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Apple Vision Pro Review

by Josh Teder

What Happened to Apple Vision Pro? In the Six Months Since I Bought Mine, the narrative around this product has changed drastically from “Apple’s visionary new product is the most technologically advanced ever” to “the Apple Vision Pro is a dud, flop, and a miss.” But why? What the hell happened in the course of six months to justify that change? Is the Vision Pro a flop, and would I recommend buying one?

My Experiences with the Apple Vision Pro

Novelty Experiences

First, let me take you through what I’ve used mine for. The first big thing I’ve been using the Vision Pro for is novelty experiences. The dinosaur encounter is the best example of this. Oh, it’s looking right at me, holy sh-, holy! I knew it would do this: your walls open up into the Jurassic age, and a giant dinosaur looks right at you as it steps through your living room. Other apps like Kung Fu Panda’s meditation lessons and Disney Marvel’s What If offer similar experiences. What makes these experiences so novel and compelling is how the Vision Pro can make you feel like the characters and creatures you’re seeing can also see you. While yes, other headsets like the Quest 3 offer similar experiences, the Vision Pro sells this illusion of presence way more thanks to its better displays, graphics, and performance.

Immersive Environments

Another immersive experience can transport you to Mount Hood or the surface of the Moon in what Apple calls environments. These are mainly places in the real world that have been recreated to make it feel like you’re right there, though some apps like Disney Plus and Max have created their own, like the throne room from Game of Thrones. The purpose of these environments is to help block out everything around you so you can focus on completing a certain task, or if you just want to have a space to have a giant screen to watch something on. Meditating in these environments can also be fun. Apple’s updated meditation app for the Vision Pro has this very soothing 3D breathing guide.

Watching Others Use the Vision Pro

Now, one of the best parts of owning a Vision Pro is watching other people try it on via guest mode. It’s hilarious seeing other people react to the dinosaur coming right at them. But again, that’s novelty. It’s the thing that gets you excited about a product and then perhaps buy it, but it’s rarely the thing that actually keeps you using it over the long term.

Apple Immersive Video

And that leads me to the Vision Pro’s next big feature, which is Apple Immersive Video. Apple Immersive Video is a new format that makes you feel like you’ve been put right in the middle of a 180° IMAX movie. The people and animals you see feel real. I just couldn’t stop smiling watching this mini-doc about a rhino sanctuary, especially in the shot where it just looks like the rhinos are right in front of you, and you could just reach out and touch them. It sells the illusion that well, and through an Apple Immersive Video trailer, Apple has actually shown off what live sports footage can look like in this format, and it is also just insane. It makes you feel like you’re sitting courtside at a Lakers game or you’re on the sidelines during the Super Bowl. It is by far the most compelling sports viewing experience I’ve ever experienced outside of actually being at the game. To me, it’s one of the most compelling things about Vision Pro, and there’s more content coming to the Vision Pro, including the first-ever scripted show in this format from Oscar-winning director Edward Berger.

Watching 2D Movies and TV Shows

Speaking of content, the last main thing I’ve been using the Vision Pro for is watching 2D movies and TV shows. Unless you have a giant theater in your home, nothing else will come close to the experience of watching content on Vision Pro. This headset is the same to TVs and movie theaters as what the AirPods are to stereo systems and speakers. And yes, you can watch 3D movies as well, though I’ve mainly stuck to 2D movies as some 3D movies with a screen as large as what you get in the Vision Pro. I’ve noticed it can cause me to get a bit motion sick. Now, while I don’t use the Vision Pro as much as my TV, there are two main use cases where I found I prefer it to watch content on. One is when I’m traveling and I don’t have a great TV setup, like when I was at the beach and I wanted to watch the latest episode of House of the Dragon. I’ve also found it useful for when I want to watch TV during the day, where unlike my TV, there’s no glare from surrounding windows. The sound quality of the Vision Pro’s dual driver audio pods is actually pretty good. I didn’t immediately feel the need to reach for my earbuds when I was watching something. However, using a set of Apple’s newest version of AirPods Pro with the USB-C case, those do significantly improve the audio experience of the Vision Pro by blocking out background noise and providing way better bass.

What I Haven’t Used the Vision Pro For

Work

So, what have I not used the Vision Pro for? First is using it for work. You can use it with a Mac to create a giant virtual Mac window, which is great for when you’re working off a MacBook or MacBook Air and want to view content on a larger screen. The second work use case is having a bunch of apps in multiple virtual windows around you, but I find that use case less compelling. It looks cool, and it does allow you to context-switch faster, meaning you can move from one task to another and then back to the other task, but that context-switching is more mentally taxing. I do like that I can just move a window completely out of view to focus on another window, though. Now, would I use Vision Pro to replace my studio display? No, using the studio display as my monitor is just more comfortable. Depending on the person and the situation, I can see a use case for when you’re traveling without a monitor and using the Vision Pro with your MacBook for quick spurts when you want a larger display. The environments can be nice to work in because they help block out all the distractions around you. It’s like noise cancellation for your vision, though I’m not sure I’d have the courage to wear it in a coffee shop just yet.

