It felt like a long time coming. From the announcement at WWDC in 2023 to finally releasing in the UK just after WWDC 2024. But the Apple Vision Pro is here and I’ve been using it for the last two months. I’ve never owned a VR, AR, or any other kind of mixed-reality device before. So my review is written from the perspective of somebody deep into the Apple ecosystem but new to this category of devices.
Design
This is a beautiful piece of hardware. Aesthetically, it looks and feels just as you’d expect from an Apple product. Gentle curves of aluminium and glass meet seamlessly to form the enclosure. Well-designed textiles make up the headband, light seal, and light seal cushion. The headband keeps Apple Vision Pro firmly attached to your face, while the seals block out light and enhance immersion. It feels every bit as expensive as its price tag suggests.
From a functional perspective, the device feels solid but heavy. There’s no integrated battery—one of the design decisions was to create an external battery, attached to a braided power cord. As I’ll discuss later, this was a wise and necessary choice. It bears the hallmark of a first-generation product. As is often the case when Apple enters a new category, there are tradeoffs and missing features. The external battery falls into this camp.
Comfort
While we’re on the subject of design, it feels like a good place to talk about fit and comfort. When I put it on for the very first time, I was so blown away by how immersive the experience felt, that I didn’t even notice the weight. It felt comfortable and the headband and cushioning created a good seal against my face, blocking out almost all visible light. There’s a tiny bit of light that peaks through at the bottom around your nose. A small flap of fabric minimises this and honestly, it doesn’t break immersion. At least not in my opinion.
As I began to use the device more and more, I started to notice how heavy it was. I could feel points of pressure against my cheekbones and forehead. Usually around the 30-45 minute mark, the discomfort would kick in. And after an hour or more, it could become pretty uncomfortable. I’d sometimes find that when taking the headset off, that I’d be left with red marks around my face. They fade away after 10 minutes or so. But it’s important to note that out of the box with the supplied headband options, that was my experience.
As time went on I experimented with the two different headband styles. My personal preference both in terms of comfort and looks is the more visually pleasing Solo Knit Band. This style of band doesn’t wrap over your head (or mess up your hair) and wraps elegantly around the back of your head. It has a handy adjustment dial that looks just like a big digital crown from the Apple Watch. The other option, the dual loop band, is a bit more fiddly to adjust. I also found that its overhead strap created a pressure point on the top of my head and could lead to headaches.
I was able to solve this by purchasing an accessory called the Annapro. It’s a pressure-reducing attachment that you use in conjunction with the Solo Knit Band. This isn’t a sponsor or an ad. I’m referencing it in this article because it solved the majority of the comfort issues for me. It enables me to use my Apple Vision Pro for longer periods than I could with the headbands Apple supplies alone. Your mileage may vary. I wouldn’t go as far as to say this makes the Apple Vision Pro a joy to wear as far as comfort goes. But it certainly makes it a more pleasant experience for extended use.
External Battery
The external battery is the only reason Apple Vision Pro is available as it exists today. There is no way Apple could have put the battery inside the current form factor. It would be impossible to wear that weight on your face and head. The device is already heavy and can be uncomfortable. I haven’t found the external battery to be an inconvenience as it relates to wearing the Apple Vision Pro. You can slip it into your pocket or off to the side if seated and it doesn’t get in the way.
The battery life on the Vision Pro wouldn’t be acceptable for something like an iPhone or iPad where we’ve become accustomed to all-day battery life. But with the comfort factor of the Apple Vision Pro, you probably won’t be able to use it for much more than two hours anyway. So for me, the battery life was less of an issue than the comfort. You can however plug the device in for extended use if you’d like. Charging is fast too.
One point to note about the battery is that I’ve found the braided cord has kinked and coiled over time. I’m pretty careful with it so I was surprised. It hasn’t been an issue as such. But sometimes I’ve found I need to stretch out the cable a bit to undo the coils. Especially if I’m plugging the battery into external power while wearing the Apple Vision Pro.
Hardware
Displays
I was blown away by the displays. They easily beat my OLED TV, a TV that supports Dolby Vision. I didn’t expect them to be that good. But good they are. They’re extraordinary. I don’t think the experience of using this device would be anywhere near as enjoyable if Apple had skimped on display quality. Although I’ve never used competing headsets, I’m told that these displays easily beat out any consumer-level headset. At least as it relates to image quality.
Apple Vision Pro’s displays are designed using micro OLED technology and there’s one for each eye. They’re incredibly high resolution. The pixels are invisible and you won’t spot them. Apple claims there are more pixels per display than a full-size 4K TV, all in an area about the size of a postage stamp. They’re also exceptionally bright, with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. This is astoundingly bright compared to other displays. For context, Apple’s next brightest display on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 tops out at 3,000 nits, while owners of a new iPhone 16 Pro will see a maximum of 1,600 nits.
