Vision Pro M5 review: It’s time for Apple to make some tough choices

With the recent releases of visionOS 26 and newly refreshed Vision Pro hardware, it’s an ideal time to check in on Apple’s Vision Pro headset—a device I was simultaneously amazed and disappointed by when it launched in early 2024.

I still like the Vision Pro, but I can tell it’s hanging on by a thread. Content is light, developer support is tepid, and while Apple has taken action to improve both, it’s not enough, and I’m concerned it might be too late.

When I got a Vision Pro, I used it a lot: I watched movies on planes and in hotel rooms, I walked around my house placing application windows and testing out weird new ways of working. I tried all the neat games and educational apps, and I watched all the immersive videos I could get ahold of. I even tried my hand at developing my own applications for it.

As the months went on, though, I used it less and less. The novelty wore off, and as cool as it remained, practicality beat coolness. By the time Apple sent me the newer model a couple of weeks ago, I had only put the original one on a few times in the prior couple of months. I had mostly stopped using it at home, but I still took it on trips as an entertainment device for hotel rooms now and then.

That’s not an uncommon story. You even see it in the subreddit for Vision Pro owners, which ought to be the home of the device’s most dedicated fans. Even there, people say, “This is really cool, but I have to go out of my way to keep using it.”

Perhaps it would have been easier to bake it into my day-to-day habits if developer and content creator support had been more robust, a classic chicken-and-egg problem.