Product test

Apple Vision Pro review: magical, but leaves you lonely

7.2.2024

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Are Apple’s new glasses a revolution in computing or just an expensive toy? I spent a few hours searching for the future in the Vision Pro. In doing so, I encountered genius, potential and dead ends.

«There’s no such thing as headphones for video,» Steve Jobs once said. Nineteen years later, Apple made some. The Vision Pro is here – a headset for virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR), which Cupertino’s marketing calls a «spatial computer». It’s initially only available in the USA. It’ll probably be months before it comes to Europe.

Following the announcement, I was sceptical as to whether the Vision Pro offers any added value. After being able to try it out for a few hours, I’m faced with a paradox. Many of my fears have come true. Starting at 3,500 US dollars, the Vision Pro is an irrational product. But I still want the thing.

An enchanting first impression

I’m standing in the winter garden of Digitec Galaxus customer René Vogel. The Apple fan picked up a Vision Pro in New York and let me try it out for a few hours. He himself is very enthusiastic, as he explains in an interview coming soon.

I’m also amazed as I put on the Vision Pro for the first time. In standard mode, I’m led to believe these are transparent glasses. Cameras film my surroundings and feed them live into the displays. This is called pass-through mode. Digital menus, windows and three-dimensional objects float in physical space. They stay in place as if they were real. There’s no latency between reality and what I see.

René gives me a brief introduction, then I dive in.
Source: Image: David Lee

Operation seems magical – I don’t need a controller. My eyes are the cursor, my hands the mouse button. To select something, I look at it and bring my thumb and index finger together. It doesn’t matter where I do this as long as it’s within the headset’s field of vision. I can hold things and move them around the room, or zoom in and out with two hands. The concept is as intuitive as multitouch on a smartphone.

After the first five minutes, I have to pick my jaw up off the floor. Am I experiencing a product as revolutionary as the first iPhone?

A Herculean achievement in technical terms

Certain parallels can’t be denied. As with the iPhone, Apple hasn’t invented a new product category with the Vision Pro. At its core, it’s a VR headset with AR simulation – no matter how often Tim Cook calls it a «spatial computer». The basic idea is the same as that of the Meta Quest Pro, which I tested over a year ago.

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As with most Apple products, the revolution lies in the implementation. The Vision Pro is the first VR headset I don’t want to take off after half an hour, just like the iPhone was the first smartphone I actually wanted to use.

Five things make the Vision Pro better than anything before it:

Image and sound quality: the biggest advantage of the Vision Pro is the resolution of the displays and the image quality of the cameras. I’ve already tried various headsets, Apple is in a league of its own. For the first time, virtual content looks really sharp. For the first time, I can easily read my cell phone in passthrough mode. The built-in speakers are also louder and better than those of the competition, and the precision of the spatial audio is impressive.
Operation: I can control the Vision Pro with my hands alone. No controllers needing charge or being forgotten in the kitchen next to the coffee machine. Sounds trivial, but it’s a revelation. Especially when I use the glasses in passthrough mode and also need my hands for other things.

After a short time, I get a handle on the controls. They’re as intuitive as a touchscreen.
Source: Image: David Lee

Integration into the ecosystem: the headset fits seamlessly into Apple’s closed garden. I immediately see all my contacts, messages and bookmarks. My MacBook can be connected without additional tools. Its touchpad and keyboard not only work on the macOS interface, but also in the apps on the headset. I can copy text, photos and files effortlessly between the different systems as if they were one and the same. The whole experience comes across as a unified whole.
Comfort: other headsets give me a headache or make me sick after an hour at the latest. Neither happens with the Vision Pro, even after three hours at a time. Despite weighing over 600 grammes, I find it surprisingly comfortable. The Solo Knit strap requires a relatively tight fit on the face to prevent the glasses from slipping. For long sessions, I therefore recommend the Dual Loop Band, which shifts some of the weight to the top of the head, though it does ruffle your hair.

The Dual Loop Band looks less cool than the Solo Knit Band – but it’s more comfortable.
Source: Image: David Lee

Details: in addition to the headline features, Apple is doing a lot of little things better. Different pads ensure an optimal fit with every face shape. They can be magnetically attached and easily replaced. There are individual corrective inserts for people who wear glasses, like me. The Vision Pro automatically measures the interpupillary distance and adjusts the lenses accordingly. M2 and R1 chips are powerful yet efficient. I never hear a fan. The functional details are complemented by the stylish design and the outstanding feel and finish.

This Herculean technical feat is expensive. Very expensive. The Basic Vision Pro with 256 gigabytes of memory costs 3,499 US dollars in the States. If you want 1 terabyte, the price climbs to 3,899 dollars. If you’re short-sighted like me, you’ll have to pay 149 dollars for the corrective inserts. Do you want a case or a replacement battery? That’ll be 199 dollars each. Add to this VAT – and in Europe, probably Apple’s usual surcharge of around ten per cent.

