Compared to the AVP, it is a toy. That doesn’t mean the Quest 3 is bad. It’s great for what it is and costs.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Regret returning your AVP?
- Thread starter rj41978
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Considering the price, yes the AVP is 7 times better. The displays are so bad on the quest 3 that I bought a second one just to confirm mine wasn't defective.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
But have you tried the Viewmaster? The pessimists tell me it too is pretty much the same as Vpro for only 1% of the price. 😉
Just a note about conditions of returns.
Distance selling laws were created to govern rights surrounding purchases through “catalogues”.
Were were given the rights to open, inspect, wear and return items. The stipulation is that they must be returned in perfect condition. The packaging is not included in this, hence you can open it.
I’m in the same boat in that I’ve never returned an Apple Product. They seem pretty liberal with their return policy given the posts from people who buy iPhones in different colors and keep their favorite.
I’ve gone back and forth on keeping my VP several times a day for the past week. Right now I’m leaning towards keeping. It’s pricey given how I’d use it, so for me it’s an expensive toy. But I know myself and I’d just spend the money on other, likely less entertaining, things.
Here's some honest and genuine advice.
If you really have $3,500 to fritter away then by all means keep it. Good for you etc and may you love your purchase.
However.
The fact you are even having thoughts that you might not get much use out of it.... for goodness sake just send it back whilst you have the chance. Your gut feeling is correct in this instance.
That doesnt mean that youll never again in your lifetime own an Apple VR headset - as better and greater (and hopefully cheaper!) are surely coming and theres nothing stopping you buying another somewhere down the line.
$3,500 for a device with no serious application for you is absolutely destined to not be used much and will end up a very expensive paperweight.
Expensive toy is fine... but imagine what other toys you could buy for that money. An incredible OLED TV. A Fantastic sound system. Multiple iPhones or iPads or Macs.
.... and ironically you'd still have enough change for an Oculus Quest 3 which frankly does a LOT of what the Vision Pro can (you'd be surprised).
So. Send it back whilst you still can.
With respect, I think this is exactly where a forum like this shines. My partner has no interest in tech and would not take any discussion seriously enough for me. I can talk to friends, but none of my friends have the VP and are not even researching it.
People on a forum like this who have bought the VP can offer insights into the product and its usability that I can’t find anywhere else. I find their thoughts and opinions valuable. Your seemingly flippant advice not to buy it does not help. This is a forum about Apple products that is intended to share thoughts and ideas. If people divulge their favorite breakfast jam then I’ll agree with your oversharing characterization.
Agreed. The last I checked, the Paramount app is just the iPad app so it’s not running natively.
I got mine at launch and returned it a week in. To be honest I’ve had no interest in picking it up again. The issues I had with it (comfort, convenience, lack of need etc) are things that won’t be going away this generation. I will be sitting on the sidelines and watching how the technology progresses with optimism. I will also be continuing to record big life moments in spatial video knowing one day years from now I can relive them.
I returned mine after a week, and I honestly don't miss it. I found it extremely uncomfortable and just generally hated using it, so I havent been tempted. I think the software is very cool, but there was just nothing to do after the initial shine wore off. I'll check back when the next one comes out and see how the app ecosystem is. I would really need the FOV and resolution to improve, because using the Mac mirrored screen would be a big use case, and its nowhere near as good as my Pro Display XDR right now.
Did you happen to see pricing info or where to buy anywhere on that site? I did not.
Don’t forget to also take plenty of panoramic photos.
Keep scrolling... and when you think you are done, scroll some more. I am still scrolling but I have faith I will soon reach the price.
I had a webcam in 2003 that was clearer than the pass-through on Quest 3. AVP also doesn't distort every time anything in the room moves. Quest 3 is terrible at stitching the camera pass-through together, and can barely be used in a dim room. While not quite as vibrant, AVP is almost indistinguishable from reality. It's a shame the FOV is so low on it.
indistinguishable from reality?
Hyperbole much?
Most reviews ive seen suggested passthrough on the VP was one of the bigger disappointments as people didnt realise that a dimply lit room would look poor and grainy.
Meta Quest 3 also looks very poor and grainy in a dimly lit room - but put it in a brightly lit room and its excellent - as too is the VP but the key being they BOTH need well lit rooms to work well.
That video of Zuckerberg was filmed using Q3 - just to give readers here a more objective view of what Q3's passthrough is capable of (and yes of course Zuckerberg carefully lit and staged that for perfect lighting conditions)
We have very different definitions of “excellent” apparently. It looks like crap.
What did you find better about the AVP and what was so inferior about the Quest? I own a Quest 2 and I like it quite a bit and have a hard time imagining what's so much better about the AVP. For example, the interface of just slapping icons over the actual environment is a bit yawn-inducing to the Quest interface where you can be in a tropical location, a space station, etc.
