Hands-On With the Apple Vision Pro: Unboxing, Initial Thoughts and More

[MacRumors]

Apple's first major new product category in almost a decade launched today, with the Vision Pro now in the hands of consumers in the United States. We picked up a Vision Pro this morning, and spent the day testing it out and filming our first impressions.

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Fit appointments at the Apple Store are useful because we've already heard of several situations where the initial Apple Store readings were off in terms of fit. If you're experiencing an issue with light leakage or comfort, Apple employees can get you a new Light Seal or help you adjust the straps to get the headset working the right way.

At over 1.3 pounds, the Vision Pro is undeniably heavy, but the weight is distributed well with the right fit. It can get heavy to wear over time, but you'll mostly notice the weight when you take it off and feel the relief of not having 1.3 pounds on your face. We've had some light leaking in around the nose even with a solid fit, but the displays seem to work well enough even with that little bit of light.

Putting on the Vision Pro for the first time is absolutely a "holy crap" moment because it's such a different experience, especially with the demo that Apple Store employees provide. The immersive content is mind blowing, especially when digging in to your own panoramas and spatial videos.

Navigation is intuitive for the most part, but the virtual keyboard is kind of a miss. You can enter text one character at a time and that's fine, but you're going to want a Bluetooth keyboard for any extensive writing. Poking at the keyboard to type feels the most natural, but you can also look at the letters and pinch.

The built-in speakers are great and do an awesome job with spatial audio, but be warned that people around you can hear what's going on so you might want to wear AirPods.

Anything you're seeing in the real world is being relayed through passthrough cameras, so if you're not in the best lighting, you're not going to have the best view. Passthrough video quality can be hit or miss for this reason.

Have you had a chance to try out the Vision Pro? Let us know in the comments below. Apple's retail stores are holding demos all weekend long, and starting Monday, you can book an appointment to get a demonstration if you don't have a Vision Pro yourself.

Article Link: Hands-On With the Apple Vision Pro: Unboxing, Initial Thoughts and More

 

[karranz]

A $ 3,500 promising solution for a non existent problem.

 

[erikkfi]

A $ 3,500 promising solution for a non existent problem.

What if the problem is that I need to buy a new monitor and I want to way overspend on it?

 

[yaxomoxay]

What if the problem is that I need to buy a new monitor and I want to way overspend on it?

Don’t forget the Bluetooth keyboard.

 

[itsMaxDigital]

Dont even feel like opening it ever since i saw all the reviews

 

[vegetassj4]

They could put an Air Tag mount in the dial you rotate to tighten the strap?

Tilt your head up, Tilt your head down. Tilt your head in, and you shake it all about. Do the Hokey Pokey and you scan your head around, that’s what it’s all about!

 

[Jdonofrio]

I've been playing around with it for about 4 hours now.
Some initial thoughts and observations:
Text is crisp and video is amazing. The immersive videos are jaw dropping.
I grew quickly fatigued using the solo band. The dual solved that.
There's a little light leakage around the bottom of my nose. It's a little distracting. I can also see my eyes dimly reflected when watching movies. Also a little distracting.
Netflix and Hulu work in the browser, but you are limited to a fairly small "screen."
I couldn't sign into Peacock: sign in page wouldn't load. Paramount plus won't play videos. You start a video and it crashes back to the title page. I thought I read reviews where they watched football on Paramount, hopefully this will be an easy fix.
When it works, using it as a display for my MacBook Pro is great. But about 25% of the time I can't get it to sync.
Passthrough is adequate, but it's fuzzy when you are moving and it's not terribly clear when you are not. Definitely won't mistake it for real life.
Controlling things with eyes and pinching works pretty well, but doesn't work enough to be annoying.
I entered the wrong password for Disney a couple of times and it just froze on the sign in screen. I had to uninstall the app to get it to work.
It's hard to drink when you have the goggles on. I was watching Ready Player one through AppleTV in 3D in the theater environment. Looks and sounds amazing. I got some popcorn and a glass of soda. It's a little weird. You can see your hands, but you can't see the popcorn or the glass. I was very worried about setting the glass down on the edge of the side table. It's also difficult to drink with the goggles on. The upper rim of the glass hits the goggles. You need to tilt your head all the way back.

 

[macduke]

View attachment 2344655
Dont even feel like opening it ever since i saw all the reviews

If this is like the Original in-box iPhone last year that sold for 400x original price, this thing will be worth $1.4 million in 16 years.

Will it actually? Probably not. But it's fun to think about. These things will be even more rare since it's projected there will only be about 450K units available this year, vs. about 5 million for the original iPhone. However, I think there are far more collectors today because of what the iPhone is now selling for. At a minimum, I still see it probably 5-10x-ing in that time. So not the worst investment out there.

 

[Dionte]

I had doubts but it is awesome

 

[Dazamcc]

Your persona look about 90% correct to me.

