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As second comings go, the Apple Vision Pro’s is deliberately low-key. For a brief moment in time, you couldn’t flick open TikTok without watching someone trying to ski a black run, skateboard around New York, or simply live in the thing for a whole day. All of which was unhinged in January 2024, but now seems actively unhelpful to anyone trying to get their head around this device. Much like teaching someone to open a soup can by crushing it with their bare hands or demoing a defibrillator by using it on a cauliflower. Mercifully, the Vision Pro 2.0 arrives at a very different moment for tech. AI is the industry’s shiny new plaything and much of the energy in the wearable space has moved over to smart glasses like Meta’s Ray-Bans. As anyone who saw a blooper reel of Mark Zuckerberg demoing his latest specs will know, they’re hardly the finished article either. So what does this all mean for Apple’s wildly ambitious $3,500 creation? More than you’d think, in all honesty. I’ve spent the last week or so with one to dig into what is still one of the company’s most exciting (and occasionally infuriating) products. No Redesign, But Still a Better Hang When I reviewed the Vision Pro just over a year ago, I thought it was strikingly similar to Apple’s first Watch. Come 2025, and I’m even more convinced of the comparison. Why? Well, Jony Ive and co’s OG Watch threw a whole bunch of fashion-forward ideas at the wall before realizing what actually stuck was its health and fitness tracking. Likewise, although the Vision Pro’s future remains in flux, its initial quest to redefine computing with lifelike Persona face scans and immersive spatial photography already feels less integral to its second iteration. That stuff is all still there, but it’s not how you’ll likely spend your time with this device. To look at this new Vision Pro, you might well assume that not much has changed at all. This is still a beefy headset that weighs up to 28 ounces when it's strapped to your face and projects all kinds of virtual imagery into the physical space around you. This time, the second Vision Pro has Apple’s latest, crazy powerful M5 chip—the same one seen in its recent MacBook Pro and iPad Pro upgrades—for even higher fidelity refresh rates of up to 120Hz from its displays, as well as a slightly improved three hour battery life and a redesigned headband that I swear to god is actually its most substantial upgrade. Eventually, I’m sure a major and entirely necessary redesign will render this device both smaller and lighter, but anyone hoping that was going to happen less than two years after its initial release needs reminding that the second Watch’s major new feature was … water resistance. For now, the Vision Pro’s considerable largesse is better distributed around your head so that you can wear it comfortably for longer before, or at least for the length of a movie, which is where I’m increasingly convinced this device’s future lies. If you’ve been following Apple’s recent moves in the content space, you might have picked up the same vibe. An Unreal Home Cinema So if the new Vision Pro isn’t smaller, lighter or dramatically more affordable, you’d be justified in wondering what has really changed here. Until you put the thing on, at least, when a year or so of software tweaks have already begun to smooth over this headset’s rough edges. From more intuitive gesture controls to widescreen support for Virtual Display connectivity with your MacBook, it’s far from the finished article, but an undeniably more polished one. Given that a big part of the Vision Pro's appeal is its undiluted futurism, more tricks like flipping your hands over to adjust its volume to feel can only be a good thing. Geeks like me are suckers for that stuff. On a similarly encouraging note, there’s an increasing amount of custom-made content for Vision Pro of which Academy Award-winning director Edward Berger’s WWII submarine short Submerged and Canal+’s Moto GP documentary Tour De Force are notable highlights. While you absolutely shouldn't buy a new “Spatial Computing” headset to just to walk around with dinosaurs, get on stage with Metallica, or hang out in the team garage of the first Frenchman to win his home Grand Prix in 71 years. If you do happen to have a Vision Pro to hand, these lovingly made experiences are one of the most compelling reasons to keep using it. It’s for this reason that Apple recently signed a deal with the NBA’s LA Lakers to broadcast their games live on Vision Pro, and it’s beginning to port games that already work on Mac or iPad—such as Sniper Elite 4 and 2019’s thrilling Control—over natively to the platform. While this trickle of content begins to speed up and Apple's new Formula 1 partnership kicks into gear, this headset remains an awesome way to watch movies on a cinema-sized screen. Even though you still have to log into your browser to watch them if you’re streaming from Netflix, the BBC, or CNN. Although living with the Vision Pro is an easier proposition nowadays, it still demands that you tolerate a lot more shortcomings and contradictions than you would with almost any other Apple product. How is it that a device exists with the power to control a digital world with just your eyes and bare hands, and also doesn’t have a YouTube app? One day, I’ll muster the brain power to understand. Until then, the Vision Pro needs to up its game further if its future really is in entertainment. Apple Vision Pro (M5) Verdict Now that much of the bluster behind the Vision Pro has subsided, it’s a lot easier to judge this device on its own merits as opposed to the ones that were first imposed on it. Will this product turn out to be as revolutionary as the iPhone? Not while it still costs more than three grand. How close is this headset to the finished article? A few years at least, even if it’s come a long way in a reasonably short amount of time. Do I like the Vision Pro anyway? I do, sometimes to my own surprise. Because in those moments when the Vision Pro is great, when you’re locked into a movie on a screen the size of a house or multitasking on your MacBook a la Tom Cruise in Minority Report, it’s a truly mind-blowing experience. Give me more of this stuff and it might even live up to the hype in the long run. A version of this story originally appeared on British GQ.
