What’s It REALLY Like To Use The Vision Pro M5?

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Ah, the Apple Vision Pro. That mythical, mystical, and magical device that only the most ardent Apple fans ever experience, much less own. That $3,499 price is more than sticker shock for a niche device—it’s the cost of a used Honda Civic on Marketplace. Or, you could buy an M4 Max MacBook Pro, three iPad Pro M5 tablets, three iPhone Pro Max smartphones, 13 pairs of AirPods Pro 3s, or 1,750 in-app purchases.

Absurdity aside, you get the idea—the Vision Pro isn’t cheap, no matter how you slice it.

Set aside the price and the dream of it, though. Let’s get down to the real question: is it worth it? Is the Vision Pro worth the exorbitant price Apple demands for it?

I have the answer, because I booked one of Apple’s official demos of the new Vision Pro at my local King Street Apple Store. The answer is, well, surprising.

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The Setup

When I arrived at the Apple Store, I was greeted by Clint, an employee there that has been with the store since it opened on September 10, 2025. Yes, I’ve been going there since then and my wife and I remembered him from all that way back—the early days of the Apple Store.

Clint explained that each demo of the new Vision Pro M5 is conducted to each individual tester’s profile. In my case, each aspect of the fit of the Vision Pro M5 was configured to my specific eyesight, facial structure, and interview question answers. There are separate sizes for things like the headband and light shield, making the Vision Pro M5 completely customizable to each user.

By comparison, the Meta Quest 3, which I owned previously, takes on more of a “one size fits all” out-of-the-box philosophy. It’s one of the touches of the Vision Pro M5 that distinguishes it as a premium product over competitors like the Meta Quest 3: custom fit. And when you wear a mixed reality headset on your head for a while, you’ll get why that custom fit is so important. We’ll touch on that more shortly.

Next, Clint asked me to scan my face into a circle on an iPad so it could make measurements for the best use of the Vision Pro M5. Compared to some more detailed scans, like FaceID, it only needed me to look straight, left, right, up, and down to get things squared away for the face scan. Easy. Then, once the data itself was registered, Clint deleted the images of my face and head from the device for privacy.

Next up, the first-time placement of the Vision Pro M5 on my head. The new Dual Knit Band is, Clint explained, a big improvement from the original single-band strap. He explained to me how to adjust the top and side bands with a single knob on the right side. Turn it pushed in to adjust one strap, then pull out the knob and turn again to adjust the other. Turn one way to tighten and the other to loosen.

These adjustments really do make a significant difference in the comfort level for wearing the Vision Pro M5. Compared to the woeful strap that comes with devices like the Meta Quest 3, the Vision Pro M5’s

-band strap is a substantially more comfortable setup. It’s soft, plush, and makes wearing the headset easy. Not quite delightful, as it does have weight to it, and man, is that head strap ugly. But for a device you wear on your head, function beats form here, so kudos to Apple for making the Dual Knit Band super easy to wear.

With the device fitted, Clint asked me to turn it on. There are two buttons on the top of the headset and a digital crown, like on the Apple Watch, for making fine adjustments. I held the power button and the screen came to life inside the device.

Before the fun begins, though, there’s an education process to follow. It starts with understanding that the Vision Pro M5 and visionOS 26 track your eye movement as the means of understanding what action you want to take on the virtual display. That education process also involves tracking large dots in a circular pattern with your eyes several times, then pinching with your thumb and index finger to select them. Think of the pinch as the “tap” where you are looking. So the look selects things, and the pinch taps them virtually.

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visionOS 26: Magic or Mirage?

Once the setup and education processes are complete, it was time to see visionOS 26 in action for the first time. That starts with the home menu. It looks similar to the kind of menu you would see on an iOS, iPadOS, or CarPlay home screen. The main icons are laid out in a grid pattern and are immediately recognizable as app icons in the Apple ecosystem.

For example, visionOS 26 has the same kinds of app icons for apps like Safari, Music, Apple TV, and Settings as you would find on other Apple devices. Apple has worked hard to unify the look and feel of the OS 26 releases, and it shows in the new Vision Pro M5.

The first demo item was Photos. In visionOS 26, photos can be viewed in the normal 2D way that you would see them on your flat-screen Apple devices. But the Vision Pro M5 has another trick up its sleeve: it can make your 2D photos appear 3D. It’s not just a sleight of hand where images have that “red and blue 3D glasses” effect applied to them. It can make your 2D images appear panoramic all around you and literally put them into a first-person perspective.

It’s much more than some kind of gimmick: it’s extraordinary. It takes you visually right out of where you are in the world and transports you into a whole new, or even completely familiar, place from your photo library. It’s supremely personal because they are your photos, your places, your memories, or even places you want to go and have never been. It’s not just an evolutionary use of virtual experiences—it’s transformative.

Next up: video in Apple TV. It’s easy to imagine watching your favorite content on a supersized virtual display. It’s another thing to experience it. On the one hand, getting to watch your favorite TV shows and movies on just about any size of virtual TV screen you can dream up is really fun to experience. I mean, who doesn’t want to watch their faves on a larger screen, especially for movies and sports?

