Peter's First Impressions on Apple Vision Pro
Spatial Coming is coming... but it's not quite there yet.
It’s been about two weeks since I was able to pick up my Apple Vision Pro and I have a few thoughts — both audio and non-audio related. It’s too early to review the product. I need more time with it to give my full thoughts. But for right now, I have a few thoughts and my general experience with the device I’d like to share.
First and foremost, I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a new product from Apple or otherwise in a very long time. Not because they were first to an AR product, nor first to a VR product. I’ve used VR products on and off for years now. I’ve always been excited about this space. My big problem with every other VR headset I’ve tried is motion sickness. And so far, the Vision Pro doesn’t cause motion sickness.
I almost want to say it’s like the first-generation Apple Watch. But not really, because the first-generation Apple Watch was slow, even after the watchOS 2 update with native applications. It wasn’t until future hardware revisions and faster chips came before the Apple Watch no longer felt inherently clunky and slow to use. To that end, I think we’ll see a similar software story. visionOS 1.x seems to be lacking some basic functionality such as the ability to take traditional phone calls, change your notification/text sounds, or rearrange your home screen. But the core functionality is there, at least for me. And I strongly believe that the software will change dramatically with visionOS 2 and future versions of the OS.
Audio Experience
Since this is an audio blog after all, let me start with the audio experience on Apple Vision Pro. I think the onboard Audio Pods are okay. They get the job done in a pinch but are severely lacking in the sub-bass and upper treble regions. This thing is effectively a midrange cannon. The audio gets distorted if you go above about 80% as well. But that’s to be expected. They are tiny speakers pointed directly at your ears. To me, the Audio Pods are like AirPods Pro. They sound good enough, but I would never want to watch a movie or listen to music on them. The Audio Pods are great for podcasts, a casual TV show, watching YouTube videos, and hopefully taking phone calls in the future.
Throwing on AirPods is a step up, especially if you have the USB-C AirPods Pro 2nd gen. It’s about what you’d expect with AirPods connected to other devices. Just lower latency. Lossless audio is there for up to 20-bit 48 kHz, and that’s cool. But from my experience, the sound is only marginally better than using AirPods Pro on any other device. Any sound improvement from going lossless won’t be feasibly heard by the vast majority of people. The real winner is the low-latency aspect. The USB-C AirPods Pro paired with the Vision Pro makes it feel like there’s virtually no latency. It’s not enough where I’d say go out and buy the new AirPods Pro if you already have the Lightning model. But it’s great for when you upgrade to a future version of AirPods, which will presumably keep and/or improve the latency.
You can, in fact, pair non-Apple/Beats Bluetooth headphones to the Apple Vision Pro. However, it’s a pain to figure it out. I had to read an Apple Support document to pair my headphones. You don’t pair it in the traditional way (Settings > Bluetooth). It’s buried deep in the accessibility settings. (Settings > Accessibility > Hearing Devices > Other Devices). Apple claims that latency may be an issue. But I haven’t found that to be a problem at all. Of course, you won’t have access to lossless audio or lower latency, but it works fine. I’ve paired my Focal Bathys to AVP numerous times and have watched plenty of movies and TV on it without any issues. There’s a slight delay when you hit play or pause, but it’s not enough to take you out of the experience. If you’ve ever used Bluetooth headphones with your phone or computer, it’s a similar experience to that.
What’s really impressive about using third-party headphones over Bluetooth is the improvement to head-tracked spatial audio. On the iPhone and iPad, it was never convincing, even recently. However, spatial audio on visionOS and whatever tech is being used is a marked improvement, especially with third-party headphones. It’s really good. It’s great whether you’re using the Audio Pods, AirPods, or third-party headphones. I would never listen to stereo mixed content this way. But any type of multi-channel audio? I keep it on. It’s actually convincing.
Of course, my preference would be a way to connect my headphones over a wire, but that’s not currently possible with the current version of visionOS. However, there are rumblings that the ultra-expensive developer strap supports up to Thunderbolt 4 speeds but is currently being software limited. One can hope.
Software
Since I mentioned software, let me start there. I think for a first attempt, there’s quite a lot Apple got right. I won’t go too deep into that here since it’s been covered to death by people way more experienced than I am. All I’ll say is, overall, I like the software experience day to day. How the Vision Pro anchors and remembers your window placement is perfect. The virtual environments and the fact that as soon as you get up and start walking away, visionOS starts passing through your real environment is great. The interaction model of looking at things and tapping them with your fingers is excellent. I wear prescription lenses and the fact that visionOS is able to accommodate me (although I understand it’s not able to accommodate everybody) is great.
