After enabling us to wear it in unconventional locations and strap it to our faces, thoughts regarding Apple’s Vision Pro are circulating widely.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, joins the conversation. If Apple treats headsets the way it treats smartphones, it stands to lose more than anybody else on the planet. Zuckerberg delivers his official assessment of the Vision Pro in comparison to his company’s most recent Quest 3 headset in a video that was uploaded to his Instagram account on Tuesday: “I believe Quest to be the superior product overall, not just the better value.”
In his living room, Zuckerberg is being recorded by the Quest 3’s video passthrough technology as he discusses the compromises Apple made to fit the most luxurious display into a wearable form factor. Since the Quest 3 weighs 120 grams less, he claims it is more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. In addition, he claims that because it has a broader field of vision than the Vision Pro and no tethered battery pack, it allows for more mobility.
Though he says he likes eye tracking for specific use cases and hinted that it will return to future Meta headsets after making its premiere in the Quest Pro, he believes the Quest’s option of physical hand controllers and hand tracking for input is superior. He concedes that the Vision Pro is a superior entertainment device, but claims that the Quest has a better “immersive” content catalog than Apple—a claim that is currently technically correct. Furthermore, the Quest 3 is, in Zuck’s words, “like seven times less expensive.”
Zuckerberg expresses gratitude to his team, who have been creating VR headsets for a very long period, at the end of the film. The message seems to be one of “people can rest easy.” As we previously spoke, Meta has a significant advantage and will continue to lead headgear sales for some time, as I mentioned to Zuckerberg. Like Zuckerberg, you could even make a compelling case that, for the majority of users, the Quest 3 is currently a superior headset over the Vision Pro.
However, Zuckerberg omits to mention in his video that Apple has clear advantages in terms of hardware and the developer ecosystem—the latter of which takes time to pick up steam with a new product category like this one. Meta might be letting out a sigh of relief at this moment. However, this is an endurance game. The fights over headsets are just getting started.
