Its fidelity is considerably higher with a 4k+ MicroOLED panel for each eye, which eliminates screen door effect, aliasing, etc making use cases that involve reading a lot of text in it more feasible. Its passthrough is also extremely low latency at 12ms, and its built with a full M2 SoC which is a good deal beefier than anything integrated into other standalone headsets.

I just want to point out that despite this is one of the highest resolution VR screens on the planet right now, the pixel density would have to double once again in order to achieve Retina resolution. This is why Apple doesn't say "Retina" when talking about Vision Pro.

For people who think they'll be designing and coding on Vision Pro virtual screens all day might be disappointed.

Certainly text won’t be as comfortable to read as on a high DPI display, but it’ll at least be usable, which is a notable step up from where things stand now. I own a Quest 2 and though it’s fine for gaming I can’t imagine using it for work in any capacity at all.

Yes, the resolution should be roughly comparable to working on a typical 20-something inch HD PC screen from normal desk distance.

Never going to be able to justify the current price but I’m still really interested in playing with it to see if I think they hit my personal bar.

I’m perfectly comfortable spending 8+ hours in a day writing code on a non-4K screen (widescreen with the pixel density of a 27in 1440p) and based on what I’ve used in the past could probably handle anything as good as a 27in 1080p monitor with the right fonts.

That said, I do find the screen door effect on my Valve Index rather distracting and can’t use it for longer than an hour or two without risking a headache, especially if I am reading any text (tried watching a movie with subtitles and oh boy).

So I don’t think retina resolution is necessary for work (at least for me personally) but it does seem like having the screens so close and completely covering vision does increase sensitivity to picture quality so I may be wrong about that.

But in about 3 more generations all of these features will be the standard in 500$ headsets. Just being better by making a device more expensive doesn't lead to more sales.

What's the killer app for this device which other devices on the market don't support today?

Though I’d love to see the price of these specs to come down that quickly I’m not optimistic they will. Those MicroOLED panels in particular are extremely difficult to manufacture with terrible yield.

I don’t know that a killer app for it exists, but with its built-in developer base it’s inheriting from iOS thanks to using the same APIs (a dev base that’s notoriously fast to pick up new features, at that), I believe the chances of a third party dev finding a killer app are significantly higher than with prior AR platforms.

Maybe, but, by then, Apple will have had the marked for themselves for some time.

Also worth noting this is not a “headset” but a computer (“headtop”?) in a different format. Think of it not as buying a headset for your gaming rig but as a laptop replacement.

The killer app is the brand. People trust and furiously consume the brand because of mental conditioning.

$3500 and Apple

Depends what kind of passthrough you’re talking about.

If you’re talking about additive displays like xreal , magic lens or HoloLens, then the Vision Pro has a much higher field of view of the content and the ability to display things that are darker than the real world , in exchange for looking at a screen of the world instead of directly at it. Those trade offs are subjective so I won’t focus on them because the tech is so different.

If you compare to other VR headsets with cameras feeding video to the screen, there’s a lot:

1. Clarity is higher. If you look at the footage from their product video which they said is shot from device, it’s a lot more stable and clear than anything up until you get to the $6k Varjo XR-3.

2. Latency is lower apparently. Most other headsets have more of a delay between photon in to photon out based on people who’ve tried it.

3. Better reprojection of the image. If you look at videos of pass through from the Quest Pro, as you move, things warp in the view. From videos from the vision pro, it doesn’t seem to have any of that. (Obviously I’m just taking each company at its word that videos are honest)

Supposedly the Quest 3 is significantly better passthrough than the Quest Pro but very few people have tried it and said anything in depth about it, so it’s too early to judge.