But at the same time, visionOS is rather buggy and can be a pain to use on a day-to-day basis. In terms of bugs, the biggest one that stands out to me is that universal control will randomly stop working. I’ll be in the middle of writing out a text and it’s like, nope, your keyboard isn’t there anymore and I’m back to pecking away at the virtual keyboard one key at a time with an error on my Mac display saying input devices are currently not available. There’s also the problem of... no keyboard occlusion. If you’re fully immersed in a VR experience, you can see your hands but good luck trying to find a keyboard you can’t see.
In terms of passthrough, everyone else is right. It gives you a slightly dim view of the world. It works most of the time but struggles in dim rooms and low-light situations. Unsurprisingly, this is due to the Apple Vision Pro using cameras and cameras struggling in the dark. With that statement in mind, it’s the same case for hand navigation. It works like magic during the day. But when I plop down in bed to watch a YouTube video, the Vision Pro sometimes struggles to register my taps correctly.
It’s a similar situation when I’m looking above me to get at a window that I moved further up. I’ve gotten used to putting my hands relatively close to my body. But when I look up, it won’t register my taps because the LiDAR sensor is out of range. I have to consciously remember to move my hands further out. It breaks the immersion.
And then... there are iOS apps (both iPhone and iPad apps). The idea of having iPhone and iPad apps running alongside visionOS apps and the ability to also mirror your Mac to have Mac applications all in one space is enticing. Unfortunately, iOS apps fall short in one key area: tap/"look" targets. Most iOS apps are designed for big meaty fingers, not precise input from your eyes. It’s not so much small tap targets, but it’s the fact that UI elements are packed so close together, visionOS sometimes has a hard time figuring out where you’re looking. For example, I’ll look and tap on something, but as soon as I tap, visionOS taps the item either directly above or beneath what I was looking at because it wasn’t quite sure which item I wanted to select.
iOS apps are also in light mode by default, which is really frustrating as a dark mode at all times user. Some apps have settings that let you manually select dark mode, but most just follow the "system" setting. Which, on visionOS is light mode with no way to change it. In stark contrast, visionOS apps appear more dark than light. This one is likely an easy solve with a simple system light/dark mode toggle in the settings for iOS apps.
But again, I don’t hate having iOS apps on visionOS. As I mentioned earlier, having both iOS apps and macOS screen mirroring arguably makes visionOS Apple’s most versatile system yet. Not to mention, visionOS allows up to 32 apps open simultaneously. That’s in stark contrast to iPadOS’ 4 app (or 8, with an external monitor) limit. I appreciate having iOS and iPadOS apps on visionOS, even if they’re a bit clunky to use at the moment.
The bane of my existence on visionOS is notifications and the whole control center experience. It feels like a tacked on experience. Notifications don’t show the full alert with details, just the app icon. And if you’re remotely looking near it, it never goes away. The only way to read the full message is if you tap on it or you bring up the control center and tap on the notification center icon. In my opinion, I think notifications should show the icon, and when you start looking at it, they should expand and show you the first few lines of the notifications, just like how it works on every other Apple platform.
Likewise, I think the control center experience is overly simplistic with way too many layers/taps to get to what you’re actually wanting. If it were up to me, I’d make the control center take up more space, but have everything available upon that first tap. Whereas right now, the actual control center as you’d traditionally define it is hidden behind a second control center button after you bring up that first contextual menu. In an OS with an infinite canvas, there should be no reason there are so many nested layers to this experience.
But the biggest "issue" right now is there just aren’t many Vision Pro apps on the App Store yet. The bulk of the apps installed on my personal Vision Pro are iPad and iPhone apps running in compatibility mode. At the time of writing, we’re only slightly above 1,000 native visionOS apps. It’s still early days and it’s definitely one of those "wait and see" situations. Developers will either see it as a viable platform and start developing for it, or we’ll just get stuck in this constant phase of "I hope more apps are updated to run natively on visionOS."
All this is to say that the software is very early stages. Should you accept that at $3500? No. Should you buy a product based on the promise of future software updates? No. Other smaller annoyances include no proper mouse support (only trackpads, currently. Even if you’re using universal control and have a mouse paired to your Mac.), and no wired accessories are currently allowed.
Hardware
The hardware is more solid than I expected. Thanks to Apple silicon, the Apple Vision Pro doesn’t feel slow. The M2 and R1 chips are no doubt doing a ton of work behind the scenes to make the experience as seamless as possible. While you don’t notice it while you’re wearing it, touching the vents up top after using Vision Pro for more than about 30-40 minutes, you can feel the heat and the fans blowing (even though the fans are silent while in use).
But the stars of the show are definitely the displays. Apple says each eye is equipped with more pixels than a 4K TV. It’s truly fantastic. It’s one of those things where describing it to you wouldn’t do it justice. Despite the passthrough being subpar, the UI, apps, and virtual reality experiences are always in focus and sharp. Some are saying that the FOV (field of view) isn’t as good as other headsets. And yeah, they’d be right. But I don’t think the FOV is bad by any means.
