I find the title overly slanted for my tastes, and I don’t have any stake in the game. The article admits the headset weighs in between a quest 3 and a quest pro. Why are we comparing to “almost as much as an iPad Pro? Maybe it’s a standard reference for the macrumors audience? Kinda feels like the author is trying to bait outrage clicks but maybe it’s just awkward wording.
> Maybe it’s a standard reference for the macrumors audience?
I think it’s honestly this. Most MacRumors headlines are awkward and almost solely reference Apple products, even if there’s a better thing to compare, so their clickbait potential is usually incidental at best because everyone who reads it normally knows this is MacRumors and they’re on a strict applesauce-based diet.
There are a lot more people with iPads than Quests. I know exactly how much a 12.9’’ iPad Pro weighs (I’m holding one right now) and have zero idea how much a Quest weighs. I fail to see anything outrageous or baity about this. If you think a 12.9’’ iPad Pro is heavy (hence outrageous?) — it is not.
"Almost as much" gives me the impression that it is heavy, at least compared to the expectation of the writer. "Less than" would give me the impression that it is light. "about" would be neutral.
I feel like an aftermarket head strap with a front-to-back top strap and a back counterweight might make it extremely usable for hours on end. The counterweight I have for my Index greatly improves comfort.
Counterweights do indeed help. Lots of Quest users use an external battery mounted on the back of their headstrap as a counterweight, so I’m sure there will be third party straps that do that with the Vision’s external battery.
They already have an USB C socket in the display, why didn't they disconnect a lightweight display from a heavier battery and cpu/gpu unit for your pocket?
Weight distribution is just as important as weight. The Meta Quest 3 is significantly more comfortable than the Quest 2 despite being slightly heavier, because the weight is much closer to your face. A fairly lightweight motorcycle helmet weighs about 1400 grams, but you really don't notice that weight unless it's poorly fitted.
Given that the Vision Pro is exclusively available with a custom-fitted facial interface and headstrap, I'm quite confident that the comfort will be - at worst - on a par with most other VR headsets.
This seems ... fine? I have a 12.9" iPad, and it doesn't feel crazy heavy to me. The weight is in line with other VR headsets I've used, and they feel fine on my face. So long as the strap is good and balances the weight evenly, it'll be good for most people.
I'm still trying to understand the use case for this $3500+ device. In the introduction video, Apple touted it as "useful for watching movies on an airplane or some other similar environment"... but I'm not bringing a large, unwieldy and extremely expensive device like a VR headset onto a plane or packing it on a trip... and the battery doesn't even last through a whole movie, according to the newest reports. The main way they tried to sell it from the beginning just seems... like a bad selling point.
I'm going to evaluate one to replace most of the equipment in my home office. I currently have 3 monitors and still could benefit from another 2-3. This would also provide audio quality on par with a decent hifi which would be a nice bonus.
Add up the cost of 5-6 large monitors, and the space they take up in the room, and this device has appeal.
Do you need a Mac though? These days I extensively use vscode.dev online, so safari is enough, which is natively supported by Vision Pro. If VisionOS has a terminal that can run vim like a Mac, that would be sufficient for a large swath of developers. Also would electron apps be natively supported in VisionPro, if so then we might even have vscode on it
I need to demo it, but ky understanding is that the virtual display can be very large, and from there I can use multiple windows to provide what I was getting from multiple monitors
Imagine text that's already somewhat low-res and then been scaled and rotated a bit. Soft, blurry. The vertical and horizontal of the pixel grid are no longer vertical or horizontal if you've got the slightest bit of head tilt.
Nobody's going to be replacing monitors with headsets any time soon. It might be OK to watch video or for some light gaming on a virtual screen, but it's not going to be comfortable for editing code or other text-heavy work.
The PPI of the Vision’s screens is supposedly high enough to render a virtual 4k display without loss of detail, which should be sufficient for text but time will tell.
All depends on the viewing distance. It can probably simulate a 4K display with you face very close to it. Or a 1000m wide 4K display 100m away from you. But in both cases you'll have to look around a lot to see the whole thing.
A realistic case for a monitor would be a viewing distance about equal to the width of the screen, so taking up only about 50 degrees of horizontal FOV, with the whole screen in your field of view.
