Apple’s Vision Pro was never going to be a big success right out of the gate. It wasn’t just the eye-watering $3,499 price—it was the headset’s reliance on highly advanced, low-yield OLED display panels from Sony, which could reportedly only be produced in quantities of under a million a year.
There was never a scenario in which the Vision Pro could have turned into the next iPhone, or even the next Apple Watch, overnight. Apple knew this when it released the product, but thought it was worth getting the platform out into the wild anyway.
That said, the company can’t be too pleased with the Vision Pro’s reception. Content for the headset has slowed to a trickle, and at no point since launch has it been difficult to find one in stock. A niche product designed to stoke excitement among early adopters and developers is one thing, but there’s little evidence that it’s succeeded even on that level.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Multicore\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Multicore is about technology hardware and design. It’s written from Tokyo by Sam Byford. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/\u0022\u003Emulticore.blog\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91454027,"imageMobileId":91454030,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}That’s not to say anything bad about the Vision Pro’s quality—visionOS is a thoughtfully designed operating system, and the hardware remains class-leading in many ways. But if Apple’s vision for spatial computing is ever going to take off, a few things need to happen. The headset needs to get smaller, it needs to be more comfortable to wear, and it needs to be much cheaper.
The Meta alternativeEnter Meta, which last week announced a product that would seem to tick all three boxes. The Meta VR Glasses are designed to do many of the same things as the Vision Pro, but in a lighter, more glasses-like form factor that costs just over a third as much—they’ll go on sale for $1,299 next year, while the Vision Pro starts at $3,699.
How did Meta do it? One cost-cutting measure is the VR Glasses’ OLED panels.
The Vision Pro’s dual 4K displays were expensive even by the standards of the rest of the hardware, which was as high-end as you’d expect of Apple. One Omdia estimate put the two internal Sony micro-OLED panels at $228 each. Add the much-ridiculed external OLED screen, which shows a low-resolution representation of the wearer’s eyes, and the estimated display bill came to around $530—or 35% of the total component cost.
It’s important to remember that a bill of materials doesn’t tell you everything that goes into the sticker price you see on shelves. But in this case, it could well indicate how much Apple was spending on its display panels before accounting for chips, sensors, or anything else.
Meta says the VR Glasses have 2,412 x 2,288 pixels per eye, which is about half as much as the Vision Pro—it’s a total of around 11 million pixels versus 23 million. But in terms of sharpness, the two headsets are closer than you might think. Meta is quoting a figure of 37 pixels per degree, which is actually higher than the Vision Pro’s.
The catch here is that the field of view is smaller, at around 70 degrees horizontally compared to roughly 100 degrees for the Vision Pro. These figures can be fuzzy and differ between users, but the difference between the two is pretty stark.
In my experience with various augmented reality glasses, however, the field of view is not quite as critical in that form factor as it would be in a VR headset designed to immerse you in a virtual world. I often use the Xreal One glasses, for example, which have an even smaller 50-degree field of view, and the picture stretches out close to the edge of the glasses themselves. It’s not really something you think about when you’re watching a movie.
Meta does say that it will offer an optional accessory to block out peripheral vision, and in that configuration the VR Glasses are likely to be less immersive than the Quest 3 or Vision Pro. But as a way to achieve the same kind of AR experience as the Vision Pro, while letting you see the world around you in a radically smaller and lighter design that weighs just 100 grams, it feels like a worthy tradeoff—especially since the panels are so much cheaper and likely available in greater volume. Impressions I’ve heard from early testers have been universally positive.
Other advantagesAnother way Meta has reduced the size and weight is by moving computing components to the tethered “puck,” which in the Vision Pro solely houses the battery. That felt like an odd decision by Apple even at the time of the Vision Pro’s release—after all, the majority of space inside an iPhone is already taken up by its battery. If you’re going to have a cable running down to a separate breakout box anyway, it would surely be prudent to make the most of it and lighten the load on the user’s head.
Apple also didn’t want to compromise when it came to the Vision Pro’s controllers, or lack thereof. The operating system is entirely built around intuitive gesture controls, in a typically Apple move. But it did mean that the Vision Pro was on the back foot when it came to gaming support, and the later addition of support for the controllers from the PlayStation VR 2—itself not exactly a roaring success of a device—hasn’t really moved the needle.
The Meta VR Glasses also won’t ship with controllers in the box, but they have two key advantages: compatibility with the huge library of Quest games and with Quest 3 controllers. That means anyone who buys the glasses and does want to play games on them won’t be short of things to do on launch day.
Of course, even the Quest 3 — by some distance the most popular VR headset to date — is still far from a mass-market success, and there’s no guarantee that Meta will fare any better with the VR Glasses. But from a design and technology perspective, it’s shocking just how more viable of a product they already appear to be than the Vision Pro.