A Vision Pro with 512 GB of memory and some accessories is likely to cost over 4,500 francs in Switzerland. Private imports from the USA are currently changing hands for at least 5,500 francs.

Fragile magic with dead ends

For this price, you get the best VR glasses around. But that doesn’t make it a perfect product by any means. The magic of Vision Pro is fragile, and there are things that temporarily disenchant it. Apple could improve some of these in future generations. Others are dead ends from the off.

Areas with potential for improvement:

Image quality: the resolution of the virtual displays is good, but real screens are still better. What’s more, the Vision Pro only produces a sharp image where I’m looking. This is called foveated rendering and saves on graphics resources. However, the sharp area is too small for me in certain applications as it doesn’t adjust immediately when I change where I look. Bright highlights also sometimes lead to disturbing reflections in the lenses.

Foveated rendering in action. I’m looking at the header image of the top article. The Vision Pro doesn’t focus the surrounding area. In reality, this feels less dramatic than it looks here. I rarely notice it.
Source: Image: Samuel Buchmann

Field of view: Apple doesn’t give specifics, but the Vision Pro’s field of view feels narrower than the Meta Quest 3. I’d estimate it at 100 degrees. It’s not terrible, but it’s not outstanding either; like looking at the world through diving goggles.
Precision eye and hand tracking: Apple’s ambitions simply exceed the limits of technology here. The interface of the VisionOS operating system requires a level of accuracy that tracking can only meet in what feels like 95 per cent of cases. In the remaining 5 per cent, an element doesn’t register even though I’m looking at it. Or the camera doesn’t recognise my finger taps. Both take me out of my flow.

Flashback to wired headphones – the Vision Pro’s battery is external. At least the cable is nice and rigid and doesn’t curl. When I’m on the move, I stow the battery in my trouser pocket.
Source: Image: David Lee

Battery life: a full charge could last longer. I don’t think it’s a big problem. After three hours, the battery still had 20 per cent left in my test. If I’m stationary, I can also connect it to the socket via USB-C during operation.
EyeSight: when you look at a person, the Vision Pro projects a virtual version of your eyes onto the external display. In my case, it projects René’s, as a scan of his head is stored on this headset. This projection is pretty dark and looks creepy, and it only works in a limited viewing angle. This teardown video from iFixit shows why:

Personas: as the Vision Pro only sees your face close up, it has to rely on face scans for video calls. Apple has received a lot of malice online for these Personas. A storm in a teacup. The feature definitely has potential for improvement, but I don’t find it annoying; I can clearly recognise the person and their facial expressions.

Concepts that fail from the get-go:

Passthrough mode: yes, the reproduction of a real environment is better than with other VR glasses. Yes, the technology has even more potential. But no matter how good it becomes, reality will always be more beautiful. No display will be able to reproduce the colour space of the human eye in the foreseeable future. Even large camera sensors don’t have anywhere near the dynamic range of our retina. It hits me when I take off my glasses. The real world is incredibly intense and well lit.
Text input: the Vision Pro is like a computer that I can operate exclusively with a mouse. I get a floating virtual keyboard for text input. I have to either look at each letter individually and click on it or try to type with my fingers in the air. There’s no haptic feedback, and you can only use your index fingers. Alternatively, I could dictate text to Siri by voice command. The best solution is still a physical keyboard. But then the magic of controller-free operation is gone and I’m tied to a table.
Form factor: the Vision Pro isn’t the product that Tim Cook actually wants. His declared aim is augmented reality in transparent glasses. However, this technology is still a long way from actually projecting high-quality content into your field of vision. What Apple has built here is an AR simulator. It may be a masterpiece, but high-resolution cameras and powerful chips need space. This leads to a ski goggle look, which’ll probably remain going forward.

The Vision Pro is compact for its performance, but it still looks like a pair of ski goggles.
Source: Image: David Lee

What’s the Vision Pro good for?

The Vision Pro is a face computer that I have to put on. Even if the glasses are comfortable, they’re still heavy. They still ruin hairstyles. There’s still a rechargeable battery connected by cable. For me to put up with this foreign body on my face in the long term, it has to offer tremendous added value. The threshold for this is massively higher than for a handheld computer, which we now call a smartphone. In some situations, the Vision Pro overcomes this hurdle. In others, there’s potential. And in some, it’ll never get there.

Entertainment

The flagship application for Apple’s VR glasses. The Vision Pro is the best mobile movie theatre there is. It conjures up a huge canvas in front of me, which I can move and scale as I wish. On the ceiling above the bed, into a virtual environment when I’m on an aeroplane, or on the wall in an apartment without a television. It’s so handy and comfortable that I’d probably watch a movie in the virtual cinema more often, even in my apartment with a TV. The glasses also open the door to 3D content – albeit not every option.