In terms of comfort, it’s obviously a YMMV situation. To give you a better idea: most headphones like the Sony XM-series or Bose QC series are extremely uncomfortable on my head. Other headphones such as AirPods Max and most other traditionally heavier headphones, I have no problems with. Likewise, I don’t really mind the weight of the Vision Pro on my head. I’ve been using the Solo Knit Band since I first unboxed the Vision Pro and I’ve had zero desire to use the Dual Loop Band. I find the Solo Knit Band extremely comfortable, even after using the Vision Pro for several hours.
One thing I’ve had to figure out is the light seal, however. Apple’s face scan, from my experience, is very inaccurate. The first light seal I got was extremely uncomfortable on my head. It took me going to my local Apple Store and trying on about effectively every light seal they had to get one that was comfortable for me. I did the questionnaire on Apple’s website a few times and every time it gave me a different size to try. But once I found the right light seal, the Vision Pro has been smooth sailing for me. I was able to get a full 8-hour work day in with it on (and of course, plugged into power).
Despite the general perception of the feature, I actually like EyeSight and the front display. Could it be brighter and more high resolution? Yeah. Same with Personas. I think it’s one of those things where you kind of half to think, "This is the worst it’ll ever be." And, if it never improves? Yeah, maybe get rid of it. But I like the idea of it and hope that it gets better as time progresses. Talking to other people in Vision Pro is a weird experience, don’t get me wrong. But everyone I’ve talked to says that they vastly prefer having my eyes visible, even on a low-quality, hard-to-see screen, than not having a screen at all.
Battery life is one of those things that are hard to quantify. Two weeks is definitely not enough time to really give an overarching impression. But so far? I’m getting much longer battery life than what Apple quoted. I’m getting around 3-4 hours of use. And that’s going from 100% to as low as 10% on one occasion.
The external battery is... fine. Would I prefer it to be integrated? Sure. But it’s not that big of a deal. Typically, I keep the cable from the battery plugged into the Vision Pro. I just put on Vision Pro, throw the battery in my pocket, and forget about it. Having the cable from the Vision Pro and charging port on the same side was a smart move by Apple. That way you have one spot where both the cord to the headset and the charging cord come out of. Would I have preferred an integrated battery? Sure. But having it external isn’t a dealbreaker by any stretch of the word. I got used to it very quickly.
Conclusion
The Vision Pro is a very hard sell. The biggest hump for most people will be the price point. It’s very expensive and has a rather limited scope at the time of writing. It’s an entertainment device first thanks to its truly exceptional and innovative displays, allowing you to have an up to 100-foot movie theater in your living room.
On the productivity side, we’re still very much early days. Apps just aren’t there yet, so I’ve fallen back to Mac Virtual Display for most of my productivity work. Which, in and of itself, is limited to just one virtual display. It’s great in a pinch or on the go, but I still prefer using my Studio Display at home.
Weight and comfort will be a problem for what appears to be a decent number of people. I don’t have an issue strapping heavy gear on my head, but as I said earlier, YMMV.
I think the biggest "yes, I’m keeping it" moment for me was when I first watched a full-length movie in Vision Pro with no discomfort or motion sickness. I was completely immersed and even forgot I was wearing the Vision Pro during the movie. In fact, I’ve sat and watched half a dozen movies and several episodes of TV shows with ease. Entertainment is definitely the Vision Pro’s biggest selling point as of right now. The big problem, of course, is that you can’t share that experience with anyone else. It’s a very individual experience until Apple can figure out shared experiences and proper SharePlay support.
Even with battery life at 3-4 hours on a single charge, you’re still dealing with an external battery pack with a cable running to the headset. With the proprietary "wide lightning" connector from the headset to the battery, it means that you’ll need to have the battery with you at all times. Even if you want to stay plugged in all day, that means a wire from the wall to the battery pack, and then the battery pack to the Vision Pro.
But at the end of the day, Apple Vision Pro is a fun, bleeding edge product. It has all the trademarks of a first-generation product. Again, the closest parallel I can draw is the Apple Watch. Most people didn’t need to buy the first-generation Apple Watch. The software wasn’t fully baked and the hardware was slow. watchOS 2 and proceeding hardware changes made the Apple Watch what it is today. watchOS 1 is almost unrecognizable today.
I was there on day one for the Apple Watch as well. For me, this is no different. I’m confidently keeping my Vision Pro. It’s a great entertainment device and has the diversity of iOS, macOS, and now visionOS apps. The barrier to entry is, of course, that you have to strap a computer to your face. But for me right now, this is a tradeoff I’m willing to take.