Peter's Long Term Apple Vision Pro Review
Peter's Long Term Apple Vision Pro Review
It might not be "the" future, but it's "a" future.
Okay, full disclosure—I had a fully written review ready but it didn’t feel right. So this is the alt version.
I wanted to do a one month review of Apple Vision Pro but I felt like it wouldn’t be right to do so without experiencing one of its biggest selling points - traveling. I was able to travel with the Vision Pro this past week and I finally feel I have enough to say about Apple’s first head-mounted display (HMD).
Also, as a person who was diagnosed with autism (and ADHD) within the last year, I think the Vision Pro has helped me in ways I never even imagined when I first picked it up almost six weeks ago.
So without further ado, here’s my long term review of Apple Vision Pro.
Accessibility
So let’s start there. My disability wasn’t even something that I was thinking about when I picked up my Vision Pro. The first week with the device was an absolute nightmare for me.
As a person with autism (and YMMV of course), I hadn’t really grasped the fact that, unlike most others, I tend to keep my eyes looking forward and tend to move my head when looking at something. Rather than moving my eyes to look at things in my peripheral vision, I tend to move my entire head (post edit: I’m still struggling with this even now—just to a lesser degree).
Thankfully, Apple has thought this through. In the Vision Pro’s accessibility settings, you’re able to change how you navigate the device—eye, hand, head, or finger tracking, for example. I tried head tracking for a few hours and that got bad quick, thanks to the weight of the Vision Pro. I felt the neck strain within the first hour of using the Vision Pro this way.
I’ve also likely spent more time than most re-doing eye tracking. For the next two or three weeks following my first week, I probably ran the eye tracking setup four or five dozen times.
But I think the best descriptor for the Vision Pro for me is that this device is headphones for your eyes. Televisions, movie screens, projectors, etc. are all the equivalent of speakers and home theater setups. It’s a shared experience. Vision Pro is a personal device designed for only one person at a time - similar to headphones.
From a sensory standpoint, the Vision Pro actually helps out quite a bit. Especially now that we’re heading into the sunnier months of the year. Yes, passthrough on the Vision Pro is the best we’ve seen. Yet, it’s still very obvious you’re staring at a display showing cameras. Yes, dynamic range isn’t as good as modern smartphone cameras and it looks like you’re viewing a washed out version of the world. Yet, I’m actually thankful for this because that means I can’t get overloaded by the insanely bright sun or bright house lights. If it’s a bright and sunny day, I can turn on an Environment and sit in Mount Hood at night.
But, despite Apple pushing AR and mixed reality, I find myself using the Vision Pro in what’s traditionally defined as a VR environment more often. The Mount Hood environment is currently my favorite of the bunch and I find myself much more comfortable on the Vision Pro versus my dual Studio Displays at home.
And it’s not like I haven’t used VR headsets before. I’ve used the Meta Quest 2 and PSVR in the past. But I didn’t really find those terribly intuitive for productivity. I’ve always thought of those as gaming headsets (especially the PSVR, obviously).
The Vision Pro also helps with my ADHD as well. Rather than having distractions from the real world, I for once am able to have complete control over my environment. I don’t have much to say in that regard other than it’s great for focus. It forces me to only have what I need around me and strips away anything I don’t. Again, the high-definition replica of Mount Hood works wonders here.
Comfort
I think the biggest concern about Vision Pro I hear from others is weight and comfort. Yes, the Apple Vision Pro is literally like strapping an iPad Pro to your face in terms of weight. Unfortunately, the two head straps that come with the device are both not great.
The Solo Knit Band is the lesser of two evils in that it’s the best looking and more comfortable of the two... if you’re planning to use it for an hour or less. It’s super easy to get on and adjust as needed. But after 45 minutes to an hour, you’ll start to feel the pressure on your head.
The Dual Loop band, at least for me, falls in the "don’t bother" category. I tried it, especially since everyone seems to argue it’s the better band, and almost immediately gave up on it. The top strap is simply way too thin and starts to hurt after about 10 minutes of use.
But fear not, not all is lost. To solve for comfort, I went ahead and bought the SoloTop adapter from Etsy, along with a second Solo Knit band from Apple (size small is recommended for most heads). With this combination, comfort went from a 3 maybe 4 out of 10 at most to an 8 or 9 out of 10. This won’t work for everyone, but this works best for me. Plus, this lets me keep the intuitive fit dial from the solo knit band. It went from an hour max in the Vision Pro to me being able to use it for a full workday (8 hours). With the battery plugged in, of course. The Vision Pro on its own can only get me 3-4 hours max before giving out.
There’s also the Light Seal dilemma. I, unfortunately, wasn’t lucky enough to get the proper light seal on the first try (nor second, third, fourth, or even fifth try). To put it shortly, I spent the first month trying different light seals. Looking back at my order information? I went through seven different light seals before landing on the one I have now - which is perfect. Apple has an online tool you can use to decipher what light seal might be good for you based on a few questions.
