For years, it’s been known that Apple was developing its first augmented reality headset, and it’s official: the Apple Vision Pro is here.
The Vision Pro is an AR headset capable of running all your favourite iOS and iPadOS apps, along with some exclusive features like 3D photos and video capture. You can use it to browse the web, watch films, make FaceTime calls, work, game and more.
If you’re willing to splash the cash, you can purchase one now. It’s no longer limited to customers in the US.
Here are all the facts on the Vision Pro. But to find out what it’s like to use, check out our Apple Vision Pro review.
When does the Apple Vision Pro go on sale?
Apple first showed the Vison Pro headset at its WWDC 2023 conference on 5 June 2023. At the time, only a vague early 2024 release date was announced. But in January, via an official blog post, Apple confirmed its release date of 2 February 2024 in the US.
After the WWDC 2024 announcement that the Vision Pro would be launched in more countries starting 12 July, it’s now also on sale in:
- The UK
- Canada
- Germany
- France
- Australia
This means you can buy the device right now from the Apple website. To complete the purchase, you’ll need an iPhone or iPad with Face ID (to complete a face scan) and an up-to-date version of the Apple Store app. However, our best advice would be to book a demo at an Apple Store first to try it out. If you do this, you’ll get a tutorial on how to fit the device comfortably and some pointers on how to use eye-tracking and gestures.
It’s not clear if you’ll ever be able to buy the Vision Pro via third-party retailers.
How much does the Vision Pro headset cost?
As you might expect, Apple’s first AR/VR headset is expensive: the Vision Pro starts from $3,499/£3,499 for a 256GB of internal storage.
The device offers a modular and customisable design, and different headband options have different prices. There are also Zeiss corrective lenses available for people who wear glasses or contacts, with Readers costing $99/£99 and prescription Optical Inserts at $149/£149.
Obviously, $3,499/£3,499 is expensive, even by VR standards. It’s more than double the $1,499/£1,499 Meta Quest Pro, and the equivalent of seven $499/£479 Meta Quest 3 headsets.
The saving grace is that, according to Bloomberg, Apple could be working on a much cheaper headset for release sometime this year. According to The Information, Apple apparently wants to launch a more affordable headset, although ‘affordable’ in Apple’s eyes is likely to be priced somewhere near the Meta Quest Pro.
It’s said to be achieving this aim by using lower-tier components than the top-end headset, with a lower resolution display, less processing power, and maybe even the omission of the low-latency audio chipset.
Ming-Chi Kuo thinks the affordable follow-up is further off. He reports that Apple is working on a pair of successors, “a high-end and a low-end” model, but that they won’t arrive until 2025.
What to expect from Apple’s AR/VR headset
It may be expensive, but the Vision Pro is like no other headset on the market in design or specs.
Design
In terms of general design, the headset looks like a cross between the Meta Quest Pro and a ski mask, with lightweight fabrics and materials that should help maintain a comfortable fit over longer sessions.
The front of the headset is a 3D-curved sheet of laminated glass which attaches to the aluminium alloy frame. This is simple in design, with a single button, a digital rotating crown, and vents for cooling.
Next comes the light seal, which is available in “a range of shapes and sizes”, and flexes to conform to your face for a comfortable and precise fit.
Then there are the flexible straps, which contain the two audio units – or “audio pods” as Apple calls them – which you position to keep the speakers close to your ears.
Finally, the 3D knitted headband has a stretchy structure. It attaches to the rest of the headset with a simple click mechanism, so it should be quick and easy to swap in for a different size or style, much like the one on the Apple Watch. There’s also an adjustment dial for more fine-tuning.
Early leaks suggested that the headset wasn’t designed to work for people who wear glasses, and that was borne out when it launched. Apple’s solution is (unsurprisingly) expensive: custom Zeiss optical inserts which magnetically attach to the headset’s lenses, available to suit a range of prescriptions.
The Vision Pro weighs 600-650g (21-23oz). This is fairly heavy, but would be heavier still if Apple hadn’t taken the battery out of the headset and put it into an aluminium battery pack, which attaches to the headset by a woven cable.
