Almost two years ago there was a thread on this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40872102). I'm curious now that more time has passed what people think?
I use it every day, approx ~95% of the days since it launched over 2 years ago. Many hours a day. Far and away my biggest use-case is connecting it to my laptop for gigantic (private) movie theater-sized screen.
Getting it comfortable was the most important step. The 6-months-old DualKnit band is really great for making it a lot more comfortable. An open face mod (eg $10 Macally on amazon) helps a lot with eye breathability, and restoring peripheral vision.
Also really great for being able to work well from anywhere.
Sad that so many people are sleeping on it, but what can you do? Check out r/VisionPro for tons of people that love theirs and use them constantly.
I bought the refreshed M5 version with the new headstrap. I read so many complaints about weight and it was just never an issue for me personally. Maybe the new strap is that much better?
That said, the battery cable was super annoying, id accidentally catch it multiple times per day. The battery is good for less than 2 hours so i used it plugged into the wall.
For zoom calls, the persona thing is hilariously bad, unusable in a business context. Interesting for a few minutes as a tech demo though.
The virtual layout is good - a big citrix app screen (its the ipad app) for remote desktop, zoom, safari etc off to the sides and then things like calendar widget pinned to physical wall. But text clarity / quality is just slightly not good enough for software development. Almost, its close. If you dont mind large fonts its good enough.
Ultimately returned it but it was a close run thing, i almost kept it.
I do still hanker for something like this, tempted to try xreal or other glasses but seems like the PPD is even lower.
having developed multiple apps on it and tried every which way to use it (as an XR enthusiast in general), I have never been so happy to put a headset up on the shelf and never pull it out again.
using as a spatial monitor was cool. for about 10min until my neck got tired of the added weight. but I’ll give credit that those 10min were pretty cool.
In industrial robotics, there is this emergency practice when the payload and tooling on the robot gets to heavy, to connect the payload to a counterweight and pully system, to "neutralize it in weight". Has anyone here tried that ? It should take three thin ropes with weight to make a object neutrally buyont. Yes, its tied to one room, yes its not pretty and futuristic, but its practical? If you want freedom of movement, connect via magnet- and dedock on leaving the room?
Unless materials science advances to the point where a display like the Vision Pro weighs as much as a pair of glasses, I don’t think there’ll ever be mass adoption of wearable VR beyond anything more than a novelty, for exactly the reason you stated.
Wearing something heavy on the front of your face is simply not a pleasant experience.
Since it's tethered anyway for the battery, I think Apple made a mistake just not building it as a (smart) monitor tethered to a separate PC.
Imagine if the vision pro could just be plugged into a small compute module with a battery or just plugged directly into a Macbook. It would be lighter, cheaper, and more flexible. I think a lot more people would have been interested in it.
Yes, make the battery 2x bigger and include the compute in that.
It would be so cool to be able to plug in arbitrary input devices too, like a dvd player, but its understandable that others don’t feel this way, and it would totally not be an apple product if it did this.
One of their main imposed constraints was clearly to make the battery pocketable, which sadly precludes a lot of things which would have made it a better product, in favour of wider acceptability.
> Yes, make the battery 2x bigger and include the compute in that.
You can't move the compute away in a headset. I have worked for an XR OEM, and when you are designing a headset, you want the compute to be as close as possible from the cameras and displays, to achieve the lowest possible latency and avoid motion sickness for the users.
Even moving the compute to the back of the headset was not considered viable by our HW team. And we haven't spoken about the bandwidth required for all those cameras and UHD displays.
A better way to reduce the weight of the AVP would have been to remove the (useless IMO) front holographic screen, and to replace most of the glass and metal by plastic. And maybe move the battery pack to the back, to get a more balanced headset.
Almost every day. Meanwhile my quest pro gathers a lot of dust. The AVP as a screen is just so much more comfortable and productive for me and nothing beats it for entertainment. It also just still feels like a really great user experience and I was genuinely sad to see the project sunsetted.
Just yesterday they announced a new OS with a number of interesting new features, like custom environments, improved click-with-your-eyes-controls (Dwell Control), a bunch more: https://www.apple.com/os/visionos/
I'm using it ocassionally - whenever I have time to do further WebXR development beyond what I've already done, and when an interesting new immersive video or 3D movie becomes available on it. I'll sometimes use it to catch up on any new VR180 videos on youtube.