I guess if, like you're implying, you're buying one of these to work, then sure the AVP would be better. But the AVP sucks for text input so you really can't work with it anyway, without using a physical keyboard (and if you're doing that, you may as well throw a physical mouse in too) so then you might as well use an actual computer.
The AVP has clearly superior visuals internally and the hand/eye tracking is really startlingly good. I returned my AVP and bought a Quest 3 because I realized I'd never want to use something like this for work and could no longer rationalize the price for something that I'd really just enjoy for entertainment once in a while. The AVP is superior in many ways, but the Quest 3 is good enough for me until there's an AVP Gen 2 that hopefully solves some of the major issues I had with it, including the fov and glare when watching movies. Yes the Quest 3 has those problems too, but I'm more willing to accept them at that price point and just consider it a stopgap toy until the AVP reaches a level of development that I want to jump back in on.
The Quest 3 does have a more robust game environment for sure, and I do like the controllers tbh.
I own both (and Quest Pro before that), and it's amazing that we can even compare these two, because they are in different leagues. Of course, AVP is superior, however:
Is it 7x better than Quest 3, though? No. Is Quest 3 really "a toy" compared to AVP? In my opinion, no (except for the plastic, but I don't really care).
- Quest 3 passthrough is quite good. It's brighter - when you put it on after AVP it's like taking off the sunglasses. It's also closer to the actual eyesight due to reproduction and camera locations - "truer" depth and if you glance in the gaps into the real world, it matches almost perfectly geometrically. But it is much grainier/noisier, especially in low light and has a big distortion issue for anything close up. And dynamic range is pretty bad.
- AVP passthrough is dimmer and "flatter", but the dynamic range is excellent - I can stand in a dim room and look through the window, and I can see the outside perfectly well, without overblown highlights. The resolution is better too, and the low light performance is better. However, it has much more pronounced motion blur.
- Lens in Quest 3 are just fantastic. Excellent edge-to-edge clarity and no distortions. Color uniformity is great. The resolution is quite an improvement compared to Q2 and even Quest Pro, but you can still see the pixels and there is this screen door effect. Also, since it's LCD, there no blacks.
- AVP resolution is great, and also the OS does a very good job rendering - even if you come very close to a window, there is no blur unless you are like an inch away or so. The contrast is great, and the color calibration is quite good too. It's also HDR.
However, the optics have quite visible distortions and color fringing at the edges. The color uniformity is also not very good, although not very noticeable for everyday tasks. AVP does a very good job correcting for distortions/color in real time by following your gaze, but it can't do anything about the very edges, and there are glitches and strange artifacts, like text looking warped if you move your head around which can get very annoying - once you see it, it's very hard to unsee. Sometimes you can see foveated rendering in action when it doesn't catch up with your eye movement and you see some blurriness for a split second. The motion blur (retention issue) is also pronounced when you move your head. - Glare is present in both, but much more noticeable with AVP. It was pretty bad with my first unit, the second is better in this regard (maybe it's also because of a shorter seal as it seems to be more to the sides when your eyes are closer to lens).
- FOV in AVP is OK. Actually, it's quite close to horizontal FOV of Quest 3 with shorter light seals, but Quest 3 has a better vertical FOV.
- Comfort-wise, overall Quest 3 is more comfortable with Elite strap, but AVP is not bad, and with a similar solution it should be pretty much the same. The facial interface is better with AVP vs. "one-size-fits-all" Quest 3, but proper fitting is important. I measured as 25W and it was very uncomfortable for me. I now use 33W and it's much more comfortable.
- AVP has a big usability issue, hardware wise. It's so easy to just pick up Quest 3 and put it on your head. And when you are done, just take it off, and put it back in the drawer.
With AVP, you need to be constantly aware of this battery brick, be careful for the wire to not catch on anything. There were a few times when I forgot about the brick and the cable almost yanked the headset off my head, and other way around - left the battery in the pocket and stepped away. Almost dropped my AVP as a result. There is also a certain way you can grab it - if you accidentally grab it by the seal, it could be a very expensive mistake, even with AppleCare. With Quest 3 you don't need to think about any of these things.
Is it 7x better than Quest 3, though? No. Is Quest 3 really "a toy" compared to AVP? In my opinion, no (except for the plastic, but I don't really care).
I work with mine. The keyboard that pops up is useful when you don't have anything else to use. But you're right, can't really use it currently for lots of text input. Siri is great. Really good at voice to text. So I do use a physical BT keyboard. Which is awesome, really. I prefer ergonomic keyboards.