For me, the virtual movie screen is by far the best practical application of the Vision Pro so far. I can’t use my own screenshots because Apple blacks out DRM-protected content.
Source: Image: Screenshot YouTube/Apple

The gaming sector is still underdeveloped. The best way to use the glasses is as a face TV with an external gamepad. Either for games on a Mac or perhaps soon with native apps for cloud gaming services such as GeForce NOW. VR games could also be possible, but here headsets with controllers such as the PSVR2 or the Meta Quest 3 have a clear advantage.

Productivity

You can also work with the Vision Pro. Native VisionOS apps are still rare, but this will improve over time. Until then, I’ll have to connect my Mac and think of the glasses more as an external screen. The virtual monitor has a resolution of 2,560 × 1,440 pixels. As a stress test, I try to grade a video in DaVinci Resolve. The picture is too dark, and the foveated rendering bothers me. Surfing the web or writing text, on the other hand, works wonderfully. Multiscreen setups like on the Mac interface aren’t possible. This doesn’t bother me. I can still wallpaper the whole room with VisionOS apps like Safari.

A virtual workstation in real space – the window in the middle is the external screen of my Mac, with VisionOS apps floating to the left and right. I can arrange and scale everything freely.
Source: Image: Samuel Buchmann

Would I do this voluntarily at home or in the office? Probably not; a real monitor is still better. And I don’t have to strap on a face computer. The glasses becoming lighter and even better wouldn’t change this. The situation is different on the road. On an aeroplane or in a hotel room, the huge work surface would be worth the ruined hairstyle.

Augmented and mixed reality

For me, the potential of augmented and mixed reality (MR) is a complete unknown. For the latter, virtual objects interact with the physical world. Enthusiasts have long been predicting revolutionary applications for it. Microsoft tried to break into the professional MR market with the HoloLens. Largely unsuccessfully, development was discontinued. It remains to be seen whether Apple’s appeal can lure developers and users. So far, there have been a few nice demonstrations such as the JigSpace app, which allows you to place a virtual aircraft engine in your room and take it apart.

There are many paths for further innovation. René works in the museum sector, for example, and could imagine virtual tours for people who are unable to make a physical visit. Or historical hiking trails, some of them enriched with digital content. For example, a ruin could be turned into the original building.

How well this can be implemented also depends on how many people will one day own such a device. If the glasses reach the mass market, the hope is several people will be able to watch the same content. What I only really realised during my test is that I’m alone with the Vision Pro. It has a socially isolating effect. Watching a movie with friends? Showing your colleague something on the monitor? Holding something up to the camera in a video call? No dice. In a conversation with a real person, the other person at best only sees the strange simulacrum of my eyes. No true connection to be found.

The eyes – the gateway to the soul. Well, actually only a creepy version of René’s eyes on my face. I prefer to take off the Vision Pro for longer conversations.
Source: Image: David Lee

Verdict: a fascinating vision of the future

The Apple Vision Pro is exciting, a demonstration of Apple’s engineering prowess. It’s the first pair of VR glasses that I actually want. It’s more beautiful, sharper, more precise, more comfortable and more sophisticated than anything that has come before. Thanks to Apple’s appeal, seamless integration into the ecosystem and clever marketing, it’s generating hype that other manufacturers such as Meta can only dream of.

Is the Vision Pro the next iPhone? The computer of the future? No. What it is, however, is an excellent implementation of a well-known idea. But it ends up in the same dead end as other face computers. The cons outweigh the pros in many situations. I have to strap the thing to my head and I’m constantly looking at the world through cameras and displays. This isolates me socially; those around me don’t see what I see. Only a few applications offer enough added value that I’d put up with it all. This won’t change with future generations or improved technology.

It’s a compromise that Apple CEO Tim Cook has deliberately made. The Vision Pro is a simulation of the physically transparent AR glasses that he actually wants to build. Whether he’ll ever be able to craft this is written in the stars. And whenever the technology is ready, this future concept will also involve compromises.

From the outside, it looks weird. The Vision Pro is best used alone.
Source: Image: David Lee

At present, I see two main areas of application for the Vision Pro – as a mobile movie theatre and as an external display for a Mac. The first experience especially is so good that I’d even use it at home. The latter may be inferior to a stationary workstation, but it offers real added value when on the move. Games, AR and MR content could also offer this in the future. But I don’t rate a product according to what might be.

All things considered, is the Vision Pro worth its astronomical price? Only for a tiny target group of enthusiasts. You’re paying the development costs for a futuristic first-generation pioneer product that doesn’t replace anything, but at best complements it. If you’re aware of this and don’t care, Apple’s glasses won’t disappoint. As a nerd, I find it hard to resist.

Header image: David Lee

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Samuel Buchmann

Senior Editor

Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.ch

My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.

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