Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tore into Apple’s new Vision Pro headset in an Instagram video on Tuesday, calling the device inferior to the Quest 3 headset.
Zuckerberg said he had recently got his hands on the $3,500 rival headset and, like many, expected it to be ‘higher quality’ because it is several times more expensive than his device, which ranges from $500 for 128 GB of storage to $650 for 512 GB of storage.
However, after testing the Vision he said he was ‘surprised’ to discover that, in his view, his device bested the Vision in every aspect, from its screen brightness and comfortability to software.
Apple officially launched the Vision Pro earlier this month at a starting price of $3,500 ranging to almost $4,000 depending on memory space and add-ons like a $199 travel case and $99 optical inserts.
Mark Zuckerberg criticized Apple’s Vision Pro headset calling it bulky, grainy, and uncomfortable
Apple’s Vision Pro headset launched earlier this month with a $3,500 price tag
‘It seems like there are a lot of people who just assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and it costs $3,000 more,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘But honestly, I’m pretty surprised that Quest is so much better for the vast majority of things that people use these headsets for, with that price differential.’
In the video, Zuckerberg said the Quest is superior to the vision pro, specifying that it has a brighter screen, more immersive content, no wires, is lighter weight, and is overall more user-friendly.
He did supply two compliments for the Apple device, saying the ‘eye tracking function is really nice’ and it has ‘higher’ resolution than the Quest – but that was where the compliments ended.
‘After using it [the Vision Pro], I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, I think that Quest is the better product period,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘Apple’s screen does have a higher resolution and that’s really nice, but I was surprised by how many trade offs they had to make to the quality of the device and the comfort and the ergonomics,’ he added.
Zuckerberg compared the Vision Pro with Meta’s Quest 3 headset, saying there was no comparison: Quest is the better model
Ahead of the Vision Pro’s release, Richard Howarth, Apple’s vice president of industrial design acknowledged the device’s weight but told VanityFair it’s made up of the lightest materials on Earth: magnesium, carbon fiber, and aluminum.
‘There is nothing we could have done to make it lighter or smaller,’ he said, adding: ‘This is state of the art.’
Zuckerberg vehemently disagreed in his review, drastically contradicting the buzz built up around the Vision Pro headset since it was announced at TK last year.
‘I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple’s going to be the leader in a new category,’ he said.
‘But the reality is that every generation of computing has an open and a closed model. And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won, but it’s not always that way.’
Zuckerberg appears to not be alone in his opinions as people flock to Apple stores to return their Vision Pro headsets mere weeks after its release.
One of the major reasons consumers want their refund it the Vision Pro’s bulky design, according to Farzad Mesbahi, who is a tech influencer on YouTube.
He wrote on X: ‘Even if you can get the device to sit comfortably on your head and face, it’s still something you have to wear on your head and face.’
The passthrough technology, which allows the wearer to view the real-world while wearing the goggles, is not good, Mesbahi wrote, and the grainy screen makes it difficult to view a phone or read a small font on a piece of paper.
Despite Apple CEO Tim Cook’s assurances that the Vision Pro is the ‘way of the future,’ Zuckerberg said he believes Meta’s Quest outperforms it in almost every way.
‘If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner, and in this next generation Meta is going to be the open model. And I really want to make sure that the open model wins out,’ Zuckerberg said, adding: ‘Again, the future is not yet written.’
