Review: Apple Vison Pro

Review by one of the first Apple Vision Pro users in New Zealand

Recently, I was on a trip to the USA when the Apple Vision Pro was released, and hence decided to buy one just before returning home, possibly making me the first person in New Zealand to have the new AR / VR headset.

After a month or so of use, here are the things that I’ve found that I like and dislike with the headset - interestingly, a lot of these things were not mentioned in other reviews, before I decided to buy the headset.

Fit, comfort and style

• Because of the glass, aluminium and processing chips, this device is quite heavy on your face. Much less comfortable for long periods than my old Occulus Quest , and the Oculus Quest 2 doesn’t even have an external battery pack.

• The heavy external battery pack is definitely ugly and heavy, but necessary for driving all the improved processing I suppose. If the AVP didn’t have the external battery pack and was the same otherwise, it would be a whole new level of cool.

  

  

Things I liked about the Apple Vision Pro

• As you’d expect from Apple, this is a device that’s much nicer looking and feeling than other devices in the same category, with brushed aluminium and glass rather than plastic

• Visually, the screen is much, much higher quality than something like a Quest 2, and the “screen door” effect, where you can see the gaps between pixels, which makes it look like you’re looking at the world through a static screen door on most VR headsets is gone / invisible with he AV Pro. They’ve nailed the resolution and quality to the point where it’s good enough to believe you’re actually in an alternate reality

• The way that the AV pro has nailed the AR / VR experience is so smart and logical, but just perfect - Like Steve Jobs said - Complexity is easy, and Simplicity is hard, and Apple is just so good at making complex things easy (like the single button on the iPhone at launch vs. the hundreds of buttons on things like a blackberry that came before. When you first put on the headset, you just see the normal world, but with the familiar apple row of icons that you’d see on an iPhone or Mac. If you want to “tune out” the real world, you can twist the Digital Crown, and your windows, Icons and apps stay where they are, and another environment can replace the real world. Apple blends AR and VR better than any other headset.

• The pass-through function of the headset is so good that when in AR mode (not VR), it seems like you are basically just looking at the normal world, which is why you’ve seen videos of people wearing Apple Vision Pros and driving cars and riding motorbikes and skateboards (which is NOT something I recommend)

Things I don’t like about the Apple Vision Pro

• By far the most annoying feature of the AVP is the guest mode implementation. When you spend US$3,700 / NZ$7,000 on a VR headset, you want to be able to share it with friends. The trouble is that because the eye tracking is so precise, the headset needs to be perfectly aligned and trained for each user. You can’t just have the headset going and then pass it to a friend - it won’t work. So each time you want to give your headset to someone to show them something, you have to enter “guest mode” then your guest users needs to go through a 3 minute setup process, and this process can’t be remembered! So if I want to show my girlfriend something, she has to go through 3 mins of process every time she puts on the headset! Now this could be vastly improved if Apple just allowed you to set up - and remember! - more guest users so that it knows at least who’s done the training and hand and eye setup. But it gets worse! In order to put the headset in guest mode, you have to choose which app to “sandbox”, meaning that basically you can only share one app at a time. (You can kind of share more than one app at a time, but they all have to be open when you pass the headset over, and some apps can’t run simultaneously). Basically, the way that the guest user is set up SUCKS. I can’t run through a check-list of apps to allow and deny, with a list of guest users who are allowed for each. So basically any guest user has to go through a 3 min setup process every time they put on the headset, and only be able to use one app at a time. It really is crap. Now for *just me* the headset is amazing, but really the AVP works best as a single piece of hardware for a single user, with everything set up just how you like, connected to your personal iCloud account. If you want to have one AVP per household and long in with multiple iCloud accounts, it’s not currently possible, and for anyone but the main user, it’s going to be painful. It’s kind of like an iPad. You can share it with your family, but ultimately it’s tied to one persons iCloud account, photos etc. And this is worse than an iPad in that while an iPad only has Face ID of the registered user, you don’t have to go thru a 3 min setup process to hand over!

• The battery pack. Carrying the external battery pack around is not *that* annoying….but it is annoying. The Oculus Quest 2 doesn’t need a battery pack and it’s a smaller lighter headset. The battery pack also has a USB-C In and out Ports, but you can ONLY use the battery back with the headset. This pissed me off. I just assumed when I bought the headset that I’d be able to use the battery pack as a normal external battery pack and charge my iPhone or even MacBook Air when I needed juice, but reverse charging (output) from the battery pack is not a thing. I think Apple missed a massive opportunity here, and I still find it annoying that the battery pack is a single use only device for the AVP and nothing else.

• Another annoying thing is that VR “Experiences” Apple seems to be locked down and trying to charge for. In much the same way that Apple made you start purchasing MP3s for $1 on iTunes instead of downloading free ones, they seem to be doing the same for VR content. On my Occulus headset, I can go to the 360 video / VR section of YouTube, and load a “360” video, and it plays perfectly without any fiddling. If you do the same with the AVP, 360 videos play in a flat format in a browser window inside Safari for AVP. The only VR content I’ve been able to get working is inside the Apple eco-system, and while it’s amazing content, it really is annoying not being able to browse the thousands of 360 videos on YouTube - hence I’ll be keeping my Oculus for a while.

• No third party apps. I find it annoying that there is no YouTube or Netflix app for the AVP. Maybe they will come, but then again there is no Netflix app for MacOS either, so I won’t hold my breath (there is a Netflix app for iPad tho). As there is no Netflix App for AVP, this means I can’t download Netflix shows for offline watching on the plane for example, so I’m forced back into the Apple TV ecosystem for offline content. So if you want to watch Netflix offline in the air on your AVP, you’ll have to go back to your iPad.

• AVP is NOT compatible with Enterprise Exchange implementations! My company has an implementation of Microsoft 365 that requires devices to be signed and install the Microsoft Company Portal app for access. As there is no Company Portal App for AVP, I can’t add my exchange account AVP, which means that I can only get my Apple and Gmail mail accounts on AVP, not my work email. But also, worse than that, because my contacts are stored on my corporate mail account, and I can’t add the corporate mail account, when I get a FaceTime or iMessage inside AVP, it always just comes up as a phone number, with no name, as there is no contact database to match with. Hoping that ‘Company Portal” is added to AVP soon, or I may have to migrate all my exchange contacts to Apple iCloud so that I can see them inside the AVP.

• As of purchase, you couldn’t use a non-US iCloud account on the AVP. This is something to be aware of for foreign citizens on holiday purchasing an AVP to take home. Luckily my iCloud account is so old that it’s always been US based as I got it when you could’t have a New Zealand one.

• The Price. I was ok to pay $US3,700 for one, but most people won’t be.

Summary

• The AVP is the worlds sexiest AR / VR headset, with visual quality un-matched

• But….The AVP is expensive. For many people it will be a luxury.

• If you want more access to content, I’d go with an Oculus Quest 3 instead at a fraction of the price, as the AVP is really locked to Apple VR content

• This will be the worst VR headset Apple will ever make, and I look forward to the day when perhaps it’s lighter with no external battery pack, and more content is accessible.