The displays are nothing short of extraordinary. They support the latest HDR standards and can reproduce 92% of the DCI-P3 colour space. In human speak, that’s about 49% of the colors our eyes can perceive. While this might not sound impressive, it’s on par with the latest iPhone models and surpasses most televisions.
I’ve never owned another device in this category so I can’t compare it. But I’m told that the field of view is narrower than some other headsets. For context, the human eye sees in about 180 degrees. The Apple Vision Pro display is about 100 degrees. But without having used other headsets, I can only say that I feel extremely immersed when using it. Having now used the device for two months, would I like it if the field of view was wider? Sure. But it isn’t a reason not to buy in my opinion. There are other devices with a wider field of view but most of them have much lower-quality displays in terms of resolution, colour accuracy, and brightness. The Meta Quest 3 for example, has a field of view of about 110 degrees. But its displays are inferior in every other way.
Sensors
The Apple Vision Pro is packed with tons of sensors which I’ll list below. I won’t go into the details of each sensor because it’s the point of them that matters. And what the sensors do is incredible. They enable you to look at something, tap your fingers together, and have the system instantly select what you’re looking at. They enable you to see the world around you and blend your digital content with your physical space. And these outward-facing cameras match the aspect ratio of your peripheral vision. You can still tell it’s a video feed of the outside world. But sometimes, when deeply immersed in content, I forget. And the sensors even create depth maps of your surroundings enabling you to place windows around you and have them remain firmly anchored in place.
- Two high‑resolution main cameras
- Six world‑facing tracking cameras
- Four eye‑tracking cameras
- TrueDepth camera
- LiDAR scanner
- Four inertial measurement units (IMUs)
- Flicker sensor
- Ambient light sensor
Apple has nailed the sensor array. They’ve made intentional choices to unlock very specific user experiences. Like being able to place digital objects all around you, or watch movies in a window the size of a movie theatre. And it’s this array of sensors combined with the displays that make the Apple Vision Pro such an expensive device. Sure there are other hardware elements but it’s clear that most of the expense is down to the display and sensors.
Silicon
There are two chips on board. The first is Apple’s M2 chip from the Mac and iPad which house the CPU and GPU. The M2 runs the operating system, handles graphics, and provides the Apple Vision Pro with excellent performance and a smooth user experience. There’s also a new R2 chip that handles all of the data being captured by the sensors. Apple said it was necessary to create this and I believe them. All of that sensor data has to be processed in near real-time. Otherwise, the experience and immersion would be broken.
I’ve never run into any issues with performance. Everything you do in Apple Vision Pro feels fast and fluid. You can tell the system is working hard to create the seamless experience you see on the screen, thanks to the air vents at the top. The system never feels hot and you can’t hear the fans. But they’re there and you can feel warm air if you hold your hands over them. Apple has done a good job with the placement of the thermal system so that displaced air doesn’t cause you to feel hot during use.
EyeSight Display
On the outside of the Apple Vision Pro is an external display. It’s designed to indicate to others that you’re deeply immersed by showing a gently pulsating gradient. But it’s also designed to help you stay connected with people around you. It does this by showing a 3D representation of your eyes to others. And it matches your blinks and facial expression. It’s supposed to look like you can see through the headset to see the person’s eyes underneath. In reality, it isn’t quite there yet.
EyeSight is a great idea and you can see that lots of care and thought went into building the external displays. They use lenticular lenses that are designed a bit like those holographic trading cards you’ve seen. The ones that create a 3D effect that changes as your angle of changes. And EyeSight takes that idea to show the outside world your eyes.
Apple said it wanted you to feel connected with others while using Apple Vision Pro. And for others to still feel connected to you. I’m not sure that EyeSight achieves those objectives, at least not in this first generation. The quality of the displays and the effect weren’t good enough to achieve what Apple was going for. But I admire the innovation and the intention. Hopefully, this is something that Apple can improve on in future generations.
User Interface
This is where the Apple Vision Pro shines and all of the technology comes together. The user interface is extraordinary. It uses eye tracking to highlight whatever it is you’re looking at on screen. And with a simple tap of your index finger and thumb, you’ll select whatever it was that you were gazing at. It feels natural, and fluid and it’s very easy to use. There’s a short learning curve for some of the gestures. Like scrolling through a webpage, zooming in on a photo, or opening the control center in the new visionOS 2. But once you’ve got it, it’s a breeze to use.
The user interface also makes good use of voice control and you’re able to interact by reaching out and ‘touching’ virtual buttons. You aren’t touching anything. But the eye and hand tracking is so good that Apple can interpret you reaching out and placing your fingers in front of on-screen buttons as a touch. There’s even an on-screen virtual keyboard. You can tap the keys by virtually touching them or you can look at each key and tap your fingers together to select them. The keyboard does take some getting used to, but once you’ve used it for a while, it’s fine to send a quick message or type in a web address.