For other work or entertainment that doesn't take advantage of its spatial features, I tend to prefer to use a computer with an external display. The display in the Vision Pro cannot match the resolution and HDR headroom of the external display I ended up having (Pro Display XDR). Maybe if the Vision Pro's screen was better than my external display, I'd have additional motivation to use it more often.
It's quite fun and I'll drop into it from time to time, but it's mostly a novel plaything for me. I do have a friend who has used it for full-time work for years though.
Sadly the passthrough is black and white only. That's the one thing I love about the Vision Pro is it never feels claustrophobic thanks to very good passthrough quality.
The Quest 3S has color passthrough and it's hardly an Apple-level device, and it's $349 in comparison.
I guess as a gamer, I don't care that much. I put on my headset to game, and if I need to step away for a moment, I'm more likely to take it off than to wander around my house with a headset on. Still, I thought color passthrough was now table stakes for a headset.
Will be interesting to see which side of $999 it drops. I'll buy it regardless but the optics (heh) on the high RAM cost issue and the unit price might temper demand a bit.
Does the AVP still not integrate with VR games/simulators? I understand why Apple wants it to be a productivity tool not a gaming device, but it really sucks to restrict it in that way.
I tried a bit on the original Vive and text was awful. I didn’t get nauseated, but games didn’t make me sick either (I did get some “sea legs” when I took it off).
Haven’t tried on the AVP, I think it has way better displays than the OG Vive did.
They probably have some kind of fallback system, but the visual-inertial odometry they are using for spatial positioning that is working pretty well when stationary (at home) tend to break badly on a train or plane.
A buddy let me try his Vision Pro, but I instead bought USB C display glasses. I just use them as a second display, not the AR experience you're probably thinking of.
I don't specify which brand or model because I have gone through several pairs since then. They're all about the same and somewhat flimsy, but worth it for the reduced bulk.
I also got usb-c display glasses and they've been great as an external monitor while traveling. I strongly recommend them to folks who want to be able to work comfortably on airplanes or other situations where you don't have an ergonomic desk.
I like them a lot and carry them as one would with headphones. My use case is boring and I mostly plug them into my phone and laptops, but they "just work" on most devices made in the last few years. I use them any time I'm stuck sitting somewhere for more than about 15 minutes.
With this form factor, the main limitation is physical user input, not compatibility or fatigue. There's no battery or adapters or walled garden to mess around with. I would not be opposed to a touch pad or gesture system if it actually worked reliably and didn't require accessories or excessive motion from me.
For now, they're literally just a screen in a pair of glasses, and that's all I ever wanted. I'm sure there will be improvements to this category, but any product that strays from this core functionality will be a hard pass from me.
it did add Safari private browsing mode :), but overall iPhone piggybacked off of the Internet, which was created by Military and adult industry were the first large scale content websites that drove innovation
I'm an indie that travels a lot. I'm interested in it to have more flexibility with ergonomic setups for development, such as being able to stand without needing a way to elevate my laptop to eye height (it's easy at least to find ways to get my keyboard halves to proper height for standing) or lying with keyboard halves at my sides.
Curious if anyone is using it successfully for ergonomics (not just for the convenience of having a big monitor which is secondary for me - Macbook + iPad sidecar display is very travel-friendly but very difficult to use ergonomically away from home).
I can't see any realistic way that the ergonomics would be better than your haphazard hotel room setup. Reality is that the device still has weight on your head and neck and is still kind of tiring to wear for long periods of time.
It's still 1.5lbs hanging off the front of your face and over hours that's still straining.
Lying down or in a recliner or something where you're not really having to support the device yourself is about the only way that I feel you might achieve any kind of better result in an ergonomics sense for a significant length of use time.
(Disclaimer: I had one to demo for a few months and used it/experimented with it sporadically, I don't own one.)
Getting it comfortable was the most important step. The 6-months-old DualKnit band is really great for making it a lot more comfortable. An open face mod (eg $10 Macally on amazon) helps a lot with eye breathability, and restoring peripheral vision.
Also really great for being able to work well from anywhere.
Sad that so many people are sleeping on it, but what can you do? Check out r/VisionPro for tons of people that love theirs and use them constantly.
That said, the battery cable was super annoying, id accidentally catch it multiple times per day. The battery is good for less than 2 hours so i used it plugged into the wall.
For zoom calls, the persona thing is hilariously bad, unusable in a business context. Interesting for a few minutes as a tech demo though.