Even if you did the keyboard mouse thing, it's no where close to using a regular computer. You can physically interact with applications. Pull the window to you or while standing, move around the room. The more I use it, the more I prefer working that way.
I don't regret returning mine, and I'm a big defender of returning this gen 1 over any recent gen 1 Apple product. For me, it was a "seeya later". While I have some money, I'm also not a money waster. And I think Apple will in the long run appreciate my feedback in the form of this return. As one of the best functioning institutions in America, I don't think they'll miss the money and I think they could use a bit of a reality check.
I'm giving them a vote of no confidence in their industrial design strategy that made this the most uncomfortable VR headset I've ever bought, and I'm asking for a bit more before I'll accept this as a Spatial Computer from Apple, which is a high bar for a VR headset.
Buying this product to see for myself if the product in the box right now was as much of a letdown as the best early reviews suggested was a love letter from me to Apple. If I cared less, I wouldn't have bought it knowing I might be driving back to the store in a few days to sheepishly ask for my money back as I feared I would have to.
Putting it on was immediately disappointing, and that's not the Apple I've come to expect, and their worst gen 1 in my experience.
I'm giving them a vote of no confidence in their industrial design strategy that made this the most uncomfortable VR headset I've ever bought, and I'm asking for a bit more before I'll accept this as a Spatial Computer from Apple, which is a high bar for a VR headset.
Buying this product to see for myself if the product in the box right now was as much of a letdown as the best early reviews suggested was a love letter from me to Apple. If I cared less, I wouldn't have bought it knowing I might be driving back to the store in a few days to sheepishly ask for my money back as I feared I would have to.
Putting it on was immediately disappointing, and that's not the Apple I've come to expect, and their worst gen 1 in my experience.
Last edited:
I owned a quest 3 for about 45 days before avp debut. I returned quest because obviously I wanted to try avp before committing.
For quest 3. I never found that I wished videos looked better or I’d keep it. Videos looked fine to me. (But then i saw some on avp). The big caveat is the source. Even on avp you’ll find some stream in low res. Others like atv will be best.
Games and boundaries. If this is your thing only the quest does this. I wasn’t that interested in it after trying it. I don’t need a workout while wearing a headset. I’m more of a sit down and use it and that’s exactly what avp is. My kid on the other hand is all about the games.
Ease of use. Definitely avp. To a certain point. And only if that app or content is easily available. If you started to want video players or do more advanced things then it crumbles.
Otherwise you start running into issues. Avps apps are mostly horrible imo. Or too simple. There is no video player that is worth buying right now. On the quest this isn’t a problem.
If you like immersion videos, a quest makes it simple to stream them. You can’t do this on avp yet without using atv and apples very limited content though it is excellent quality bar none.
As for productivity I’m not using a headset to do that. I use windows for work. A Mac though I use personally wouldn’t do the trick. I work in a professional accounting firm. We’re not wearing headsets there. I wouldn’t want to work 8+ hours with one on. That’s torture to me.
Headsets are like gaming consoles for me. Occasional use. I’m in no rush when I get home exhausted to throw this thing on. I’m lucky to get 30-60 mins of use at a time out of it.
Avps main strength is oled and movie apps. And perhaps knowing immersive content will look awesome as more comes out for it.
I did try a comic app but it’s an iPad one. Wasn’t great but saw the potential. There’s no kindle app for reading. I seldom used safari as it’s a pain to use and is barebones. I did use Mac virtual but it wasn’t better than simply using my Mac. There’s no games that are worthwhile on avp.
I honestly found myself just watching videos on avp hdr oled. That’s what it’s best at. 2d and 3d. Source or app matters too. Not immersion really because I already saw what Apple had. To view more immersion it sucks to do that because you have to first find content. Download it. And hope one of the buggy 3rd party apps that can play it works.
So in summary. Avp wins at 2d/3d video. Easily. Quest wins at everything else. I don’t consider productivity a criteria to even use. At 7x the cost you really have to like viewing videos to justify it. I couldn’t do that.
Maybe if avp gets better and especially as vision os gets updated along with better apps. Even for videos it’s not where it could be. When we can steam immersion ones, and that content is much more abundant then it might be worth it. YouTube vr with ability to stream immersion is essential. If sports like nfl got this ability then it’s a no brainer maybe. But it’s a long way off.
Oh and look at Avps getting cracks in middle and apple making people pay 299 for the fix. That’s bad PR. Really apple? This is how you treat your most enthusiastic fans who dish out nearly 5k for this gen 1 device with buggy os and apps?
Until then a quest at 7x less cost does this good enough. I say 7x less. My avp cost plus bag and AppleCare approached 5k. That’s too much for videos. Makes quest more like 10x less.