On the other hand, watching flat, 2D content in a 3D environment somewhat defeats the purpose. I mean, sure, it’s bigger, and bigger is better for media consumption. But for your $3,499, you can get one seriously large real-world TV. Really large.

My refrigerator died a couple of weeks ago, and a new one from Best Buy was just delivered the day before I wrote this article. One of the guys that delivered it said his next stop was to deliver a 102” TV to a new owner. I asked him if it was the biggest TV he’d delivered, and he said it wasn’t. He had recently delivered a 116” TV. That’s nearly as tall as an entire wall in my home.

There’s a real difference between watching your media on a real TV compared to a virtual one. I’ve done that in the Meta Quest 3 and the Vision Pro M5. It’s nice, but real displays are still nicer for watching your 2D content.

But, man, oh man, when you watch dedicated 3D video content made for the Vision Pro ecosystem, that’s when glorious kicks in. And I’m not sure that glorious is strong enough of a word to cover the experience and how it made me feel.

You see, I’m a Metallica fan. I have been since the 80s. So when Clint turned on the Vision Pro version of a live Metallica concert, it was like he had been reading my mind. It was more than just like being at the concert front row. It was like being a member of the band. You get up on stage with them and stand the equivalent of about three feet away from them while they perform. You are the fifth member of Met.

The image here does no justice to the experience, and there should be justice done—for all. Met fans will get it. I don’t think it matters whether you are a Metallica fan or not. Just experiencing the love and care that went into the production of the experience you watch with the micro-OLED displays and hear through the bone-conductive audio is evident in every moment. It’s stupendous, and there is no other way in the world to experience it the way Apple has made possible.

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What I Didn’t Experience In The Demo

There are so many other things that the Vision Pro M5 can do. Things like gaming, music streaming, web browsing, email, Apple device screen sharing, messaging, and so much more. The demo, including the setup, only lasts for around 30 minutes, and there’s not enough time to experience everything in one sitting.

Maybe, though, that’s the most interesting thing, and the most utilitarian thing, about the Vision Pro M5: all of the many things it can do other than be a fancy media player.

The Vision Pro M5 can be a daily driver in terms of productivity, screen sharing, and connecting with people all over the world. Businesses are adopting the Vision Pro and Vision Pro M5 to aid in telework scenarios to connect people that work remotely. Families are using the power of visionOS 26 to connect with friends and loved ones when they cannot otherwise be together and to experience that connectivity in a more personal way. People that can’t travel can experience places from all over the world—and the galaxy, by teleporting themselves virtually into different places and exciting new realms.

The flat, 2D screens of all other Apple devices, and nearly every device in the world, just can’t compete with the 3D, virtualized experiences that devices like the Vision Pro M5 deliver.

We humans see, hear, and feel the world in three dimensions. Adding virtualized 3D to the visuals we see and the sounds we hear makes them seem much more real and engaging. That’s the north star of devices like the Vision Pro M5: to make us feel something remarkable in ways that no other experience can.

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Is It Worth the Price Tag?

The answer isn’t so much a matter of “price” as it is a matter of “value.” In reality, all things work that way, even when we don’t initially process them like that.

For example, my MacBook Pro 16” M4 Max is a $3,499 laptop. For some, that would be a ludicrous price to pay for any laptop, including a MacBook Pro. For others, it fits their needs and wants, so the value is there when compared against the price to pay to get it.

For some, the $3,499 price tag of the Vision Pro M5 represents an unnecessary, overpriced luxury buy. For others, the joy it brings, productivity it enables, and connectivity it creates with others make the value proposition make perfect sense.

So, I think it breaks down to these simple questions.
• Do you have the money for it? Don’t put it on a credit card or get an Apple Card to buy one (a financial discussion for another time).
• Do you know other people that have them? Having that communal connection in the visionOS ecosystem is going to amplify your Vision Pro M5 ownership experience significantly. Connectors connect on common ground, and connecting with people virtually will make owning a Vision Pro M5 a much more meaningful experience.
• Does the media library of movies, TV shows, and games native to visionOS appeal to you? Do your homework. Make sure you would actually want to watch the movies and play the games available in visionOS.
• Do you get motion sickness? Many of the visionOS media experiences are calm, but some of the gaming ones can cause motion sickness for some users of VR and first-person perspective games.
• How often will you use it? If you think it’d be a daily driver, the value is super clear. If it’s a “once every blue moon” kind of device, the price-to-value proposition becomes murky.

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One More Thing

Yes, you too can absolutely book a demo of the new Vision Pro M5 with Apple. Go to the Apple website, click on the “Vision” link at the top, and click on the “Book A Demo” link on the page.

In conversation, Clint said that nearly every person that demoed the Vision Pro in the past did not end up buying one. He’s still happy to demo the Vision Pro M5 to anyone that would like to try it out. It’s part of Apple’s desire to serve its users in any way that best helps them understand their technologies and the direction they are heading.

If you think you would enjoy experiencing, and maybe even owning, a Vision Pro M5, I encourage you to sign up with Apple to take the tour. It’s an experience you won’t soon forget.