Apple is going to have to go back to the drawing board with visionOS, and Meta may well have just shown the way forward.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Multicore\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Multicore is about technology hardware and design. It’s written from Tokyo by Sam Byford. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/\u0022\u003Emulticore.blog\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91454027,"imageMobileId":91454030,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}Apple’s Vision Pro was never going to be a big success right out of the gate. It wasn’t just the eye-watering $3,499 price—it was the headset’s reliance on highly advanced, low-yield OLED display panels from Sony, which could reportedly only be produced in quantities of under a million a year.
There was never a scenario in which the Vision Pro could have turned into the next iPhone, or even the next Apple Watch, overnight. Apple knew this when it released the product, but thought it was worth getting the platform out into the wild anyway.
That said, the company can’t be too pleased with the Vision Pro’s reception. Content for the headset has slowed to a trickle, and at no point since launch has it been difficult to find one in stock. A niche product designed to stoke excitement among early adopters and developers is one thing, but there’s little evidence that it’s succeeded even on that level.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/multicore-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Multicore\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Multicore is about technology hardware and design. It’s written from Tokyo by Sam Byford. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/\u0022\u003Emulticore.blog\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.multicore.blog\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91454027,"imageMobileId":91454030,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}That’s not to say anything bad about the Vision Pro’s quality—visionOS is a thoughtfully designed operating system, and the hardware remains class-leading in many ways. But if Apple’s vision for spatial computing is ever going to take off, a few things need to happen. The headset needs to get smaller, it needs to be more comfortable to wear, and it needs to be much cheaper.
The Meta alternativeEnter Meta, which last week announced a product that would seem to tick all three boxes. The Meta VR Glasses are designed to do many of the same things as the Vision Pro, but in a lighter, more glasses-like form factor that costs just over a third as much—they’ll go on sale for $1,299 next year, while the Vision Pro starts at $3,699.
How did Meta do it? One cost-cutting measure is the VR Glasses’ OLED panels.
The Vision Pro’s dual 4K displays were expensive even by the standards of the rest of the hardware, which was as high-end as you’d expect of Apple. One Omdia estimate put the two internal Sony micro-OLED panels at $228 each. Add the much-ridiculed external OLED screen, which shows a low-resolution representation of the wearer’s eyes, and the estimated display bill came to around $530—or 35% of the total component cost.
It’s important to remember that a bill of materials doesn’t tell you everything that goes into the sticker price you see on shelves. But in this case, it could well indicate how much Apple was spending on its display panels before accounting for chips, sensors, or anything else.
Meta says the VR Glasses have 2,412 x 2,288 pixels per eye, which is about half as much as the Vision Pro—it’s a total of around 11 million pixels versus 23 million. But in terms of sharpness, the two headsets are closer than you might think. Meta is quoting a figure of 37 pixels per degree, which is actually higher than the Vision Pro’s.
The catch here is that the field of view is smaller, at around 70 degrees horizontally compared to roughly 100 degrees for the Vision Pro. These figures can be fuzzy and differ between users, but the difference between the two is pretty stark.
In my experience with various augmented reality glasses, however, the field of view is not quite as critical in that form factor as it would be in a VR headset designed to immerse you in a virtual world. I often use the Xreal One glasses, for example, which have an even smaller 50-degree field of view, and the picture stretches out close to the edge of the glasses themselves. It’s not really something you think about when you’re watching a movie.
Meta does say that it will offer an optional accessory to block out peripheral vision, and in that configuration the VR Glasses are likely to be less immersive than the Quest 3 or Vision Pro. But as a way to achieve the same kind of AR experience as the Vision Pro, while letting you see the world around you in a radically smaller and lighter design that weighs just 100 grams, it feels like a worthy tradeoff—especially since the panels are so much cheaper and likely available in greater volume. Impressions I’ve heard from early testers have been universally positive.
Other advantagesAnother way Meta has reduced the size and weight is by moving computing components to the tethered “puck,” which in the Vision Pro solely houses the battery. That felt like an odd decision by Apple even at the time of the Vision Pro’s release—after all, the majority of space inside an iPhone is already taken up by its battery. If you’re going to have a cable running down to a separate breakout box anyway, it would surely be prudent to make the most of it and lighten the load on the user’s head.
Apple also didn’t want to compromise when it came to the Vision Pro’s controllers, or lack thereof. The operating system is entirely built around intuitive gesture controls, in a typically Apple move. But it did mean that the Vision Pro was on the back foot when it came to gaming support, and the later addition of support for the controllers from the PlayStation VR 2—itself not exactly a roaring success of a device—hasn’t really moved the needle.
The Meta VR Glasses also won’t ship with controllers in the box, but they have two key advantages: compatibility with the huge library of Quest games and with Quest 3 controllers. That means anyone who buys the glasses and does want to play games on them won’t be short of things to do on launch day.
Of course, even the Quest 3 — by some distance the most popular VR headset to date — is still far from a mass-market success, and there’s no guarantee that Meta will fare any better with the VR Glasses. But from a design and technology perspective, it’s shocking just how more viable of a product they already appear to be than the Vision Pro.
Apple is going to have to go back to the drawing board with visionOS, and Meta may well have just shown the way forward.
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