Ultimately, though, this Reddit thread helped me decipher Apple’s numbering system and is what helped me figure out what light seal worked best. If you were like me and were struggling to find the right light seal, that guide helped me tremendously. With my current light seal and band combination, I have a near-complete seal. I can ever so slightly see a little gap under my nose, but I’d have to actually look all the way down to see it. It’s outside my peripheral vision. 99% of the time, I’m completely sealed away.
Traveling with Apple Vision Pro
This is the part of my review I had to sit on because... well, I haven’t traveled until very recently. First and foremost, everyone else is right. Make sure you enable Travel Mode on Vision Pro before you actually get on the flight. Otherwise, like me, you’ll be fighting the constant Tracking Failed error and trying to, as quickly as you can, access the control center and activate Travel Mode before the error pops up. (Some people say that Vision Pro asks you to turn on Travel Mode in this scenario, but that was not the case for me.)
Thankfully, once you have it enabled (again, you want to do it before you actually get on the flight), it stays on until you manually turn off the feature.
Unfortunately, with Travel Mode enabled is where I feel the Vision Pro is the most buggy. While watching offline content is fine, you’ll notice that the video window slightly shifts every few seconds. It’s fine if your window is quite large and you’re in an environment. It’s not terribly noticeable there. But when you have your real-world environment dialed in and the video window about a foot in front of you as a tiny window because you’re waiting on the drink cart to show up? It becomes super apparent that testing for travel mode pre-launch was minimal. Hopefully, Apple improves on this as more feedback and more people can freely travel with the Vision Pro, but as of right now (visionOS 1.1), it’s good enough with clear bug fixes that can be made.
Other bugs I noticed include environments not dialing in and out as I turned the digital crown and the visionOS home screen becoming extremely laggy and buggy. I also had a few instances where apps would become unresponsive to hand gestures. The big one, as Apple notes, is that you have to remain stationary. You can’t look out the window. As soon as you look elsewhere, including down, to grab your drink, you get the Trackinng Failed message again. Thankfully, once you look forward again, the error goes away and you can continue where you left off.
Also, don’t bother with Mac Virtual Display in this environment unless your flight has free Wi-Fi. In order for the feature to work in flight, you’ll need to pay for Wi-Fi for both your Vision Pro and your Mac. I actually tried to use the feature at the Denver airport while waiting a few hours for a layover (free Wi-Fi). For whatever reason, it refused to work. That’s after trying to restart both my Mac and Vision Pro and I even tried to connect both to a mobile hotspot. Didn’t work. I kept getting a timed out error. I spent a good 45-90 minutes troubleshooting this and probably looked like a complete psychopath in the making. Did not work.
While Travel Mode in its current state is way better than not having it at all—especially when you’re able to fully immerse yourself in the air—it still has a lot of work to do in terms of stability.
Entertainment, 3D Movies, Immersive Experiences & Audio
Likely the biggest reason most people would consider the Vision Pro is for its entertainment factor. And boy, it is an experience. And that’s coming from someone who has two OLED TVs—a 55-inch 2017 LG C7 and a 65-inch LG CX.
Those TVs are now reserved for group viewing experiences. If I know I’m only going to watch something on my own, the Vision Pro is the first thing I go for now. It’s the best display I have. And that’s only with 2D experiences.
It’s not a hot take by any stretch of the imagination but I’ve never been a fan of 3D movies. Seeing them in theaters was never a great experience for me. But my goodness, 3D movies on Apple Vision Pro are next level. You don’t lose brightness or dynamic range like at the theater. And because AVP has two physical displays, it’s able to output real 3D without any lens or display tricks. The best way I can describe it is things don’t really pop out at you. Rather, your "normal" vision is about as far forward as it’ll go, but things start popping "in" behind it. As opposed to what a lot of us were led to believe when we were younger where you expect things to pop out of the screen.
I watched a few movies on Disney+ in 3D such as Encanto, and Ralph Breaks The Internet. In the former, it felt like a 2D movie with 3D effects sprinkled on top. It wasn’t distracting at all. For the latter, the 3D effect was very much in your face, but not distracting. After a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the fact that it was seeing 3D, and didn’t really think about it. The end credits for Ralph Breaks The Internet were most notable for that movie. I wouldn’t want to watch a 3D movie any other way ever again.
But something that I absolutely love and would like to see more of is Apple’s immersive video and third-party fully immersive VR experiences. They’re separate tech that aims to deliver a similar experience—a 180-degree immersive experience. Most notably, I really liked the Alicia Keys Rehearsal Room episode on Apple TV+, and the Zara Larsson experience on AmazeVR. Watching those had me clamoring for more content in those formats.
The main difference, of course, is that Apple’s experiences are shot in much higher fidelity. And at least with that particular episode, all of the cameras were stationary. Meanwhile, the AmazeVR experience has you transported into virtual worlds (though, I would kill for “real” live concerts shot in 3D in the future). The fidelity isn’t as high and you can definitely see the lower quality at times, but the movement was smooth and the overall experience was great. It was an enjoyable 20-minute "mini" concert.