Although Apple intends this device to augment the world around you, it also enables fully immersive experiences and can place you in a virtual world. Apple calls these worlds ‘environments’. You can control how immersed you are by turning the digital crown. If you want you can be fully immersed in 360 degrees. And to make it easy to interact in these virtual spaces, Apple has ensured that you can still see your hands passing through them. On the subject of pass-through, you can also connect an Apple keyboard, mouse, and trackpad. Apple has ensured that these work with pass through too. This is great for productivity and stuff like writing emails and working in Microsoft Office or Notion.
I think Apple made the right choice by making this device both an AR and VR device. It’s great to be able to see the world around you. But I also love being able to immerse myself in the breathtaking 3D environments. Third-party developers can also build these experiences and create environments in their apps. Some of them are truly amazing. I’d highly encourage you to experiment with environments. They’re epic.
But what can you do with this device?
That’s a good question. I’ve talked about its design, how it feels to wear it, the hardware, and how it works. But what can you do in Apple Vision Pro? Well for starters you can do pretty much all of the things you might do on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. How you do those things depends on the app. You see there are three different app experiences on Apple Vision Pro. The first, and in some ways least impressive, is the ability to open iPad apps. The second is the ability to mirror your Mac screen inside of Apple Vision Pro with a feature called ‘Mac Virtual Display’. And the third and in my opinion the best app experience is custom-designed visionOS apps.
iPad Apps
Just about any developer that wants to, can let their iPad app work in visionOS with no work required by them. It just works. There are millions of iPad apps and you can install these without issue. For games, you can even use game controllers if you’d like such as an Xbox or PS5 controller. The large iPad touch targets work well with the eye tracking of Apple Vision Pro and you can blow up the apps to the size of a wall if you want to. It’s useful to have this option and for some apps, it probably even makes more sense. Heck, even Apple acknowledges it as they haven’t updated all of their apps to be true visionOS apps. The one major downside to this approach is that for games that require touch input, it’s a really bad experience. Those games need the direct responsiveness of a touch screen to work properly.
Mac Virtual Display
This is where things get interesting. You can mirror your Mac’s display virtually inside Apple Vision Pro. You can make your Mac’s display into a truly enormous screen and use any of your Mac’s apps in this self-contained window. What’s great about this is that you can also open other visionOS apps or iPad apps in your space and position your virtual Mac display where you’d like. The only downside to this feature is that you can only have one virtual display. Apple is improving this feature by adding the option of a wrap-around, ‘curved display’ option in a future software update. But that isn’t available just yet.
visionOS Apps
By far the best experience with Apple Vision Pro is when you’re using native apps. Apps that were custom-designed for a spatial operating system. These apps feel alive and interact with the world around you. They can contain virtual objects that you can place in your physical space. And they’re designed for you to interact in ways that simply aren’t possible on a Mac or an iPhone. They aren’t constrained by size, shape, or window design. They can be translucent or opaque. They can be stacked and layered. And you can place them anywhere. Their visual ‘touch targets’ are the most heavily optimised and they can contain custom 3D immersive environments that take you into a different workspace.
By far my favorite experience inside visionOS is the ability to watch movies on a giant screen. It feels like you’re in a private movie theatre when you open an app like the IMAX app. And the screen feels every bit as large as if you were in an IMAX. It’s incredible. And movies can even interact with an environment like reflecting off a lake or casting a glow on the surface of the moon. The Apple Vision Pro is worth it just for this feature alone.
Final Thoughts
The Apple Vision Pro is an amazing device without question. But it isn’t perfect. Its ambition is held back by the limits of today’s technology. Or at least by the price of its components. It’s a very expensive device with an inaccessible price point. Apple could probably do things like increase the field of view with even better displays. It could probably add even better cameras for the video passthrough. It could probably use innovative materials to reduce weight. But all of those things would make the device even more cost prohibitive.
Taken at face value, the Apple Vision Pro delivers an amazing AR and VR experience. I’d love to see games more widely supported. And especially VR games. I’d love to see the price come down and to see Apple introduce less expensive, more accessible models. Because the core experience is there. The UI is fantastic, the operating system is excellent and there is a strong foundation here.
Should you buy an Apple Vision Pro? If you have the financial means and are prepared to make the trade-offs on things like comfort, then go for it. You’ll have a great time with it and I promise you, you’ll want to use it as much as you can. But if you’re hesitant about spending this amount of money or are considering finance options, I would probably say no. Try a demo in an Apple Store to give yourself a taste of what’s to come. Because in the years ahead, the price will come down, more visionOS apps will be available and the comfort and battery life will hopefully improve.
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