly an Augmented Reality product, it still provides some pretty cool built-in Virtual Reality capabilities. In the OS, you can easily switch from passthrough to a VR environment by turning the digital crown and looking at the environment icon that shows up in the headset.
The Vision Pro even does some small but noticeable things to make you feel immersed in these spaces, such as making the clouds move in the sky, or playing environment-specific ambient noise. You can still interact with all of your apps just like in the passthrough mode too. I didn’t use the VR features of the headset often myself, but they are nice to have if you find yourself wanting to at least feel like you are somewhere else or look at something different.
The experience of using the Vision Pro is not perfect, but despite the shortcomings, similar to using my first iPhone or folding phone (iPhone 3G and the Galaxy Z Fold, for those who are curious), the new and exciting feeling I got when using a brand-new piece of technology was there. Interacting with your content and applications in this form feels super cool and futuristic.
Specs That Elevate the Experience and Price
The Vision Pro has tons of high-end specs that make you understand why the headset costs $3,500 to start. According to Apple, the Vision Pro uses 12 cameras: two high-resolution main cameras, four downward cameras, two cameras flanking the sides, and two cameras inside each eye socket that enable eye tracking. Additionally, the headset uses a LiDAR scanner and a TrueDepth camera for 3D mapping, as well as two IR illuminators to help make the hand and head tracking as good as it is.
The Vision Pro doesn’t use Face ID or Touch ID for biometric authentication. It uses what Apple calls Optic ID. Simply put, the headset scans your eyes to unlock it. During my time using the headset, Optic ID worked well in the beginning.
It worked when I had the 21W Light Seal, but when I switched to the 22W, Optic ID stopped functioning entirely. I tried setting up Optic ID with the new Light Seal, but that didn’t fix it. It’s possible that my eyes are too far away from the cameras with the 22W for Optic ID to work.
In terms of silicon, the Apple Vision Pro uses two chips. The M2 chip, the central processor on board, powers the experience. There is also a new dedicated chip for processing the cameras and sensors, called the R1 chip. The R1 makes it to where the Vision Pro only has a 12ms delay with the passthrough video.
Breaking down the M2 chip, it’s the 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU variant with 16GB of RAM. For context, it’s the same chip that is in Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air. The Vision Pro also supports up to 1TB of storage.
A Passthrough That Mimics Reality, But It’s Not 100%
Certain features the Apple Vision Pro includes, such as passthrough video and EyeSight, are meant to help you not feel cut off from the world and others around you. We’ll touch on EyeSight later, but the passthrough capability allows you to see the world around you while using applications. How this works is that Apple Vision Pro uses several cameras, sensors, and high-quality displays to show you your environment.
Some people who got early demos of the Vision Pro described the passthrough as reality and couldn’t see the difference. That’s not the case if you know the shortcomings of cameras and use the headset in non-perfect conditions. Again, the headset uses cameras to create this image, since it is not transparent.
You can see the cameras struggle in low light scenarios; sometimes, the eye lenses look like they have smudges on them even though they don’t, for example. Another instance that will remind you that what you see isn’t truly reality is if you put your hands up against an application, you can see some kind of outline effect around your hands, and your arm will fade slightly.
Using the Vision Pro doesn’t fully make you believe the world is exactly like it is in the headset, but make no mistake, the passthrough video isn’t terrible. In decent lighting, the passthrough video looks pretty good, and you can still operate normally in the world, thanks to impressively minimal delay. I was able to walk around my house while using the headset with no problems.
Another aspect of the passthrough feed to mention is when you are in a VR environment, and someone comes up to talk to you; they will essentially break through your space so you can see them. It’s impressive how well it works, and surprisingly, it doesn’t feel jarring when it happens, either.
The passthrough doesn’t match reality perfectly, as expected, but I think it does help with not feeling as isolated as I originally expected it to be in the Vision Pro. And the ability for the Vision Pro to bring people into your view when you are in VR is something else.
visionOS: A Good Start, But Updates Are Needed
The Vision Pro runs a brand-new operating system called visionOS. The operating system comes with a handful of native first-party Vision Pro apps. Here is the list of official Vision Pro apps from Apple that you can use right now:
Apple’s other apps, such as Calendar, Books, Maps, and more, are not official Vision Pro apps, which is one of the reasons why visionOS feels unfinished. You can, however, run the iPad version of these apps. When using them, you can even position the apps to be in either portrait or landscape mode, just like on an iPad.
The iPad version of apps on the Vision Pro are not bad at all, and still even show shadows in your environment, but they still don’t take full advantage of the headset. This problem will eventually be resolved, since more and more developers will likely update their apps for Vision Pro. Currently, Apple says there are now over 1000 apps for Vision Pro.
There are other examples of how visionOS still has a ways to go. Personas are in beta. If you forgot the passcode for your Vision Pro, at one point, you had to go to the Apple Store to reset it, according toBloomberg. Thankfully, visionOS 1.0.3 fixed that.
Overall, I enjoyed using visionOS, despite it not feeling complete. If you have used iOS or iPadOS, you’ll know your way around visionOS.
EyeSight Is a Great Idea That Needs Work
EyeSight is a feature that digitally shows eyes on the front of the Vision Pro using a screen. The primary purpose of this feature is to help with isolation and make people feel like they are talking to you normally, other than just looking at a blank front or the effect that happens when you are in a VR environment. I’ll keep this short: EyeSight needs work.
It looks pretty low quality at many angles, especially if you get up close to the headset. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here’s what my eyes looked like on the headset.
I like the idea of EyeSight, but the execution is not as great as I expected. It’s possible that Apple can improve it over time, but you can see pixels when you get close to the outward-facing display, so some hardware improvements will likely be needed in the next generation.
Two-Hour Battery That Holds Up
One of the Apple Vision Pro’s most controversial parts is its battery life. The Vision Pro’s external battery is rated for two hours of general use, with up to two and a half hours when watching videos.
Since the Vision Pro is not meant to be worn for extended periods (Apple even says during the setup process that you should take frequent breaks if you feel any discomfort), I didn’t find the battery life to be a major limitation during my usage. In fact, I actually think the limited battery life is a good thing because you could argue that this headset still disconnects people from reality and their surroundings more than a smartphone does.
If you want to use it for extended period of time though, you can connect a power adapter to the battery to keep the headset powered, or use another external battery pack to charge the Vision Pro’s battery.
Should You Buy Apple Vision Pro?
It’s hard to recommend theApple Vision Proto most consumers because of three factors: long-term comfort, price, and practicality. After struggling with these three things and some eye strain issues that appeared to be linked to using the headset, I returned the Vision Pro for now. I may repurchase it once a use case presents itself to warrant the price, more apps become available, and if the eye strain issues I experienced end up not being directly related to the Vision Pro.
If you are comfortable spending $3,500 and can find a reason to use the Vision Pro that makes it worth the price to you, it’s an incredible piece of technology to own. Despite being a first-generation device, I loved using it, even though I ended up returning it. It makes me excited about the future of personal consumer technology, and I will be watching Apple’s Vision product line very closely in the coming years.
