Today Apple has started taking pre-orders for its first "spatial computer", the Vision Pro headset. It will become available, as previously announced, on February 2. With the pre-order page come more details about the headset, but let's start with pricing. It's US$ 3,499 with 256GB of storage, US$ 3,699 with 512GB, or US$ 3,899 with 1TB. You can get all versions with one-year financing through Apple Card monthly installments.
AppleCare+ for the Vision Pro is US$ 499, and
gives you unlimited repairs for accidental damage protection, an "Express
Replacement Service", and 24/7 priority access to Apple experts. Before
you pre-order, you need to get a measurement for the light seal and head band,
and for that you need an iPhone or iPad with Face ID. Then you can add two
types of Zeiss optical inserts depending on your vision - it's US$ 99 for Readers
inserts, and US$ 149 for Prescription inserts. To help people come to grips with
this entirely new product in its portfolio, Apple has produced an almost 10-minute
video that's a "guided tour" of the Vision Pro. Now, in the box you
get the headset itself, a dual loop band, a cover, the battery, a light seal
cushion, a polishing cloth, a USB-C charging cable, and - you're not going to
believe this - an actual charger. So now we're confused - if any iPhone started
at US$ 3,499, would Apple afford to bundle a charger with it then? Or would it
suddenly stop caring about the environment by "wastefully" doing
that? We'll probably never know, unless inflation really gets out of hand.
Let's dive into the specs. The headset is
powered by an M2 chip with an 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4
efficiency cores, a 10-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine, and 16GB of unified
memory. The special R1 chip provides 12ms photon-to-photon latency with 256GB/s
memory bandwidth. Speaking of photons, the displays support 90Hz, 96Hz, and
100Hz refresh rate, with 24fps and 30fps video playback. The micro OLED panels
cover 92% of the DCI-P3 color space with a 7.5-micron pixel pitch and 23 million
total pixels. You can use AirPlay to morror your view in the Vision Pro on any
AirPlay-enabled device.
The Vision Pro has two high-res main
cameras, six world-facing tracking cameras, four eye-tracking cameras, a LiDAR
scanner, four inertial measurement units, a flicker sensor, and an ambient
light sensor. Additionally, you get iris-based biometrics, six mics, Spatial
Audio, and there's Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 on board. Battery life is quoted
as 2 hours of "general use", and 2.5 hours of video watching. You can
also use the headset while it's charging. The Vision Pro weighs between 600 and
650g (the variation is due to different light seal and head band configurations
available). The separate battery weighs 353g.
