Apple Vision Pro review: A glimpse into the future of computing

Note: This review was first published on 27 June 2024.

If you are reading this, you probably already read and watched countless reviews of the Vision Pro by now. Maybe you even know its specs by heart. How its dual displays are the most cutting-edge to ever find their way into a headset, and how its complex array of cameras and sensors required Apple to design an all-new processor to process all of the sensors' inputs in real-time. 

I’m not here to talk about all that.

I had the chance to be one of the first people in the world outside of Apple to try the Vision Pro last year, and now I finally have it in my hands. I've been using the Vision Pro for the past week and what I want to do is tell you the basics of it, what I think it's best used for, and why you might want to splurge upwards of five grand to get one. 

The TL;DR version:



The hardware is bleeding-edge tech and at times feels like magic. However, it’s not perfect and the price of admission is very dear. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting glimpse into the future of computing.



You can order the Vision Pro on the Apple Online Store.

A note on the screenshots in this review: To reduce workload and to generally make things snappy, the Vision Pro uses a rendering technique called foveated rendering, which means it only renders what your eyes are looking at. Consequently, only a single part of the screenshot appears sharp, because that was what I was looking at when I took it. Also, because of the way Vision Pro renders, it's incredibly difficult to take a perfectly straight screenshot. That's why the screenshots you see are tilted. You'll also notice there are no examples of content from Apple TV+ or Disney+ being played, and that's because of DRM (digital rights management). If you take a screenshot when a show or movie is playing, you end up with a black screen.

Vision Pro basics

I won’t say the Vision Pro headset is compact, but neither would I call it bulky. It is, however, substantial in weight. Apple quotes between 600 and 650g and you do feel it when you wear it. And because the Vision Pro is top-heavy, most of the weight is going to be concentrated on your face. In my case, I felt it most keenly on my forehead and cheeks. Using the Dual Loop Band helps because then some of the weight is spread across the top of your head.

Personally, I’m not too bothered by the Vision Pro’s weight. I won’t say it’s comfortable, but it doesn’t deter me from using it. Maybe it’s because I’m used to wearing heavy planar magnetic headphones. Even so, this is going to be an important consideration because it’s no good if you can’t bear wearing something heavy on your head for extended periods. 

My biggest problem with the Vision Pro is motion sickness. It gets better the more I use it, but I still experience some giddiness especially if I use it for extended periods (over an hour). Obviously, this is a very personal thing so your mileage may vary. On this note, I must temper this by saying that I’m extremely sensitive to motion sickness. Boat rides, theme park rides, and even being a passenger in a haphazardly driven car can make me sick. Maybe this says more about my sensitivity to motion sickness than anything else. Apple has some tips on how to reduce motion sickness and I must say it helps.

Navigating and interacting with the Vision Pro is an unusual and almost freakish experience because you don’t do it with any traditional input devices. Instead, you use your eyes and hands. When you start the Vision Pro for the first time, the device will calibrate your eye tracking and finger gestures. This takes mere minutes and once you are done, you can begin using the Vision Pro.

You look at items to navigate to them and pinch your thumb and index fingers to select. There are also gestures to scroll and resize windows. It’s all pretty intuitive and I think most users will get the hang of it within the first 30 or so minutes.

The eye tracking is both revolutionary and frustrating. When it works, it almost feels like magic. But there are instances where it’s unsure of what you are looking at. This happens more often than you think it should, and when it does, you are forced to look intently at what it is you want in an attempt to get your selection right. Over time, this gets fatiguing and frustrating. 

It is for this reason that I prefer using the Vision Pro with the Magic Trackpad. Why not a mouse? That’s because the Vision Pro doesn’t work with Bluetooth mice right now, though it soon will with visionOS 2.

One last thing I must mention before I go on to talk about how I use the Vision Pro is the video passthrough because it is remarkable. High-resolution cameras on the front feed a digital version of the environment to you and the end result is uncanny. You can tell you are looking at a digital representation of the world, but it’s the best I’ve seen from any headset. The accuracy with which it captures the environment and the almost imperceptible amount of lag is remarkable. 

This isn’t a gimmick either. This high-quality video passthrough lets you remain “connected” to the real world as you are using the Vision Pro. Not only does it let you see what’s happening around you, you can also continue to navigate your environment and interact with the people near you. And if you want to disappear from the world and immerse yourself in whatever you are doing, you can turn the digital crown and the video passthrough disappears and is replaced by your digital environment.

However, as good as the video passthrough is, cameras are no match for human eyes. In poorly lit environments, the cameras have to crank up their sensitivity and the footage gets noticeably grainier, and motion blur becomes more pronounced. And if you have to wear inserts like I do, you can sometimes see reflections in the lenses.  

Fantastic for movies & Apple Immersive Videos

I’ll cut to the chase. One of the most compelling reasons for getting a Vision Pro is to watch movies and videos. It sounds trivial but it’s true, and there are a few reasons why.

The first is the excellent quality of the Vision Pro’s twin micro-OLED displays. They are the size of mere postage stamps and yet have over 23 million pixels crammed into them. They are also colour-calibrated at the factory. The end result of this is that movies look pin-sharp and vivid – in a word, excellent – when viewed using the Vision Pro. And when you consider the fact that you have the freedom to resize displays within it, you start to understand what a fantastic tool the Vision Pro is for watching videos. 

The second reason is the Vision Pro’s built-in speakers. They are positioned within the straps and seem inadequate because they are so small. However, they are surprisingly loud and sound remarkably full. There’s even palpable bass. You’d never guess the sound is coming from these small pods at the sides of your head. They also do an excellent job of producing spatial sound – sounds appear to come from where you think they should be coming from. The one downside is that people around can hear you. If you want more privacy, you can use the Vision Pro with AirPods Pro. 

The final reason is the streaming apps optimised for Vision Pro. Sadly, it's a small list now that only consists of Apple’s own Apple TV app and Disney+. Netflix isn’t making an app for Vision Pro and Amazon’s Prime Video app currently runs as a regular iPad app within Vision Pro. Perhaps the situation will change in the future.

Optimising for the Vision Pro means the Apple TV and Disney+ apps don’t run merely like regular iPad apps. They have features exclusive to the Vision Pro. In this case, the two apps offer immersive environments that work as virtual theatres. The Apple TV app has a simple but effective virtual theatre that simulates different perspectives. You can position yourself in the front, middle, or the back or even from the virtual balcony for a different perspective.

As for the Disney+ app, you can watch as if you are inside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood or from Iron Man’s office in the Avengers Tower, and more. The environments are beautifully rendered and, as gimmicky as they may sound, genuinely help elevate the viewing experience. Furthermore, the virtual screens within these apps look massive, accentuating the feeling that you have a private screening session in a theatre. The Disney+ app also lets you watch movies in 3D.

Speaking of 3D, where the Vision Pro really shines is when viewing Apple Immersive Videos. This is a new video format designed especially for the Vision Pro and it consists of 180-degree footage recorded in 8K. When you watch these videos with the Vision Pro, it seems as if you were there – right in the thick of the action. It's jaw-dropping and downright amazing. Sadly, there’s only a handful of Apple Immersive Videos to watch right now and most of them are merely trailers or demos. Hopefully, Apple will start populating its streaming service with more immersive videos, preferably with sports content because I think that’s where it really showcases the Vision Pro to the best of its abilities. If they can pull this off and acquire sporting content like the NBA, NFL, or European football to show in this new immersive video format, it could be a very good reason for sports fans to invest in a Vision Pro. 

Spatial computing & productivity

Apple calls the Vision Pro a spatial computer. The spatial aspect of it refers to how you use apps with the Vision Pro and how it interacts with your environment. Whenever you open an app, it opens up in a space around you. You can position it anywhere and resize it to any size you see fit. 

What’s unique about it is how it remains anchored in that space. The app stays put when you move, so it’s entirely possible to walk up to an app to inspect it if you so wish. It also means you can open apps and place them in your physical space and it would be where you left it. Imagine opening a Safari tab with a recipe in the kitchen, another Safari tab with YouTube in your bathroom, and the Disney+ app in your bedroom in front of your bed. This is the spatial aspect of the Vision Pro and it’s absolutely wild, because not only it is a completely new way of interacting with apps, but it also opens up new possibilities and use cases. 

Play

Of course, you don’t have to open and anchor apps in space if you don’t want to. You can use your apps in one of the immersive environments too, in which case it’ll feel as if you have an infinite amount of space to position apps around you. 

If you really want to supercharge your productivity with the Vision Pro, the best thing you can do is to use it with your Mac and with a feature called Mac Virtual Display. With this, you can cast your Mac’s screen within the Vision Pro and use it as if it were another Vision Pro app. This means you can position it anywhere and make it any size. The latter point means you can work on your Mac as if you had a 60 or 80-inch monitor. It feels surreal – and almost hilarious – to be using your Mac on such a humongous “display”. It also means you can use your Mac alongside other Vision Pro apps.

This feature isn’t perfect and one of its shortcomings is that you can only have a single “display” even if you have a multi-monitor setup with your Mac. Yes, you can make this “display” as large as you want, but it’s not quite the same as working with two displays. Happily, it seems like Apple is listening because visionOS 2 will allow you to cast your Mac on an ultrawide screen that it says is the equivalent of having two 4K displays side by side. 

One slightly confusing thing about Mac Virtual Display is that it doesn’t support the Vision Pro’s eye-tracking and gesture inputs. This means you can’t look at elements within it to highlight them, and you most certainly can’t pinch your fingers to select them. You’ll need to use your Mac’s keyboard and mouse (or trackpad) to navigate it. I lost count of the number of times I looked at an app with the Mac Virtual Display only to realise that it doesn’t work that way.

I suppose the $5000 question is whether using the Vision Pro as a way to expand your Mac’s display and as a productivity tool is truly better than just using your Mac or MacBook as you normally would. I think it helps if you are using a MacBook because even a 16-inch MacBook Pro’s display is small in comparison with what you can achieve with the Mac Virtual Display in a Vision Pro. If you already have a multi-monitor setup, then the benefits are less obvious.

One advantage of using the Mac Virtual Display with the Vision Pro is that it's private. No one can see what’s on your screen, and this could be helpful if you deal with confidential information or simply don’t like people looking at what you are working on.

Other thoughts

• The Vision Pro’s battery situation is slightly odd because the headset is permanently tethered to a compact battery pack that’s roughly the size of most 10,000mAh power banks. Apple’s claims of about two hours of battery life are about right. Two hours may sound insufficient, but I wonder how many people can even bear using the Vision Pro that long because it’s not the most comfortable thing to wear. At any rate, you can plug the battery into a USB-C power adapter (at least 30W) and use the Vision Pro indefinitely. One thing I would say about the battery is that the cable is a little short. Presumably, Apple wants to make it long enough so that it’ll slip into pockets and let you move around easily, but I find that it’s a tad too short when I’m using it at my desk
  
   
• Though the Vision Pro can be used for productivity and has a ton of apps available, don’t think for a moment that it can be used as your primary computer. One thing to point out is that it has no inputs or outputs. You can’t plug in SD cards or any kind of external drive, and you most certainly cannot output to an external display and use it like a traditional Mac with a keyboard and mouse. And because visionOS is based on iPadOS, you are faced with the same app limitations of iPadOS where some apps simply don’t exist. As capable as it is out of the box, it’s no substitute for a Mac.
  
   
• I doubt many would use the Vision Pro outside of their homes mainly because of how cumbersome it is to transport. The headset itself isn't terribly large, but then it doesn’t fold and it has a pretty odd shape. Furthermore, the carrying case which Apple sells separately for S$299, is akin to a small duffel bag, and also really pricey. Unless you really need the privacy offered by the Vision Pro (or just want to show off your new toy), it makes much more sense to take a MacBook or iPad.

• I thought heat would be an issue, but it’s not. Although you can feel heat coming out from the vents, the Vision Pro itself never becomes warm to touch nor does it become so warm that you can feel it on your face and become uncomfortable to wear. That’s a surprising discovery for me, given how warm our climate is. Furthermore, the fans are also extremely quiet. I couldn't hear them at all.
  
   
• Spatial videos recorded by my iPhone 15 Pro Max didn’t feel especially “spatial” to me. It’s certainly more immersive than standard videos, and there’s a palpable sense of depth to them. However, the field of view is narrow. Ultimately, it’s nowhere as impressive as the specially recorded Apple Immersive Videos.
  
   
• It’s probably obvious to most people, but the Vision Pro messes up your hair when you use it, especially if you are using the Dual Loop Band. If you wear makeup, it’ll probably mess it up too. Take note if you style your hair and/or wear makeup.

 Compromised, but revolutionary

The Vision Pro is an amazing but also conflicted device. On the other hand, it’s a headset with excellent displays, amazing video passthrough, surprisingly good speakers, and outstanding performance. It opens up new entertainment possibilities and truly is a new way of computing. It’s impossible to put it on, use it, and not be impressed and amazed by what you experience. In this respect, it’s a groundbreaking piece of technology, just as we've predicted.

But then, it’s also flawed. It’s heavy, motion sickness can be a problem for some users, the video passthrough isn’t good in poor light, the eye and handing tracking can be wonky at times, and the battery life is quite short – I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The Vision Pro has its limits. Some of these problems can be fixed with software, but some others (like video passthrough and battery life) make me wonder if technology can ever get good enough to overcome them.

Nevertheless, Apple surely has to be applauded for trying and being brave enough to put out something like a Vision Pro. I consider it a revolutionary device, and if headsets or AR glasses become commonplace in the future, we will surely have to look back on the Vision Pro and say that this is where it all started.

Now on to the thorny issue of should you buy one … 

Buying advice

Let’s start with how much the Vision Pro costs. Prices start at S$5,299. It sounds high, but the good thing is that you probably won't need to buy much accessories for it. It comes with just about everything you need, including both the Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band, and two Light Seal Cushions. If you wear glasses, you’ll need the Zeiss Optical Inserts. Readers are S$149, while prescription ones are S$219. If you want the carrying case, that’s S$299. If you do the math, you’ll realise that it’s easy to spend close to six grand on the Vision Pro.

If the thought of spending six grand doesn’t faze you, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Vision Pro. It’s fantastic for movies and the immersive videos will leave your jaw on the floor. More important perhaps is that it’s an exciting and fun new way of computing. It’s the closest thing we have to a glimpse of the future of computing. And what price would you pay if you could see into and experience the future?

For those who are unsure, I think it helps to consider these two points to help with your purchasing decision.

• How comfortable are you with wearing something heavy on your face and head? This is a critical consideration because the Vision Pro isn’t the most comfortable thing to wear. I won’t go far as to say that it’s agonising, but it does weigh you down. Motion sickness can also be an issue for some people. Anecdotally, it seems most people can tolerate wearing the Vision Pro for about an hour or so tops, me included. How would you feel if you were limited to using your almost S$6,000 investment for one-hour-long stretches?
  
   
• The Vision Pro’s displays are so good that I think one could legitimately consider buying it as a personal theatre or as an external display of sorts for their Macs. Consider how much a large OLED TV or external monitor costs. I love watching videos and movies on it, and I would do it more if I could bear the motion sickness (see point above). However, it does have one glaring shortcoming: if you use it as a personal theatre/external display, remember that it has zero inputs. What you can display on it is limited to visionOS and your Mac. 

If you can find the answers to these questions, you’ll probably have a clearer picture of whether or not the Vision Pro is something you want to invest in.

Personally, unless you really need or want to experience the most cutting-edge headset money can buy now, I think the financially prudent thing to do for most people would be to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Wait for either prices to come down or see if Apple announces a more affordable version. Given that this is called the Vision Pro, there's a good chance we'll see a less pricey version in time.

Note: You can order the Apple Vision Pro on the Apple Online Store. For more information on how to pre-order, check out our article here.

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