Apple Vision Pro, A $3499 device, is it worth it?

IPhone 4 for the first time in 2010. That was when Apple shipped its first-ever Retina display and Steve Jobs said that, once you use it, “you can’t go back.”

No doubt you’ve heard Apple officially took the wraps off Apple Vision Pro, its first “spatial computing” device which debuted at this week’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) at Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

Not only is this ski goggle-shaped mixed-reality headset Apple’s biggest product since Apple Watch debuted in 2015, but it’s easily its most ambitious.

In development for multiple years and tied to more than 5,000 patents, Apple Vision Pro – simply referred to as “Vision Pro,” which will be available in early 2024 for an astounding $3,499 to start.

When is the Apple Vision Pro available?

It will be available in early 2024 – in the U.S. only. Other countries will follow at a later date.

Apple Vision Pro preorder

Apple has not disclosed when you can preorder Vision Pro, so more details to come on that.

What does the Apple Vision Pro do?

It’s a wearable headset, with twin micro‑OLED displays – one for each eye – and featuring 23 million pixels, which is more than a 4K TV.

The result is incredible clarity.

The new visionOS operating system features a fully three-dimensional user-interface controlled with your eyes (tracked with inward-facing sensors), voice (including Siri support), and hands, whether it’s via finger gestures in the air or by twisting a Digital Crown knob on the side of the headset (similar to the dial on Apple Watch). There’s also support for an optional wireless Magic Keyboard or Trackpad, but was not part of my demo.

Is Apple Vision Pro augmented reality?

It’s mixed reality, sometimes referred to as XR, which combines augmented reality (AR) with virtual reality (VR).

When opening the Photos app, for example, images and the room automatically dimmed around them for added immersion (including panoramic shots of Iceland and Oregon’s coast).

One virtual reality-like experience is called Environments, which are full-screen relaxing videos tied to head-tracking (so you can “look around”), but when the Apple employees in my room talked with me, their images gradually appeared in my scene (called “breakthrough,” as to stay connected with those around you). So, like augmented reality, but shifts between the two smoothly.

Is the Vision Pro worth it?

I’ve seen a lot of VR in my day, but not with this much clarity and depth. The user-interface was graceful and intuitive, and the applications are seemingly endless (for work and play).

One of the most impressive parts of the demo by far was seeing “spatial" photos and videos, captured by Vision Pro headset, including scenes of kids blowing out birthday cake and another with a few friends hanging outside by a fire, sipping drinks, telling stories, and laughing. It truly looked 3D, like really being there, which lets you then relive memories long after you captured them with the same realistic depth.

No VR headset I’ve tried can do anything like this.

Requiring an external battery (that only lasts up to two hours) isn’t ideal, but remember, this is a Gen 1 product, and if any company can figure out how to improve products, including battery management, it’s Apple. Think of how much the iPhone has evolved over the years. This category is in its infancy.

Yes, the concerns over price are real, and Apple no doubt knows this isn’t a mass-market product. The company is deaf” by working on something most people can’t afford. Instead, it is clearly investing in what’s possible for the future.

Will it flop? Who knows. But Apple isn’t just dipping its toe in the spatial computing space, it's diving in head first.

Skeptics, and there are many, should at least reserve judgement until trying it out for themselves - though no word yet when it may be available for the general public to give it a spin. Otherwise, deep-pocketed Apple fans who consider themselves “early adopters” may need to take a leap of faith.

The eye tracking and gesture control is near perfect. The hand gestures are picked up anywhere around the headset. That includes on your lap or low and away resting on a chair or couch. Many other hand-tracking interfaces force you to keep your hands up in front of you, which is tiring. Apple has high-resolution cameras dedicated to the bottom of the device just to keep track of your hands. Similarly, an eye-tracking array inside means that, after calibration, nearly everything you look at is precisely highlighted. A simple low-effort tap of your fingers and boom, it works.

Passthrough is a major key. Having a real-time 4K view of the world around you that includes any humans in your personal space is so important for long-session VR or AR wear. There is a deep animal brain thing in most humans that makes us really, really uncomfortable if we can’t see our surroundings for a length of time. Eliminating that worry by passing through an image should improve the chance of long use times. There’s also a clever “breakthrough” mechanism that automatically passes a person who comes near you through your content, alerting you to the fact that they’re approaching. The eyes on the outside, which change appearance depending on what you’re doing, also provide a nice context cue for those outside.

The resolution means that text is actually readable. Apple’s positioning of this as a full-on computing device only makes sense if you can actually read text in it. All of the previous iterations of “virtual desktop” setups have relied on panels and lenses that present too blurry a view to reliably read fine text at length. In many cases it literally hurt to do so. Not with the Apple Vision Pro — text is super crisp and legible at all sizes and at far “distances” within your space.

There were a handful of really surprising moments from my short time with the headset, as well. Aside from the sharpness of the display and the snappy responsiveness of the interface, the entire suite of samples oozed attention to detail.

It’s crisp. I've read about it and can state this again but, really, it seems crisp as hell. Running right up to demos like the 3D dinosaur you got right down to the texture level and beyond.

3D Movies are actually good in it. Jim Cameron probably had a moment when he saw “Avatar: Way of Water” on the Apple Vision Pro. This thing was absolutely born to make the 3D format sing — and it can display them pretty much right away, so there’s going to be a decent library of shot-on-3D movies that will bring new life to them all. The 3D photos and videos you can take with Apple Vision Pro directly also look super great.

The setup is smooth and simple. A couple of minutes and you’re good to go. Very Apple.

Yes, it does look that good. The output of the interface and the various apps are so good that Apple just used them directly off of the device in its keynote. The interface is bright and bold and feels present because of the way it interacts with other windows, casts shadows on the ground and reacts to lighting conditions.

Overall, I’m hesitant to make any broad claims about whether Apple Vision Pro is going to fulfill Apple’s claims about the onset of spatial computing. I’ve had read far too little that is available on the internet and it’s not even completed — Apple is still working on things like the light shroud and definitely on many software aspects.

It is, however, really, really well done. The platonic ideal of an XR headset. Now, we wait to see what developers and Apple accomplish over the next few months and how the public reacts.