The $3,500 Vision Pro didn't impress users as much as Apple expected

The Vision Pro, Apple's attempt to open the VR market to the mainstream, started selling in February 2024. However, the "spatial computing" headset was not as successful as expected.

Critics from Bussines Insider, The New York Times, and Spanish newspaper El País, and users received the Vision Pro with mixed reviews.

According to The Verge, users turned to social media to explain they had returned their Vision Pro right after buying it.

Some users said they experienced discomfort while using the device, others complained about the disruption of reality, and all complained about the lack of apps and uses.

The most concerning complaint about the device is the lack of apps and general uses. The Vision Pro costs, according to The New York Times, around $4.000 with accessories, and it still does not seem essential.

Some users reported feeling discomfort when using the Vision Pro: it made them dizzy, gave them nausea, and hurt their heads after prolonged use.

On the other hand, the media critics complained about feeling isolated from reality when using the device. It allows only a narrow vision of the surroundings and makes socializing hard.

The users and reviewers all concluded that in its current state and price, it's hard to justify purchasing the Vision Pro.

The launch fell short. Last year, the company's CEO, Tim Cook, presented VisionPro at Apple's annual developers' conference in California as a promise to open an underdeveloped market.

Cook described the Vision Pro as a "spatial computing" device, avoiding the term virtual reality as he expected customers to perceive the product as more than that.

He did so to distance the new product from the competition. Meta has released various headsets since its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced their Metaverse in 2020.

Still, the functions of the Vision Pro are not far enough from Meta's latest $500 Quest headset, which was released just a few weeks before Apple's.

However, many experts and users who compared both products praised Apple for the quality of the Vision Pro, which far exceeds the competition.

During the announcement, Cook admitted the product was only a first attempt: "This marks the beginning of a journey," he said in a speech collected by the Associated Press.

Many reviewers agree with Cook: the VisionPro looks like the beginning, and when the technology improves, it could be valuable to users.

Photo: Laurenz Heymann / Unsplash

Apple is known for breaking technology products into the mainstream, and most of the users who returned their Vision Pro said they would wait for the next version.