Zuckerberg on Apple Vision Pro: Impressive Display, Yet Compromised by Excessive Tradeoffs
With the Apple Vision Pro having been on the market in the US for nearly a fortnight, users have begun to voice their thoughts on Apple’s inaugural mixed-reality headset. While some express admiration for its capabilities, others approach the technology with cautious optimism.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and creator of the competing Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset, recently shared his own perspective in a video review posted on his Instagram profile. In the three-minute review, Zuckerberg acknowledges the strengths of the Apple Vision Pro while emphasizing the advantages held by the Meta Quest 3. Beginning with an acknowledgment of the Vision Pro’s features, Zuckerberg quickly pivots to assert that the Meta Quest 3 is unequivocally the superior product.
Notably, this sentiment echoes his earlier skepticism toward the Vision Pro, which he expressed upon its unveiling at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2023. At that time, Zuckerberg criticized Apple’s solitary-focused demos, underscoring Meta’s commitment to a fundamentally social metaverse experience.
Reviewing the mixed-reality headset, Zuckerberg praised the high-resolution display on Vision Pro, and pointed out that the eye tracking was “really nice”. However, he was quick to highlight that he was surprised by the number of trade-offs Apple made with the quality, comfort, and ergonomics of the headset and its other aspects in order to get to that.
Zuckerberg also did not miss out on the opportunity to compare the Apple headset with the Meta Quest 3 and explained that the mixed-reality headset was made 120g lighter compared to the predecessor in order to be more comfortable. He also pointed out that there are no wires in the Quest 3 that get in the way when a user moves around, unlike Vision Pro. Additionally, he said the field of vision and screen brightness was better on Meta’s wearable.
“When I look around, I see a lot of people who assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and it costs $3000 more. But honestly, I’m pretty surprised that Quest is so much better for a vast majority of things that people use these headsets for with that price differential,” he added.
“The reality is every generation of computing has an open and closed model. In mobile, Apple’s closed model won but it’s not always that way. If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner. In the next generation, Meta is going to be the open model and I really want to make sure that the open model wins out again,” Zuckerberg concluded.