Pros & Cons
-
- Much more comfortable than the original
- Powerful M5 chip
- Incredibly intuitive control system
- Super-sharp display
-
- Still very expensive
- Several software omissions
Apple Vision Pro (2025) Specs
| Controls | Eye and hand tracking |
| Hardware Platform | Apple M5 |
| Motion Detection | 6DOF |
| Refresh Rate | 120 |
| Resolution | 23 million pixels |
| Software Platform | Apple VisionOS |
| Type | Standalone |
When I reviewed the Apple Vision Pro last year, I described it as the most advanced wearable display available—but its front-heavy design and eye-watering price made it hard to recommend without reservation. With the latest Vision Pro, Apple tackles one of those shortcomings by replacing the original’s two awkward headbands with a single design that blends the best elements of both. It also delivers a major performance upgrade, swapping the M2 chip for the significantly faster and newer M5. What Apple hasn't changed is the price, which remains a steep $3,499.
The M5-powered Vision Pro is the most sophisticated mixed reality headset I've used. It's every bit as impressive as its predecessor while being more powerful and comfortable. That said, it faces competition that the original Vision Pro didn't have to worry about. I haven't completed full testing yet, but Samsung's Galaxy XR ($1,799.99) appears to offer similar features—including intuitive eye and hand tracking—for roughly half the cost. Meanwhile, our Editors' Choice winner, the Meta Quest 3 ($499.99), lacks the Vision Pro's technical ambition but remains the most accessible and affordable entry point into mixed reality. Even so, there's no question the Vision Pro deserves serious consideration for the right person—if you’re deeply committed to both cutting-edge immersive tech and Apple's ecosystem, it's worth the investment.
Design: Apple Fixes the Vision Pro's Biggest Physical Flaw
The M5 version of the Vision Pro is physically identical to its predecessor. It’s an aluminum-bodied headset with a curved black glass front hiding several visual and space-tracking cameras and an outward-facing display. The outer display is mostly used to guide you through setting up your Persona video chat avatar and to show your eyes to the person in front of you when you’re looking at them. Its material, contours, and layout are reminiscent of an Apple Watch, down to a digital crown dial on the upper right corner and a multifunction button on the upper left corner.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)The inward-facing part of the headset features magnets for attaching the fabric-covered shield that blocks outside light from entering your view. The light shield has its own magnets for connecting either of the two included facial cushions, which further seal and pad where the headset meets your face.
Apple doesn’t recommend wearing glasses with the Vision Pro, so if you’re nearsighted like me, you’ll have to get lens inserts. Apple offers the option to order Zeiss lens inserts when you purchase the headset, or you can purchase them separately afterward. Either way, reader-strength inserts in three common ranges (SPH +0.75 to +1.25D, +1.50 to +1.75D, and +2.00 to +2.75D) are $99, while prescription inserts are $149.
Short white arms extend a few inches from the sides of the headset and serve three purposes. First, they hold speakers aimed at your ears to provide sound. Second, they serve as mounting points for the headband. Third, the left arm features the twist-and-lock connector for the battery pack’s wire.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)While the headset itself remains unchanged, the headband sees a massive upgrade. The new Dual Knit Band features two wide, padded fabric straps that run across the back and top of the head. It’s incredibly easy to adjust either strap with a turn of the dial on the right side of the band; press the dial in to loosen or tighten the rear strap, and pull it out to adjust the top strap. It’s comfortable and distributes the weight of the 1.3-pound headset well, addressing one of the main complaints I had with the previous Vision Pro.
Hardware: M5 Muscle Powers an Otherwise Identical Headset
Internally, the new Vision Pro uses Apple’s recently released M5 chip, which offers a significant increase in raw power over the three-year-old M2 in the original Vision Pro. It’s the same processor used by the latest iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, whereas the M2 was used in the 2022 iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, and was last seen in the 2024 iPad Air.
The increase in processing power is significant. In Geekbench 6’s CPU benchmarks, the M5 Vision Pro scored 3,775 for single-core and 12,456 for multi-core. That’s a 35% increase for single-core and a 36% increase for multi-core over the M2 Vision Pro (2,444 and 7,854). The M5 headset also scored 8,443 on 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme benchmark, an increase of 28% over the M2 model (6,058). Antutu consistently crashed at the end of its tests on the M5 Vision Pro, so I can’t compare it with the M2’s score of 2,021,940 in that app. Otherwise, it’s clear that the M5 provides a big boost for the new headset.
That doesn’t mean the M5 Vision Pro’s performance matches the M5 iPad Pro or M5 MacBook Pro in raw numbers, though. They both significantly outpace the headset in both Geekbench (4,141/15,490 for the tablet, 4,220/17,990 for the notebook) and 3DMark (10,929 for the tablet, 12,402 for the notebook). The performance dip is understandable given the Vision Pro's much more sophisticated capabilities, including spatial mapping and hand and eye tracking. The Vision Pro does have Apple’s R1 coprocessor for handling its mixed reality and spatial processing functions (the same coprocessor found in the M2 Vision Pro), but even then, the CPU is likely dealing with some amount of resource overhead that it only has to contend with on the Vision Pro. Still, the M5 is by far the most powerful processor used in any standalone headset; the Samsung Galaxy XR uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, a mobile processor, while the Meta Quest 3 and 3S both use the even less powerful Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2.