The virtual layout is good - a big citrix app screen (its the ipad app) for remote desktop, zoom, safari etc off to the sides and then things like calendar widget pinned to physical wall. But text clarity / quality is just slightly not good enough for software development. Almost, its close. If you dont mind large fonts its good enough.
Ultimately returned it but it was a close run thing, i almost kept it.
I do still hanker for something like this, tempted to try xreal or other glasses but seems like the PPD is even lower.
using as a spatial monitor was cool. for about 10min until my neck got tired of the added weight. but I’ll give credit that those 10min were pretty cool.
https://old.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1cki7jc/brillian...
Wearing something heavy on the front of your face is simply not a pleasant experience.
Imagine if the vision pro could just be plugged into a small compute module with a battery or just plugged directly into a Macbook. It would be lighter, cheaper, and more flexible. I think a lot more people would have been interested in it.
It would be so cool to be able to plug in arbitrary input devices too, like a dvd player, but its understandable that others don’t feel this way, and it would totally not be an apple product if it did this.
One of their main imposed constraints was clearly to make the battery pocketable, which sadly precludes a lot of things which would have made it a better product, in favour of wider acceptability.
You can't move the compute away in a headset. I have worked for an XR OEM, and when you are designing a headset, you want the compute to be as close as possible from the cameras and displays, to achieve the lowest possible latency and avoid motion sickness for the users.
Even moving the compute to the back of the headset was not considered viable by our HW team. And we haven't spoken about the bandwidth required for all those cameras and UHD displays.
A better way to reduce the weight of the AVP would have been to remove the (useless IMO) front holographic screen, and to replace most of the glass and metal by plastic. And maybe move the battery pack to the back, to get a more balanced headset.
WWDC also just rolled out some quite exciting features to RealityKit: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/279/ as well as visionOS itself (https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/287/)
It makes me wonder if Apple is really giving it up as news have claimed.
I don't think anyone serious has claimed that.
Just yesterday they announced a new OS with a number of interesting new features, like custom environments, improved click-with-your-eyes-controls (Dwell Control), a bunch more: https://www.apple.com/os/visionos/
For other work or entertainment that doesn't take advantage of its spatial features, I tend to prefer to use a computer with an external display. The display in the Vision Pro cannot match the resolution and HDR headroom of the external display I ended up having (Pro Display XDR). Maybe if the Vision Pro's screen was better than my external display, I'd have additional motivation to use it more often.
Mostly multiple safari windows opening on servers via webterm, cli and emacs.
It’s especially great when traveling.
Only problem, I cannot share a window when presenting…
The Quest 3S has color passthrough and it's hardly an Apple-level device, and it's $349 in comparison.
I guess as a gamer, I don't care that much. I put on my headset to game, and if I need to step away for a moment, I'm more likely to take it off than to wander around my house with a headset on. Still, I thought color passthrough was now table stakes for a headset.
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/the-steam-frame...
KRVR - https://krvr.app/
ALVR - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alvr/id6479728026
Did anyone ever use that and did it live up to the hype? Or did you just get sick from having a headset on?
Haven’t tried on the AVP, I think it has way better displays than the OG Vive did.
I don't specify which brand or model because I have gone through several pairs since then. They're all about the same and somewhat flimsy, but worth it for the reduced bulk.
How did you use these? Did you like them?
With this form factor, the main limitation is physical user input, not compatibility or fatigue. There's no battery or adapters or walled garden to mess around with. I would not be opposed to a touch pad or gesture system if it actually worked reliably and didn't require accessories or excessive motion from me.
For now, they're literally just a screen in a pair of glasses, and that's all I ever wanted. I'm sure there will be improvements to this category, but any product that strays from this core functionality will be a hard pass from me.
There are only two first-adopters for any new technology: military and adult industry.
Without these you wont get any traction
Curious if anyone is using it successfully for ergonomics (not just for the convenience of having a big monitor which is secondary for me - Macbook + iPad sidecar display is very travel-friendly but very difficult to use ergonomically away from home).
It's still 1.5lbs hanging off the front of your face and over hours that's still straining.
Lying down or in a recliner or something where you're not really having to support the device yourself is about the only way that I feel you might achieve any kind of better result in an ergonomics sense for a significant length of use time.
(Disclaimer: I had one to demo for a few months and used it/experimented with it sporadically, I don't own one.)