The most unusual thing about the design of the Vision Pro is what it doesn’t have: controllers. Apple intends you to control the headset solely with your eyes, hands, and voice, so there are no potentially cumbersome controls to learn.
Specs, tracking, and performance
The core of the Vision Pro hardware is one of Apple’s M2 chips – found across its Mac line, including the 15-inch MacBook Air, which was revealed at the same time as the headset.
That guarantees significant power, almost certainly more than is found in any rival AR headset right now.
The M2 is paired with a new chip running parallel: R1.
This silicon is designed for real-time sensor processing, handling the inputs from the headset’s 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones while striving to keep latency as low as possible – down to as little as 12ms, according to the company, which is less than the time it takes you to blink.
All that tracking is complicated, too. The cameras are used both to supply a visual feed of the world to you and to track your eye and hand movements for controls, with all the sensors combining to make the headset view as natural and immersive as possible.
The displays are similarly impressive. There are 23 million pixels across the two microOLED display units, each of which is the size of a postage stamp. That means each eye gets a screen with a higher resolution than a 4K TV, allowing you to watch 4K content and read small text with clarity.
Thanks to an online developer session released by Apple, we first found out that the screens can deliver HDR and a 90Hz refresh rate. In fact, they can technically go up to 96Hz – a number chosen because it’s a multiple of 24, meaning 24fps content (including most movies) can be displayed smoothly, without dropped frames.
What’s most surprising is that the headset actually packs a third display – on the outside. This curved OLED panel is designed to show your eyes to people in the room with you, using a feed transmitted by cameras inside the headset.
The screen can react to what you’re doing – going opaque when you’re in fully immersive content, for example – or to people in the room, bringing your eyes into view whenever someone comes close to talk to you.
As for audio, the two “audio pods” each have two drivers, and use audio ray-tracing to tune their “ambient Spatial Audio” to suit the exact size, layout, and materials of your room.
The downside to all this power is battery life. While Apple touts that this is an “all-day” headset while plugged into mains power, if you’re on battery it only lasts up to two hours. That means this doesn’t yet feel like tech ready for travel or using out and about, despite Apple’s marketing to that effect.
Software and features
So, for all that hardware, what does Vision Pro actually do?
Well, on a basic level the software – dubbed visionOS – lets you open all your usual apps on a private display, including multi-tasking, so that you can browse the web, work on a presentation, on what feels to you like a gigantic display.
Apple says that “hundreds of thousands” of iOS and iPadOS apps will be compatible with the hardware, along with a dedicated app store for software designed specifically for Vision Pro – including a Disney+ app that Disney CEO Bob Iger came to WWDC to show off.
You can see those apps floating around in the room you’re in – or, technically, a camera feed of that room – or you can replace it with immersive 3D environments if you’d rather be working in the rainforest or the cockpit of an X-Wing.
The headset lets you browse photos or watch video content, and will automatically dim your surroundings as it does so. There are some neat effects here too – panoramic photos will wrap around you, 3D movies like Avatar will display with full effect, and custom new Spatial Audio tech delivers surround sound.
You can even use the headset to create 3D content, but we’re not sure who will. You’ve got to be wearing the headset while you take 3D photos or record 3D video, adding a dystopian edge to Apple’s vision of capturing treasured family memories in three dimensions.
Naturally the headset can sync to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, so all of your content and accounts carry across.
More impressively, you can wirelessly stream content from other hardware. Just looking at a MacBook screen can transfer the contents of its display to the headset interface, letting you privately work on files while the laptop screen stays blank.
For the most part, the headset is controlled with eye-tracking, gestures, and voice controls – including dictation for messaging – but if you need to get on with proper work, you can also connect a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse for a more traditional experience.
You can even use the headset for FaceTime calls, although there’s a catch: since no-one wants to see your face behind a visor, Apple is instead using the eye-tracking tech to render a 3D digital avatar of you which recreates your facial movements exactly (well, ish – even Apple’s WWDC demo wasn’t entirely convincing here).
As for security, Apple has introduced Optic ID, eye-scanning tech which recognises the unique patterns of your iris. This works for Apple Pay, App Store purchases, and password auto-fill as you’d expect, along with offering handy privacy for users of a shared headset.