Across the board, the M5 Vision Pro performs very well. It feels slightly more responsive than the M2 Vision Pro, but that could be a placebo effect, simply from knowing how much more powerful the M5 chip is. Really resource-intensive apps and games will likely achieve better frame rates or complete tasks a bit faster, but there isn’t a significant, noticeable difference in most cases. This is hardly a complaint, as the original Vision Pro never felt sluggish when watching videos, playing games, or using multiple apps.
The new CPU is genuinely the only real hardware upgrade the M5 Vision Pro gets over the M2 model. Like its predecessor, the latest version has 16GB of memory, is available in three storage capacities (256GB, 512GB, or 1TB), and supports Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)Visual capabilities are also almost completely unchanged, which means you’ll be getting nearly the same experience as the M2 version in terms of both what you see and how you see it, with a single exception. It now supports a 120Hz refresh rate in addition to 90Hz, 96Hz, and 100Hz refresh rates, but that isn’t a change to the display itself; Apple informed me that the higher refresh rate is due to the extra processing power of the M5.
Otherwise, you’ll be looking through the same micro-OLED display, packing 23 million total pixels with a 7.5-micron pixel pitch and a claimed color range covering 92% of the DCI-P3 digital cinema color space. That puts it on the sharper end of mixed reality headsets, with more than three times the pixels of the Meta Quest 3.
Cameras and sensors also carry over from the original Vision Pro. A stereoscopic 3D pass-through view is enabled by two cameras equipped with 18mm f/2.0 lenses, yielding a total resolution of 6.5 megapixels. It also packs six separate outward cameras for spatial position tracking, four inward-facing eye-tracking cameras, a TrueDepth camera, a LiDAR sensor, and four internal inertial measurement units (IMUs).
Whether you’re looking at a simulated environment like one of visionOS’ soothing backgrounds (I quite like the lake by Mt. Hood), watching an immersive video, or staring at an app floating in front of you, almost everything still looks sharp and colorful on the Vision Pro. Because the outward-facing stereo cameras are much lower resolution than the displays, the view of your real-world environment will be significantly softer than anything the Vision Pro actually renders through software. Even so, it’s the sharpest I’ve tested, eclipsing the pass-through perspective of Meta's headsets. It’s a bit like looking through a pair of glasses that aren’t quite your prescription; it’s blurrier than the best your eyes can do, but still close enough to be usable.
Similar Products
Our Current Picks for The Best VR Headsets for 2026
(Credit: Will Greenwald)According to Apple, the M5 Vision Pro offers slightly better battery life than its predecessor. It should last for 2.5 hours on a charge with typical use or up to three hours if you're just watching videos. That's a half hour longer than the M2 Vision Pro on both counts, but it still isn't very long. This is a weakness shared by all standalone mixed reality headsets, as well as the Meta Quest 3 and 3S. I found myself keeping the battery pack plugged in when using the Vision Pro while sitting on my couch, and unplugging it when standing up for immersive activities.
Controls: Apple's Gaze-and-Gesture Interface Still Shines
When the Vision Pro first came out, its visionOS-powered interface felt like a revolutionary leap for mixed reality headsets and wearable displays. It’s still the most intuitive and simple control scheme in any headset I’ve tested, and only the Samsung Galaxy XR and the developer-focused XReal Project Aura have tried to really match it. The Vision Pro relies on eye and finger tracking, following what you’re looking at and highlighting any interactable object you focus your gaze on, like an icon, button, or link. With the object highlighted, usually by glowing subtly, tapping your thumb and index finger together “clicks” it. You can also hold your fingers together to move or resize elements and entire app windows, depending on the context.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)Cameras in the headset monitor your hands for these gestures even when they’re resting in your lap, so navigating apps and sites is as easy as sitting back, looking around, and flexing your fingers. Hand and finger tracking also works very well in mixed reality experiences. In supported games and other immersive software, you can reach out and manipulate objects directly with your hands. It’s a really intuitive and accessible system that doesn’t require any external controller, unlike the Meta Quest 3, 3S, and many other mixed reality headsets.
Eye and hand tracking still work wonderfully on the M5 Vision Pro, and after a quick calibration process that involves looking at circles at varying levels of brightness, I was able to reliably control the headset with a glance. It works best for objects in the center of my view, and the tracking becomes less reliable if I’m trying to look at anything in my periphery without turning my head, but it’s not difficult to adjust to that. The tracking remained accurate throughout multiple sessions, and even when it started to drift, I could recalibrate it with just a few taps.
