Apple Vision Pro review — I tried the VR headset and was lost for words

★★★★☆

I tried Apple’s new Vision Pro headset for the first time last summer and immediately wanted to have another go. Behind closed doors at Apple’s headquarters in California, I was one of a handful of people that were allowed to spend 30 minutes experiencing the company’s vision for the future.

To say Apple’s headset is good would be an understatement. Years in the making, it is by far the best mixed/augmented/virtual reality experience I’ve ever tried, and I’ve played with most over the past decade, but it also felt like I’d just stepped out of watching a two-and-a-half hour Marvel film at the cinema on a sunny afternoon. I needed a moment to ground myself back in the real world again and process the sensory overload I’d just endured.

First let’s rewind. Having brought the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and many other category-defining products to us over the years, Apple set its sights on what it calls “spatial computing”. The idea is that you can have various screens and experiences, both 2D and 3D, in the space around you rather than confined to a screen on a single device.

After a quick setup process that not only scanned my face and my ears, I donned the headset that looks like a pair of ski goggles. It oozes premium with a design aesthetic like the Apple AirPods Max. That does mean it’s heavier than I was expecting, an optional extra head strap made some difference, but I suspect it will be something you do become aware of if you use it for long periods of time.

Seconds later an interface that would happily sit on the iPhone hovered inches away from my face. The internal cameras facing my eyes were seamlessly tracking what I was looking at, so all that was left for me to do was pinch my fingers and I was into the first experience. It was frighteningly intuitive. Within minutes I’d got the full hang of it, navigating around as if it were something I’ve always known how to do and very much enjoying the controller free world I was using.

The screen, which has an incredible fidelity, allowed me to see everything in the room around me. It wasn’t reality, but close to it. I was aware of wearing a headset, but I could also see everything clearly, including my watch, my iPhone, furniture and of course people. Speakers sat just above my ears rather than in them, which helped me to stay present, but also immersed.

After some mundane stuff like looking at pictures, messing around with web surfing, viewing messages and taking a rather uncanny valley FaceTime call with a digital avatar, I got to experience some truly breathtaking — and at times dystopian — moments that almost brought a tear to my eye.

Because where the Vision Pro really shines is handling 3D movies and interactive graphical experiences. One moment I was at a child’s birthday party where I’m sure my 80-year-old self would be crying at having enjoyed a life well lived and the next I was court-side at an NBA game, on the goal line at a football match, in Alicia Keys’s music studio and fending off cute baby rhinos who wanted to say hello, all recorded in what Apple calls Apple Immersive Video. The pièce de resistance? A butterfly that gracefully flew around the room before landing on my outstretched hand. Animators are going to love it.

By the end I was almost lost for words, a rare moment, but also left with the burning question — what is this all for?

Apple has, with its first version of a new computing experience, created something truly groundbreaking and amazing, but it still somewhat suffers from the same burning question I’ve struggled with from all similar experiences. Why do I need it in my life?

The difference here though is not whether the technology is good enough to show me the future, it is, but whether the idea of using the Vision Pro is powerful enough to get people to part with $3,499.

Apple will now find out.Deliveries of the Apple Vision Pro are scheduled from Feb 2, 2024