There's no way it'll be able to render every pixel of a 4K virtual screen in those conditions. I'd be surprised if it looks as good as a 1080p screen, when you consider the resampling from the pixel grid of the virtual screen to the final output on the headset screen.
(I guess you could argue that rendering 2 views gives an element of supersampling, though?)
Considering they haven't mentioned it much at all since the initial demo, I think they are intentionally going low-key with the launch.
This is way outside the price range for people who could splurge $1000+ on an iPhone, but not much more. Plus you know what you're getting with an iPhone, this thing doesn't even have any apps yet.
There's also significant anxiety about inflation, mortgage rates ans rent now that there wasn't previously.
It's great how you even quoted what I said and still paid no attention to what was said. I would not categorize a laptop as large and unwieldy and most fit neatly into most travel bags. The average laptop is not $3500+ either. This headset is not going to fit nicely into most travel bags.
I'm floored you used a smartphone in this comparison.
Yeah the AirPod Max is pretty egregiously heavy compared to competitors, 380 grams compared to 250ish, largely because Apple doesn't seem to like using plastic.
I wonder how much of the weight comes from screens and cameras and sensors (which must be in the glasses) vs CPU and memory and radios and the like?
Because the latter could be moved to the back for balance it, or even down to the battery pack if an umbilical that could handle that much bandwidth was available.
This is likely not a major issue for the first version. It’s is the general range of other VR headsets. Mostly a decent strap design will make it comfortable to wear for an hour, maybe two. The eye strain from a fixed lens means you won’t want to wear it much longer than that anyway.
Future versions will need to get a lot lighter and smaller to go beyond gaming and short uses to be something you’d use as much as a phone or laptop.
My concern is more like this: the product still feels like a last-generation traditional VR headset. When products like Viture exist that actually make sense to wear for a long time, it's hard to justify the technology. Maybe separate optical components and the rest. Having an external battery-compute combo box or something. (Apple Vision Pro already requires an external battery bank anyway). I don't know; some decisions are off.
I have an 11" iPad Pro and find it to be pretty light on its own. Much of the heft comes from the Magic Keyboard case that it snaps into, which has to be heavy (on the bottom) to keep it from tipping over. But iPad Pros on their own are not especially heavy IMO.
I use by Quest exclusively for working out (FitXR + some Beat Saber), around 1 hour a day, 5 days/week. I don't have any neck problems at all. Maybe you just have a weak neck?
Given that a VR headset places an unbalanced, unusual, not insignificant weight (pulling down the front of the head) on delicate and vital structure that is the neck, I think the onus would be on the manufacturers to show that it is safe, rather than vice versa. Everything else you wear on your head is either balanced (helmets) or very light weight (glasses).
Manufactures do believe they are safe. There are over 20 million of these out there. OP said it caused serious neck injuries. Doug asked for a single source.
FWIW, as someone who logged between 175 and 200 hours of usage with a Quest 2 playing Beat Saber (a high-movement game) last year, I’ve not experienced any issues.
The strap makes all the difference. The strap that comes with the Meta Quest 3 (weighs 18.2 ounces) is awful and makes it hard to wear it for more than 30 min or so but Meta makes an "Elite Strap" that I find really comfortable so on some days during the Christmas break I was able to put 5 hours into Asgard's Wrath 2.
The Elite Strap is also expensive and infamous for breaking, Meta stopped the sales of both the Quest 2 and Quest 3 versions in the past.
I just ordered a cheap third-party strap and it's very comfortable.
The original strap is so terrible that it seems intentional. The bare minimum so they can legally say it includes one.
Considering that Meta is probably selling the Quest 2 and 3 at cost (or even subsidizing it) I'm pretty sure it's intentional as a cost-cutting measure that has an easy and somewhat inexpensive aftermarket fix.
But yeah, as someone who waited +1 year to get a third-party strap, don't do that. It's worth the 30$.
I have the Elite Strap and have been pretty happy with it. I don't see how it could break. I don't understand what other users are using VR for, though.
I’m not really informed on the influencer-sphere, is MKBHD generally good for reviews? (Note: when I say not really informed, I mean really not informed. So, this is not intended as a shade throwing question, hahaha).