Gaming

Gaming is another thing I haven’t found myself using the Vision Pro for. I’ve tried a few and looked at plenty of games out there for it, but they’re either too expensive for me to want to really try them out, or they just haven’t really appealed to me. Though I’m the type of gamer who plays very few games, of the games I do play, I sink a lot of hours into them, so this might just be a me thing.

FaceTime

FaceTime is another feature I haven’t used. I’ve used it once to scare my family members with my persona, which the Vision Pro creates when it scans your face during the initial setup.

Airline Travel

The last thing I haven’t found myself using Vision Pro for at all is specifically for airline travel, mainly because of its size. If you’re already bringing a carry-on bag and a personal item onto a plane, the Vision Pro, in its case, is going to take up a lot of space in one of those bags. Though yes, you could just take the Vision Pro like this and put it directly into one of your bags, given how much this device costs and how fragile some of its components are, I’m not sure I’d recommend doing that.

Is the Vision Pro a Flop?

So, if the Vision Pro can do some pretty incredible things, why did it fade so quickly, and why do people consider it a flop? Do I consider it a flop? No, not necessarily. It depends on how you look at the Vision Pro, its underlying technology platform, and the product itself.

The Underlying Technology Platform

When looking at the underlying technology platform, I think Apple actually did what it set out to do. The high-resolution micro OLED panels that are the tech responsible for creating such a crisp image with outstanding color reproduction and contrast. They also move the Vision Pro, which will actually scan the distance between your eyes to align the displays perfectly for that 3D depth effect, which is key to viewing everything in the Vision Pro, like spatial photos and videos. While the spatial photos and videos captured on my iPhone 15 Pro Max aren’t nearly as impressive as the ones captured on the Vision Pro itself, thanks to the better depth effect it creates, even today, I think spatial photos and videos are compelling, though somewhat limiting since better videos can only be taken with Vision Pro, and overall their resolution and clarity isn’t as crystal clear as you want it to be. Hopefully, that’ll improve over time. Oddly enough, for me, today panoramas are the most impressive photo/video feature on Vision Pro because it can recreate the perspective you had when you took the panorama, and it’s high-res, so it looks really impressive.

The LIDAR and Camera Suite

The LIDAR and camera suite is another incredible technology packed into Vision Pro. It’s the reason the tracking and placement of virtual objects in your environment feel so damn real. The camera suite also helps power Apple’s hand and eye tracking, which is actually quite good. It allows you to look at something with your eyes and pinch your fingers together to select it, though parts of the experience over the past six months have still felt a bit clunky, like when watching Apple Immersive Videos. Often, when you glance up, the little dot for the control center constantly appears with its default setting, though Apple has addressed this with a new hand gesture in VisionOS 2, which comes out later this year. And sometimes I find the eye tracking to be a bit fatiguing, honestly, when you’re always having to look at the thing you’re trying to select, and then sometimes you look at the wrong thing, you select the wrong thing, and yeah.

The R1 Chip

Now, the last major hardware breakthrough with Vision Pro is the R1 chip. To make the eye and hand tracking, as well as object placement, work so quickly that you can’t perceive any lag, Apple had to design a chip separate from the normal processor to run all of those tasks. Now, does the R1 chip mean you can’t get any motion sickness while wearing Vision Pro? No, but it does significantly reduce the chances of it happening. I’ve only noticed getting motion sick when watching a 3D movie, occasionally when walking around with a headset on and my eyes are dry, or in a situation where the tracking goes berserk, like when my Apple TV screensaver turned on in a dimly lit room, and the headset decided to track against that.

Issues with Product Experience

Overall, Vision Pro’s underlying technology is insanely impressive, but where the Vision Pro will likely feel like a flop to some is all of the issues with the product experience. The weight of the device is the most glaring issue. Apple Vision Pro can weigh 600 to 650 g depending on the light seal and headband configuration, and that’s just too damn heavy for most people. Worse, Apple shipped two pretty garbage headbands for distributing the weight of the Vision Pro around your head. The first is the Solo Knit band, which has an awesome adjustable dial and great fabric material. However, Apple decided not to ship it with the optional head strap, which they originally showed off at WWDC. They instead shipped the Solo Knit band with the additional Dual Loop band. The problem is the Dual Loop band is harder to adjust, and the bottom strap doesn’t cover as much of your head as the Solo Knit band does for weight distribution. Wearing the Vision Pro with the Solo Knit band without any additional type of head strap over top is typically going to cause the Vision Pro to dig into your cheeks or your forehead as you continue to wear it. To remedy that, you’ll either try to move it or further tighten it, and it’s easy to overtighten it to the point where it can cause headaches, migraines, and general facial pain. Wearing Vision Pro gave me the first migraine I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, and it got so bad that I just really regretted buying a Vision Pro.