 

[flofixer]

I've been playing around with it for about 4 hours now.
Some initial thoughts and observations:
Text is crisp and video is amazing. The immersive videos are jaw dropping.
I grew quickly fatigued using the solo band. The dual solved that.
There's a little light leakage around the bottom of my nose. It's a little distracting. I can also see my eyes dimly reflected when watching movies. Also a little distracting.
Netflix and Hulu work in the browser, but you are limited to a fairly small "screen."
I couldn't sign into Peacock: sign in page wouldn't load. Paramount plus won't play videos. You start a video and it crashes back to the title page. I thought I read reviews where they watched football on Paramount, hopefully this will be an easy fix.
When it works, using it as a display for my MacBook Pro is great. But about 25% of the time I can't get it to sync.
Passthrough is adequate, but it's fuzzy when you are moving and it's not terribly clear when you are not. Definitely won't mistake it for real life.
Controlling things with eyes and pinching works pretty well, but doesn't work enough to be annoying.
I entered the wrong password for Disney a couple of times and it just froze on the sign in screen. I had to uninstall the app to get it to work.
It's hard to drink when you have the goggles on. I was watching Ready Player one through AppleTV in 3D in the theater environment. Looks and sounds amazing. I got some popcorn and a glass of soda. It's a little weird. You can see your hands, but you can't see the popcorn or the glass. I was very worried about setting the glass down on the edge of the side table. It's also difficult to drink with the goggles on. The upper rim of the glass hits the goggles. You need to tilt your head all the way back.

you will have to buy some straws

 

[djinn]

you will have to buy some straws

Or a Stanley!

 

[G5isAlive]

you will have to buy some straws

or do shots. smaller glasses.

 

[k1121j]

A $ 3,500 promising solution for a non existent problem.

So did the touch screen keyboard

 

[flofixer]

My packages just arrived. I am sending one back immediately because I ordered two sizes. I tried cancelling the one order a week ago, but they weren't able to cancel it then. Looking forward to a fun evening!

 

[klasma]

More first impressions here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1ah5mz7

 

[femike]

Nice toy to play around with for a while. Not impressed with Apple's VR. Would like to play around with it though. Apple has a long way to go for this product. YouTubers are going to love it, lots for videos for them to do and loads of clicks. Maybe Apple did make this for YouTubers 😂

 

[klojewski]

3 initial thoughts:

Grab it by the metal when taking on or off. The light shield assembly comes apart if you grab it wrong, making you think you will drop the unit. Since it is held together by magnets, it comes apart easily. But lifting the whole unit off and on is a little awkward. You want to grap it by the metal.

My Zeiss-ordered prescription lenses made it blurry, and it works better for me without them. I don't wear glasses, I have "monovision", one eye is nearsighted, one eye is farsighted. When you buy from Apple, you are asked if you have monovision specifically. I bought them and sent in a prescription, because I was prompted to do so. So I sent all my prescriptions to Ziess - reading and distance. The lenses I got appear to be reading glasses. But For me, they don't work. What I percieve is blurry with the lenses. I popped them out after 20 seconds, and don't seem to need them at all.

Took about an hour for me to get it set up and adjusted, connected to iCloud, etc. following all the wizards. The jury is still out on how practical it is. But using "look and pinch" to point and click is pretty awesome. Resizing the screens is very cool. My avatar for FaceTime is really cool.

I think it will take me a 2-3 more hours to get a feel it.

Another observation: The headset is not trasparent. The world you perceive when wearing the headset is video images. Hard to tell at first, but after a while you realize you're looking at the world through cameras.

 

[kiensoy]

Ouch, just a few minutes with it and all those marks on your nose.

 

[cateye]

More first impressions here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1ah5mz7

Ouch. Scanning through that, people are really not pleased with the pass-through (though it's better than anything that has come before). It really is a better VR device than AR device, regardless of what Apple has said. Not that this is a huge shock.

 

[turbineseaplane]

More first impressions here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1ah5mz7

Good link

Yep .. going exactly how new VR stuff usually goes

Some interesting and impressive tech, but already a few comments about some reservations and some comments about preferring their normal monitors for actual computer usage.

Eventually the newness wears off and you’re left wondering why you spent nearly $4k for it

 

[erikkfi]

Good link

Yep .. going exactly how new VR stuff usually goes

Some interesting and impressive tech, but already a few comments about some reservations and some comments about preferring their normal monitors for actual computer usage.

Eventually the newness wears off and you’re left wondering why you spent nearly $4k for it

Hell I can't figure out why I spent $500 on PSVR2. After six weeks the thought of putting on the headset became very unpleasant.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Hell I can't figure out why I spent $500 on PSVR2. After six weeks the thought of putting on the headset became very unpleasant.

Same. I returned my PSVR2 while I still could

 

[votdfak]

I've been playing around with it for about 4 hours now.
Some initial thoughts and observations:
Text is crisp and video is amazing. The immersive videos are jaw dropping.
I grew quickly fatigued using the solo band. The dual solved that.
There's a little light leakage around the bottom of my nose. It's a little distracting. I can also see my eyes dimly reflected when watching movies. Also a little distracting.
Netflix and Hulu work in the browser, but you are limited to a fairly small "screen."
I couldn't sign into Peacock: sign in page wouldn't load. Paramount plus won't play videos. You start a video and it crashes back to the title page. I thought I read reviews where they watched football on Paramount, hopefully this will be an easy fix.
When it works, using it as a display for my MacBook Pro is great. But about 25% of the time I can't get it to sync.
Passthrough is adequate, but it's fuzzy when you are moving and it's not terribly clear when you are not. Definitely won't mistake it for real life.
Controlling things with eyes and pinching works pretty well, but doesn't work enough to be annoying.
I entered the wrong password for Disney a couple of times and it just froze on the sign in screen. I had to uninstall the app to get it to work.
It's hard to drink when you have the goggles on. I was watching Ready Player one through AppleTV in 3D in the theater environment. Looks and sounds amazing. I got some popcorn and a glass of soda. It's a little weird. You can see your hands, but you can't see the popcorn or the glass. I was very worried about setting the glass down on the edge of the side table. It's also difficult to drink with the goggles on. The upper rim of the glass hits the goggles. You need to tilt your head all the way back.

Use a straw brother.

 

[miiwtoo]

amazing product, without a doubt, too bad the price

but away and before you gonna say it, 5000 patents my ass ☺️