The Vision Pro Review: I'm running out of reasons to wear Apple's futuristic headset after a week

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• I've had Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro for a week now.
• It's a virtual reality headset that lets you see the real world too, all done the Apple way.
• Here's how my first week went using the futuristic gadget.

When I brought home the Apple Vision Pro, I was eager to add it to my Apple ecosystem. I own an iPhone 14 Pro Max, an iPad Pro, a Mac, and use a MacBook for work, so it made sense for me to meet the tech giant on its next big frontier.

I've had the Vision Pro for a week now, and I'm still impressed by the same features shown off during Apple's free in-store demos. The headset ushers in Apple's "spatial computing" era, tracking your hand gestures and eyes to create a new way to control the company's most out-there device yet.

There are some familiar elements. The Vision Pro has a lot of the same functions as an iPad and the UI feels similar. There are apps for entertainment, work, and arcade games, but all of this can be overlaid onto your physical environment for a mixed-reality experience.

All of it feels futuristic, and it is. But, I can't say that the first-generation Vision Pro fits perfectly in the life of someone who prefers to socialize IRL. It also left me wondering if I would truly miss it if I stopped using it after a week or two.

Still, it's a bold bet, and Apple has the potential to usher in a new era of the human experience.

Let's dive in.

The fit is nice for the first few hours

The Vision Pro comes with six accessories in the box: a cleaning cloth, a cover for the display, a dual loop band (pictured above), a battery pack, a charger, and an extra light seal.

I mostly use the standard headband that comes attached to the Vision Pro. I tested out the dual loop band briefly, but I didn't immediately notice any big difference in the fit.

At about 22.9 ounces, the Vision Pro weighs less than 2 ounces shy of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. After wearing it for a few hours, the eye strain starts to set in. After all, your eyes are inches from two extremely bright screens. It begins to feel like you have an iPad strapped to your face.

My attempt to work inside the Vision Pro all day ended with me desperately needing a nap and some time away from screens. That's an issue for Apple, which is marketing the device heavily as a productivity tool.

Apple has said there wasn't a way to make this version of the Vision Pro any lighter — but it needs to figure that out if it wants to turn this into a daily device for people.

I tried my best to fit the Vision Pro into my daily life

I cooked while wearing the Vision Pro, I worked, watched movies, listened to music, and tested its immersion capabilities.

During my first 48 hours with the Vision Pro, I was wowed by just how futuristic the experience is. I'm fairly new to the world of mixed reality and VR, so it didn't take much to blow my mind and Apple's headset has some of the sharpest screens out there. Cramming that many pixels into such a small screen gives undeniable Apple bragging rights for just how crisp it can virtually render things in front of your eyes, whether you're looking at an app, photo, or moving image.

You can dial in the level of immersion using the "digital crown" on the top of the display, which is basically just a larger version of the crown found on the side of the Apple Watch. One second I was in my living room and the next I found myself on a cliffside with 360-degree views.

Being whisked away into another scenic setting is breathtaking, and the ability to watch movies and shows projected out in front of you in your own personal movie theater — without the image appearing blurry or pixelated — is even more mind-blowing.

As a casual tech user, my mission was to find ways to integrate the Vision Pro into my daily life. I was searching for a reason to reach for the headset instead of my phone, iPad, or MacBook. Ultimately, I don't think I found one that justifies the $3,500 price tag.

I find that wearing the headset while I cook is disorienting when I want to focus on something in the real world, but I enjoyed the sound quality of the speakers blasting my music while I made dinner. 

The Vision Pro was the most useful to me during my workday. It gives all of my remote work needs one place to exist. I can seamlessly project my MacBook screen up on the headset while having a comfort show streaming on Disney+ in another window. The trade-off of working in your own customized hub of apps and media spread out before you is the eye strain that comes after hours of usage.

It's become my home office, and I enjoy it. But after 5 o'clock, I struggle to find fun ways to engage with the Vision Pro on my own. The best I could come up with was playing Fruit Ninja in my living room and 3D tours of homes on the Zillow app. Usually, I just want to give my eyes and my brain a rest after using them to navigate a screen all day. 

The (anti)social aspect

I love a good group activity.

It's rare that I want to experience something cool on my own, and — unfortunately for me — that kind of comes with the territory of VR headsets.

The immersion is great, but it becomes underwhelming to have to experience it alone after a while. For me, half the fun of watching movies is doing it with others and sharing our commentary.

FaceTime in the headset feels fairly normal for the person wearing the Vision Pro. It's the people on the other end of the line who can tell something is different. They see a more ghostly, slightly aged version of me that Apple has dubbed my Persona, created by scanning my face. But, the Vision Pro does allow you to share your screen with others on a FaceTime call, so they can see what you're seeing through the headset.

But when it comes to interacting with people around you in your physical space, the Vision Pro isn't like your iPhone, MacBook, or TV — you can't easily bring someone into the virtual world you're viewing to enjoy it together.

That can feel lonely, even with EyeSight, Apple's name for the low-resolution representation of your eyes that the Vision Pro can display on its exterior. The feature feels designed to give an onlooker a slightly less dystopian view when sharing the same room with you. Fake digital eyes aside, there's no way around the fact that using the Vision Pro means wearing a literal barrier between yourself and the real world.

Apple has done what it can to mitigate that through a combination of super-high-resolution screens and cutting-edge cameras and sensors that let you see the world around you in convincing enough detail.

But the view through the cameras is clearly a screen that blurs when you move your head, and your immediate surroundings look dimmer from the inside and your peripheral vision is limited — think ski goggles.

The technology will likely get to a stage where it's more like sunglasses. But in the meantime, I suspect the Vision Pro will be a tough sell to people until there are must-have apps in a form factor that's slimmer, lighter, and feels less solitary.

What are your alternatives?

If you're eager to experience VR, all of Apple's mainstream competitors offer cheaper alternatives. Meta offers three headsets at a lower price than the Vision Pro. Even its most expensive unit, the Meta Quest Pro, is $1,000.

The Quest Pro is meant to draw professionals who want to work in the headset rather than gamers who might opt for the Meta Quest 3 — priced at $500 — instead.

Should you buy it?

I wouldn't recommend the Vision Pro to a social butterfly like myself. It's fun to show off to friends, and it made me more productive at work, but I still haven't thought: "Where has this been all my life?"

At the end of my first two days with the device, I said that Apple is onto something with the Vision Pro — and I still believe it a little more than a week later. But the average consumer doesn't have $3,500 to spend on a device that is in the promising stage, and it isn't worth breaking the bank … yet.

But my iPhone 14 Pro Max makes the original iPhone from 2007 look like a toy. So while Apple still has a ways to go until the Vision Pro reaches an ideal form factor with killer apps that people can't stop talking about, I'm not betting against them.

Until then, book a demo at your local Apple store and try it out before reaching for your wallet.