My only real complaint about the AmazeVR experience is that it requires you to download the concert in full to play it. And boy does that take quite a while to download. For reference, I have a gigabit wired connection blanketed with Wi-Fi 6E and it took the app nearly half an hour to download the 19GB concert. There’s currently no way to stream it. But outside of the sluggish downloads, if this is the worst AmazeVR is ever gonna be, I’m excited for what’s to come as they build out their content library. It also sucks that, despite the download requirement, the app requires an active network connection.
But the biggest downside for the Vision Pro for entertainment is its audio setup. It’s great that you can pair any Bluetooth headphones to AVP or use the built-in audio pods. And spatial audio on AVP is genuinely great, but you’re still bandwidth limited. There are no physical data ports on the Vision Pro, and there’s no way to AirPlay to other devices (though, that’s still a lossy audio experience). It’s not so much sound quality as much as it is latency. I don’t notice it most of the time, but the intro to Lush Life in the Zara Larsson experience involves her clapping to the beat and that’s the first time I’ve felt an audio/visual disconnect in the Vision Pro while using third-party headphones.
On the topic of headphones, it’s very obvious the Vision Pro was designed with earbuds in mind. Not even just AirPods, but any Bluetooth earbuds. While you can absolutely wear over-ear headphones with Vision Pro, it’s a bit cumbersome. Wearing the Solo Knit band, your over-ear headphones’ ear pads will more than likely sit on top of the adjustment knob. That not only prevents a full seal but makes it incredibly difficult to adjust the fit of the band with headphones on. The seal isn’t that much of a problem with open-back headphones or most closed-back headphones, really. But we’re talking about Vision Pro, so most people will be pairing noise cancelling headphones. Obviously, the seal is very important there otherwise you’ll be hearing the world around you. Similarly, you’ll need to wrap the Vision Pro’s power cable around your ear pads if you want a full seal. You may need to have the ear cups lower on your head than normal to compensate. Or, you let the ear pads sit on the adjustment knob if you’ve dialed in your fit already.
Conclusion
Here comes the hard part. For me, the Vision Pro crosses the, "Is there enough here to use on a daily basis" line. For my use cases, I’m more than happy to strap on Apple’s spatial computer to my face and use it for hours at a time on most days.
I’m currently on a personal trip and am thousands of miles away from home. Yet, for the first time, I don’t miss being at my desk with my dual Studio Displays. I have a truly massive 4K display when wearing the Vision Pro and I’m able to use my Mac’s keyboard and trackpad to not only control my Mac display but all of my other apps within visionOS.
And when not working, I am very glad that I’m able to sit back and watch most TV shows and movies natively (and sometimes a less great, but still much better than a small 15-inch 1080p TV, iPad experience. But even then, opening Safari and using the web to watch content not available through the App Store) on a massive 100-foot screen.
I think the best way to describe the Vision Pro experience is that it’s "good enough" in all the areas most people care about. Entertainment is great and most people are okay with Bluetooth latency and audio. Mac Virtual Display is very good, but if you look at it closely, you’ll notice pixelation and latency. Travel Mode is great and is way better than bending your neck down to stare at a laptop screen. Traveling with the Vision Pro is actually the first time I’ve been able to lay back and watch content on a plane. I’ve never had that happen before.
Comfort is a real problem, but thankfully third-party accessories are a thing and that market will only continue to grow and expand in the future. I suppose, my only real complaint about the hardware right now is the lack of physical ports without having to spend $300 for a single USB-C port that only works with development or restoring your device. If they could open up that USB-C port and make the strap available to everyone, that would be a massive step forward.
Yet, saying all that, I can’t recommend the Vision Pro to the vast majority of people. The software is in its infancy both at the operating system level and with third-party applications. For the vast majority of people, you’re better off buying a nice display and a standard computer. Price aside, the Vision Pro is a large, heavy, head-strapped computer with an external battery. While I don’t agree with most of what Mark Zuckerberg says comparing the Vision Pro and Quest 3, the core of his argument is accurate. Apple designed the Vision Pro around its incredible displays. Apple uses premium materials, yet when iFixit tore it down, you can see the company was trying everything it possibly could to reduce weight internally. But that’s still not enough. It’s still a very heavy device you strap to your head, despite having the best displays around when you put the Vision Pro on.
I think Vision Pro is the desktop computer of the computing world. It’s meant for very specific use cases and isn’t meant to be mobile. Mixed reality glasses will be the mass market "made for everybody" product. But that also has tradeoffs such as no immersive environments and processing power. In the best way possible, Apple Vision Pro is the iPad of the world, and future mixed reality glasses are the Apple Watch of the world. iPads can be a bit clunky to use in some scenarios (like walking down the street), but iPads have incredible hardware capability. The Apple Watch is super convenient and most people are more than happy to strap it to their wrist and wear it for every waking moment, but its capabilities are fairly limited thanks to the form factor. That’s how I see Apple Vision Pro versus any future Apple Vision "non-Pro" product.
However, I would still highly recommend booking a demo and trying the Vision Pro at an Apple Store if you’re close. It’s a great first-generation product that will "wow" most people even if it’s not for you.