First impressions: Apple Vision Pro review

When the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) was first announced back in June 2023, we were promised a highly polished immersive audio visual world where people could go on a virtual holiday through images; or play games and watch movies; or set up multiple virtual screens for a work environment; or have some sort of augmented reality where the goggles act like a virtual assistant.

All these options seem very compelling, but spoiler alert – people are literally not buying into Apples plan to get society to wear goggles all day, every day.

So, what went wrong? Several factors contributed to the underwhelming sales figures, including the expensive $5,999 price point, competition from the Meta Quest Pro at $1,729 and the HTC Vive Pro 2 at $2,299, market unpreparedness, and the system's physical weight and unwieldiness.

But it's not a complete write-off. What the Capture team witnessed in our 45 minute 'get to know an AR system' session at Apple HQ in Martin Place Sydney, gave us enough wow factor to leave us thinking – this is the future, just not this week (or even year). Let's keep in mind that the original iPhone wasn't an overnight, runaway success. But let's also acknowledge that the concept of 3D TV is now virtually extinct and those 3D glasses were so lightweight and normal to wear.

Physical design, setting up and calibrating
The build quality of the headset is an elegant, yet almost space-y design that merges cutting-edge technology with aesthetic sophistication and has the quality and finish that we come to expect from Apple products.

The system requires an approximately five minute 'gesture' calibration set up, where you will be using your eyes to look and 'select' buttons on the screen, then using your hands to 'click' the buttons, or more specifically, pinching your finger tips together (thumb and index fingers).

You can also pinch and drag to zoom or make screens larger. Before you know it you'll be navigating through screens like Tom Cruise in The Minority Report. And of course, you can use Siri to open apps and perform other tasks such as messaging.

The 'immersion crown'
On the top of the goggles are only two buttons: an on / off; and a 'Digital Crown' dial / button which you can click down, as well as spinning to 'dial up' your level of immersion. For example, a virtual screen image may only take up say 40% of the view in front of you, but if you dial up the immersion, the transparency of the real world behind that screen will fade away and the image (a.k.a Environment) will fill your view entirely. This is where the wow factor begins.

The wow factor
Looking at my own photos in a Safari web browser enabled me to revisit some landscape locations even though this content obviously wasn't AVP material. The Apple staff then started to go through a treasure trove of purpose-shot visual content for the quintessential tour to see what these goggles can do.  

There were options to load custom Environment content that were actually gob-smackingly incredible – such as being on top of an extinct volcano-rim during the daytime, a redwood forest, an incredible Icelandic landscape, and two different digital sci-fi mansions in Star Wars and the Avengers universes. With some images, you can look in 360 degrees and feel fooled into believing you are actually there, as if things are tangible objects that you could almost reach out a touch.

From a landscape photographers perspective, this a a brilliant way to view your work and may even prompt you to consider buying a $11,550 Matterport camera.

3D photos and video may melt your mind
So, what’s more immersive than a regular photo? A 3D photo – or as Apple calls it, a 'spatial photo'. Apple employees walked us through a series of typical family events, like birthday parties and gatherings, starting with photos. However, the most impressive experience came from the spatial videos, which truly make you feel as if you’re there, to the point where you feel like you could blow out the candles on a birthday cake.

Personally, I can't wait to get hired as a 'wedding spacial-videographer' where I just hang out, watch the ceremony from the front row and then interact with all the (usually drunk and loud) wedding guests.

So if photos are a trigger for our memories, 3D video is like reliving your memory. I'm not saying that society is going to start getting 'jacked-in' like in the film Strange Days, but it feels like it's not an impossibility after seeing this. Perhaps we'll get people doing crazy stunts such as base-jumping and record them on AVP to share online – just to get hits and likes in the near future?

Sport fanatics rejoice!
The most impressive part of the tour was watching what would be typical TV content shot for the 3D AVP. The goggles or an iPhone 15 can easily create compatible content. There is a scene where you are surrounded by a champion winning (I'm going to guess) basketball team who are celebrating with champaign and generally going nuts. We've seen all this stuff before on normal TV, but with AVP it is a unique and super realistic contagious experience that makes you feel that you are sharing the excitement of the win with the whole team. 

Other footage included football (yes – the real football, the one you play with your feet) and this gives you a front row view of a game with the football arcing realistically into the goal mouth at 60kph. Now if only they could get the football players to wear the goggles or have some device on their chests so we could live swap between player perspectives. I'm not saying this would be easy to implement, but give it another 10 years perhaps?

Will it work as a portable workstation with multiple virtual screens?
Creating and surrounding yourself with multiple screens is simple which means you could set up loads of virtual screens for multitasking at work. In fact, you can place screens virtually around your house so that they will only appear on particular walls. So imagine walking into the kitchen, going to your fridge, and there is a virtual screen with your shopping list sitting there. But this begs the question – does Apple think we'll be walking around the house or apartment with these things on our faces all day?

All day use?
Weighing in at 600-650g (+350g for the corded battery), and yes you can call me a wuss, the goggles weighed heavy on my face, and especially my temples to such a degree that they were mildly headache inducing. I should have spoken up, but I didn't want to interrupt the guided tour.

600g is like strapping a top-of-the-line speedlight to your forehead. Apparently there is an extra top band that is available which takes some of the weight off your temples, and maybe this would have helped. I really can't imagine using the goggles for extended periods of time. Perhaps lying down on a bed, or preferably a sensory deprivation tank would help (not that the AVP are waterproof).

An obvious negative feature that Apple tried to solve is that anti-social aspect where people 'disappear into the googles' right in front of their family. There is an eyes graphic that appears on the front of the goggles, and is well implemented, though still a bit odd.

While we do live in an era of 'personal entertainment' – there is still something comforting about having the shared social experience of watching a film together, or being able to communicate freely with one another. If wearing headphones are already a quarter of the way to being anti-social – then wearing goggles are at least 75% anti-social.

What will the next-gen AVP look like?
Due to the poor sales results, Apple seems to have discarded the idea of AVPmkII and are going with a lower-end version that should alleviate some 'wallet-strain' that occurs when you purchase something for a minimum of $5,999. Six thousand dollars, especially at a time when there is a 'cost of living crisis' means that only the rich can afford a product that is, and lets face it, just a very cool toy to use for short periods of time.

The wrap up
Really – the AVP is an incredible experience, especially when you are watching custom content. It's way more immersive that 3D TV is, or ever was. In fact you can watch popular 3D movies using the Apple TV app to which there are currently more than 200 3D movie titles such as Avatar, Kong and Kung Fu Panda. Or you can just go out and shoot your own content wearing the goggles, or on your iPhone 15, or even a Canon R5 or R7 with the Dual-fisheye lenses.

So as they say, content is king / queen, and now it's over to the app developers and film makers to come up with the material that will give this product legs.


I really hope that Apple continues down this Vision Pro path, even if it means dropping the word 'pro' and creating a more budget-conscious version. Perhaps they can call them the Apple Vision Amateur?

A big question is – can they make them lighter by tethering them to laptop or a phone, and using those gadgets computing power and batteries? This would help solve the brick-strapped-to-your-face issue as let's face it, the goggles are better suited for sitting down at a desk or lounging, rather than walking around like the marketing videos would lead us to believe.

In any case, we'll just have to wait and see what the world's most secretive corporation has in store for us hardware wise, as it seems that the software implementation is more than 85% there.

You can find out more about the AVP on the Australian Apple store. 

Or you can watch this hilarious review of the AVP by Eddy Burback.