It helps if the software is designed specifically for the Vision Pro itself, or at least for a tablet or phone, because the size and layout of interface elements significantly affect how well eye-tracking works. It’s much more like tapping a touch screen with your fingers than using a mouse; you won’t have any trouble hitting big, friendly tiles, but you won’t be pixel-perfect. This means that the desktop versions of some sites can be difficult to use, as can text-heavy productivity apps with numerous menus. I had a slightly hard time using Gmail and Google Docs in Safari tabs with just my eyes, unless I zoomed in or pulled the virtual browser closer to my face to make the tools and menu items large enough to consistently highlight with my eyes.
Fortunately, you can pair Bluetooth mice, keyboards, and gamepads with the headset and use them in conjunction with your eyes and fingers.
Software: visionOS Is Still More iPad Than VR
I go into more depth about how visionOS works in my review of the original Vision Pro, but here are the basics. VisionOS is built on iPadOS, so many of the operating system’s interface elements and menu layouts will feel very similar to those found on those devices. Pressing the digital crown on the headset, or looking at your hand and bringing your fingers together, will display a home view of installed apps arranged in icons similar to those on an iPad. If you look at your hand until the Home button appears, then turn your hand over, you’ll see a status bar that you can tap to open a quick menu instead. From there, you can adjust the audio, toggle different modes including Airplane and Travel, connect to a Mac through Mac Virtual Display, or stream what you’re looking at to an Apple AirPlay device.
Apple has made a notable addition to visionOS since the headset's launch, in the form of widgets. The OS now features widgets similar to iOS and iPadOS, allowing you to display a clock, weather report, or music player that’s simpler and less intrusive than a full app. Most interesting is how you can use them: Since visionOS doesn’t have a specific “screen” to put widgets on, you can instead affix them to your physical walls, where they’ll stay in place. The weather widget appears as a window that shows blue skies when the weather is clear, which is a really neat touch.
Most apps pop up a floating window with a thin bar indicating the bottom edge. You can move the app anywhere by looking at that bar and pinching, then moving your hand. You can also resize the app by looking at the lower left or right corners until a curved line appears and pinching it, or close the app by tapping the X button to the left of the bar. Some apps and games completely take over your view and can be interacted with like conventional VR software.
Speaking of software, visionOS hasn’t seen many major app or game releases since the Vision Pro’s initial launch, but immersive media has been steadily trickling out through Apple TV and some other streaming apps. There isn’t a ton, but what's there looks great.
I watched the first episode of World of Red Bull, “Backcountry Skiing,” on the Vision Pro, and it was incredible. The immersive video displays a 180-degree dome, completely covering your field of view with 3D footage that pops out like you're there. The snow flying in your face in ground shots and the mountains moving under you in aerial clips look lifelike, with plenty of depth. The sharp display makes it look better than any 3D visuals I’ve seen on Meta’s lower-resolution headsets. The majority of the immersive video on Apple TV is nature, sports, and concert footage, but there’s still enough to visually impress.
Because it’s based on iPadOS, visionOS can run thousands of iPad apps, which appear as floating 2D windows that you can resize and move around. In fact, the control you have over multiple apps at once on visionOS is even better than it is on an iPad because you can look around and see everything that’s open.
Most major iPad and iPhone apps are compatible with the Vision Pro, with a few notable exceptions. Apple’s main mobile and productivity apps are preinstalled, including FaceTime, Mail, Messages, and Safari, with others like Pages available for download. The iPad versions of Microsoft’s Chrome and the Office suite run on visionOS, along with Adobe Lightroom and Premiere.
Then there are the exceptions I mentioned. Apple’s own Final Cut Pro and GarageBand are missing from the Vision Pro, despite having their own iPad apps, and Adobe Photoshop is nowhere to be found. The worst omissions to me, however, are Google’s. Chrome, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Maps, and Google Sheets all simply don’t work as apps on the Vision Pro. You can access most of these services (except Chrome) through webpages via Safari, Firefox, or Edge, but they’re clunkier than the iPad versions of the apps. It baffles me that these apps are still not on visionOS, considering they’ve all been reliably running on iOS and iPadOS for years.
The Vision Pro is nearly as capable for gaming as the iPad Pro, especially when paired with a Bluetooth gamepad, such as an Xbox Wireless Controller. In addition to a handful of immersive mixed reality experiences for the headset, you can play most iPad games available on Apple Arcade, including PowerWash Simulator and Cult of the Lamb. A number of other games also work on the Vision Pro, including iPad ports of classics like Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. You can also stream games locally over the Steam Link iPad app and even through the cloud with Nvidia GeForce Now’s web portal. However, cloud gaming through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate doesn’t work on the Vision Pro.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Apple Vision Pro (M5)
The M5 Vision Pro refines the already best-in-class mixed reality headset with meaningful comfort and performance gains, but at $3,499, it remains best suited for Apple devotees who want the absolute cutting edge regardless of cost.