Apple has announced the price and release date of the Vision Pro headset, and it’s just around the corner..
The Apple Vision Pro will be available from February 2 in the US, and will start at $3499.
You’ll be able to buy the headset from brick and mortar Apple Stores, or the online web store.
“The era of spatial computing has arrived. Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created. Its revolutionary and magical user interface will redefine how we connect, create, and explore,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement.
Pre-orders will begin on January 19 at 5am PST, which may be an important time to note if you think the headset will be sold in limited quantities at first, as has been reported.
Apple will also sell prescription inserts for the Vision Pro, at $149.
A few little facts aren’t known yet. For example, there are no prices for the Vision Pro specs beyond the baseline 256GB storage version.
It was originally reported the headset would have 1TB as standard, but that clearly is not the case.
In MacBooks, an upgrade from 256GB to 1TB costs $400, suggesting a 1TB Vision Pro may sell for around $3899.
It’s also not clear how easy it will be to test drive these headsets when they arrive in February.
Back in July 2023, Bloomberg reported Apple’s plans to have demo units in stores.
This makes sense, as Apple Vision Pro is the kind of device you likely need to try first-hand to truly “get” even if you have some experience with VR.
Apple’s pitch for the headset is not like that of a Meta Quest 3, which is largely about fun and play. It calls the Vision Pro a spatial computer, and suggests you could work away with one of these things on your head.
The image you see is made up of 23 million pixels, far more than the 9.1 million of the fairly high-res Quest 3.
It may well be a mind-blowing experience. How many folks will be able to, or want to, afford a Vision Pro is as yet unknown.
In December 2023, prolific Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested Apple may ship around 50,000 headsets in 2024. According to Road to VR, Meta sold more than 230,000 headsets over the Christmas sales period. And most of those were Quest 2 headsets, thanks to a healthy discount on the older hardware.