Third-Party Solutions

But thankfully, a third-party accessory maker came to my rescue. I bought this SpeeDen Vision Pro headstrap, which is a similar design to what Apple originally showed off with the Solo Knit band and should have shipped. Even with this strap—and they’re not a sponsor, by the way—even with the strap, the Vision Pro does still feel heavy, yes, but it’s not unmanageable. Since getting it, I’ve been able to comfortably wear Vision Pro for well over an hour with no facial pain or headaches afterward. I’ve left a link to it and the other accessories for Vision Pro above.

Eye Strain and Fatigue

Now, there is one more comfort problem that still remains for me with Vision Pro, and that’s eye strain and eye fatigue. Because we all tend to blink less when we look at displays and screens, our eyes will then dry out and feel more strained and fatigued, which is why you’ve probably heard of the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, you’re supposed to look at something 20 ft away for at least 20 seconds. Well, that’s kind of hard to do in the Vision Pro if you’re watching a movie; it’s not really practical. Now, I’ve noticed this is worse when wearing contacts versus glasses with headsets like Vision Pro. If you do wear contacts, one thing I found that’s really helped me after a long session with Vision Pro is getting some eye drops like these and just putting a few drops in each eye to help refresh them and cause them not to be as dry.

Battery Life

Now, what about battery life? Two hours sounds like not that much, but when you take the eye strain plus the weight of the device into account, to me the battery life has actually been pretty adequate. And if you want to use Vision Pro longer, you always have the option to plug it in. Now, another reason why people might feel like the Vision Pro is a flop is app availability. Most of the apps just provide novelty, but again novelty can only get you so far. I just haven’t really found anything that’s kept me wanting to come back and use the headset outside of core content apps like the Max app, but the content app availability is lacking. Six months in, there’s not an official Netflix or YouTube app. Now, one reason developers of larger apps might have been more hesitant to develop for the Vision Pro is Apple’s business model for it. The company has called Vision Pro its first spatial computer. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word computer, I typically think of file systems, open protocols, and the ability to download software freely outside of Apple’s App Store walled garden. The Vision Pro isn’t that; it’s more like a spatial iPad, and I think the software development for this device has suffered because of that.

Over-Engineering

The last thing about the Vision Pro that I think contributes to this feeling that this product is a flop is Apple just over-engineered it. EyeSight is a good example of this. It makes it sort of look like you can see the person’s eyes as they look at you while wearing Vision Pro, but in reality, from most angles, it looks kind of goofy. Oddly, when looking at yourself in the mirror, though, it looks pretty decent. Motions like when you blink your eyes happen pretty much in real-time, which is impressive. Now, in order to get EyeSight to work, Apple needed to create a 3D scan of your face, which is your Apple Persona. Now, how well my facial movements here map to my Persona and blinking the eyes, everything, that is impressive, but the end result is still a little bit, uh, yikes.

Fit and Design

Vision Pro’s fit is also complex. Apple made like 30-something different light seals for it. Depending on which light seal you’re fitted with, the field of view or the amount of virtual space that you see when you put the Vision Pro on can actually decrease. Luckily, I was fitted with the 21W seal, which has a decent field of view. Another complication with the Vision Pro design is you can’t wear glasses while wearing the headset. You’ll need to upload your prescription and order Zeiss optical inserts, which magnetically pop into the Vision Pro and cost anywhere from $100 to $150. Another downside with Vision Pro is there’s no multi-user support. If you live with somebody else who also wants to use this on occasion, every time they want to use it, they have to use guest mode, which means they have to reset their hand and eye tracking every single time they use the headset. There’s also a content DRM that basically prevents you from doing any screen recordings while watching any movies or TV shows, which makes sharing how great the movie-watching experience is on social pretty difficult. You can also see reflections and some minimal glare towards the bottom of the lens when viewing content, which some might find to be a downside.

Recommendation

So, do I recommend getting an Apple Vision Pro? For almost everyone out there, the answer to that question is no. Novelty will only entertain for so long, and $3,500 is a lot to spend on novelty, plus a giant virtual TV and computer monitor. Even for the use cases I use it for, you’re probably better off getting a 75″ or, heck, even an 83″ OLED television and you’d still spend less than $3,500, and you could watch content with other people. But what if it wasn’t $3,500? What if it was $1,500? At that price, I might very well recommend it, depending on what trade-offs Apple made to get it down to that price. The TV-watching and Apple Immersive video formats are compelling. If they could somehow keep the excellent displays and make the device lighter, I think it would be a better product.

Conclusion

So overall, yes, I have found a use for the Vision Pro that keeps me coming back to the headset time and time again. I don’t think the device is a total flop. The technology platform Apple developed is seriously impressive, but I don’t recommend getting the device because too many of the product’s downsides outweigh its highlights. It’s a device that feels like something from the future but is hampered by the present form factor, business model, and extra features Apple decided to go with. If you want to learn even more about the Vision Pro and how it compares to the much cheaper Meta Quest 3, as well as my full six months later review of the Meta Quest 3, you can get to those videos by clicking here: