TechVRApple Vision Pro review round-up: you’re going to love the 2028 modelUS reviewers love the technology but many seem to be struggling to work out what the Vision Pro is actually forWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
TechVRApple Vision Pro review round-up: you’re going to love the 2028 modelUS reviewers love the technology but many seem to be struggling to work out what the Vision Pro is actually forWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
US reviewers love the technology but many seem to be struggling to work out what the Vision Pro is actually for
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Apple)
(Image credit: Apple)
TheApple Vision Proheadset launches in the US on Friday 2 February, and that means the US review embargo has been lifted and the reviews are coming in from US titles. We’re on a slightly different timetable here so you’ll see our in-depth review very, very soon; in the meantime, here’s a look at what our US colleagues and peers make ofApple’s expensive but innovative headset.
Over at theWall Street Journal, Joanna Stern discovered a potential killer app in her kitchen – having floating timers above individual pots and pans is genuinely useful – and even took the headset to a ski cabin with the goal of using it constantly for 24 hours. It’s far and away the best mixed reality headset Stern has ever used, but it feels more like a face-mounted Mac oriPadwith “awful” avatars in video calls. And like every review I’ve seen, Stern notes that the headset feels very heavy after even fairly short periods of time.
Vision Pro: an incredible VR experience, but an isolating one too
In Patel’s view, despite Apple’s protestations that the Vision Pro is not a VR headset that’s exactly what it is right now – with all the negatives that that entails. There’s a noticeable lack of mixed reality apps as opposed to VR ones, and hoped-for features like being able to simulate multiple Mac monitors are currently absent. It also has a narrower field of view than theQuest 3.
What I think Patel really nails in his review is the big question around Vision Pro: what is it actually for? And the answer so far appears to be that nobody really knows. While the headset is astonishingly clever from a technical perspective, using it is also very isolating and in very many cases it’s less useful than a Mac laptop that you’d pay less than half the price for. In that respect it feels rather like the originalApple Watch, which didn’t really start living up to the hype until theApple Watch Series 4or 5.
The consensus that seems to be emerging from the reviews is that the Vision Pro is a vision of a possible future, one that even Apple can’t currently deliver because the technology doesn’t yet exist: Tim Cook has said on many occasions that he sees mixed reality as bringing people together in the real world, but right now the Vision Pro does the opposite of that because it’s a headset that isolates you from the world and the people around you.
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The word that keeps jumping out from the reviews isn’t a technical one but an emotional one: the experience of using the Vision Pro is an incredible one, but it’s also very lonely.
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