Picture source @Visual China
text | Lei Technology
1 month ago, Apple’s Vision Pro headset was hailed as “the beginning of a new era of computing” by numerous technology media. With the rush of Apple fans around the world, the pre-sale took only 18 hours on the day it started. Within minutes, the inventory was gone.
However, it has only been a month since the pre-sale started. Various negative public opinions about Apple Vision Pro have emerged one after another. Even the most basic quality control guarantee has been strongly questioned by users.
According to feedback from netizens in the reddit community, there have been at least 3 cases of Apple Vision Pro front glass cracking for no reason. They all occurred without bumps or falls. It is not ruled out that more users will encounter similar problems. Condition.
Although Xiaolei did not find a more detailed chain of evidence on the Internet to confirm the specific cause of the cracks, as a product that has just been released, it is indeed difficult for consumers to have such a situation under the influence of non-human factors. who accept.
For a time, countless heartbroken Apple fans chose to apply for a no-reason return within the official 14-day trial period. A return survey by foreign media cult of mac shows that as of February 15, about 45% of users chose to return the purchased Vision Pro within the no-reason return period. The return rate is much higher than that of other Apple product line devices.
went from being hard to find for 100,000 yuan to a large number of returns. Vision Pro has completely fallen from the altar, and its reputation has reversed. Why is this?
Overnight, Vision Pro fell from the altar
1, the price is too high, and it is unaffordable.
Among the first batch of people in the world trying to try Vision Pro, there are professional AR/VR practitioners, 3D software developers, technology media/bloggers, as well as novices who have never used any head-mounted display equipment. Although Xiao Lei doesn’t know the specific proportions of various groups, I know that there must be many potential consumers among them who are directly dissuaded by the starting price of US$3,499.
From an industry perspective, the price of vision pro is 6-7 times that of similar product meta quest 3. Even many application developers and practitioners find it difficult to accept such a high price. Sebastian de with, the developer of the halide iphone camera app, said that although it is a cool technology, the apple vision pro will be returned due to its high price.
Judging from the feedback from various users on the pricing of Vision Pro, it is obviously not in line with the positioning of consumer-grade headsets in the minds of the public. If Apple wants to build Vision Pro into a second iPhone, then it is obviously unwise to actively use price to narrow the user range.
2. The equipment is heavy and the experience is poor.
If high pricing is a means of screening users, then poor experience is the direct cause of the wave of returns. Many users reported that they experienced visual fatigue, dizziness, headaches and other symptoms after wearing Vision Pro, and some even experienced rupture of blood vessels in the eyeballs. Due to the heavy weight of the device, wearing it for a long time can easily put pressure on the head, cervical spine, etc., causing discomfort.
These problems directly affect the user experience, which is a blow to many users who had previously thought of using Vision Pro to replace mobile phones, tablets, and PCs. Even if the use effect is not ideal, they may be able to tolerate it, but it will have a negative impact on their health, so there seems to be no other choice except returning it.
3. Lack of core applications and limited usage scenarios.
Before the pre-sale, Apple used a promotional video to show us many uses of Vision Pro. The publicity effect was outstanding and directly attracted many users who had never been exposed to head-mounted display devices before to participate in the pre-sale.
But after they purchased Vision Pro, they found that it seemed difficult to achieve 100% of the results presented in the promotional video. As mentioned above, wearing it for a long time can easily cause discomfort, which makes it difficult for users to fully experience a movie. TV drama. The attributes of productivity tools officially emphasized by
are not suitable for all users. Some YouTuber creators mentioned that the overall program runs very slowly during the use of Vision Pro, which cannot be compared with PC devices, and the color display is not accurate enough.Some programmers think that writing code with Vision Pro is torture for the eyes because the eye-tracking technology requires them to focus their eyes for a long time.
In addition to the above, the most critical problem of is that vision pro still lacks a killer application - a functional application that cannot be replaced by other devices.
vision pro is still a very niche product, and its success depends largely on support from third-party apps and services. If there is no application that can attract users to stay for a long time, according to the current dilemma that Vision Pro can neither experience audio-visual entertainment as desired nor be used for a long time in work scenarios, even if consumers do not return the product, Vision Pro will most likely become a new generation of dust-eating products.
4. When reselling is cold, scalpers stop losses in time.
According to past experience, Apple's first-generation products such as iPhone and Apple Watch are the favorites of scalpers: they have limited supply, a large user base, and a lot of room for speculation. They are well-known "hard currency" and can guarantee profits without losing money. Presumably most scalpers must have expected that the highly priced Vision Pro would not be easy to sell before pre-sale, but there are still many people who are taking risks and risking their stocking up.
Compared with previous stringent conditions for repairing mobile phones and recycling tablets, Apple’s Vision Pro return conditions this time are quite generous. As long as the headset and packaging are intact, Apple will directly recycle the product.
Faced with uncertain sales prospects, scalpers would rather return the goods to the original route and reduce risks than leaving the goods in their hands.
has not yet been launched in the Chinese market, but the future is worrying.
Currently, Vision Pro has not been officially released in the domestic market. Domestic users who can get started in advance either go to the United States to buy it in person or purchase it through scalpers. Previously, many domestic platforms used the method of purchasing at a higher price to sell futures. At the height of the popularity, the price was once raised to about 100,000 yuan. But now the purchase price has been falling, even almost falling below the official offering price. The fluctuations in the price of
fully reflect the domestic market's judgment on the prospects of vision pro. It has been previously reported that Vision Pro will be sold to China after Apple’s spring conference. Judging from the current situation, it seems difficult for Vision Pro to achieve ideal market performance in the Chinese market.
Most qualified domestic consumers have tried it in various ways. Even if you don’t have the conditions to buy directly, Chinese people can still experience it. Various vision pro experience stores have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and the experience prices range from tens to thousands of yuan. A store in Beijing has received more than 2,000 people during the two days of the Spring Festival alone, and the users came specifically to experience Vision Pro. After experiencing
, those who are interested will continue to pay attention, and those who are not interested will naturally not buy it, which is equivalent to filtering out some users.
In addition to consumer groups, Huaqiangbei, as one of the domestic digital trendsetters, has an extremely cold attitude towards Vision Pro this time. It is almost difficult to find headsets similar to Vision Pro for sale. Only a few stores sell headsets labeled "MR all-in-one". On the one hand, Huaqiangbei cannot compare with Apple’s Vision Pro at a technical level. On the other hand, the original owners are experiencing a wave of returns, and high imitation products will not be favored.
borrowed the words of the shop owner: "If I sell this alone, I will starve to death." Although
's words are straightforward, the domestic market's attitude towards Vision Pro is evident.
cannot escape the "curse of the first generation". Is there any hope for the second generation of vision pro? A report released by
market research organization IDC shows that China's ar market shipments are expected to reach 240,000 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 133.9%. Shipments are expected to continue to grow rapidly in 2024, with a growth rate of 101%. The market demand for
ar equipment has continued to grow in recent years, showing that people's expectations for related equipment are also getting higher and higher. But this does not mean that any head-mounted display device can be favored by domestic users. If it wants to become a phenomenal consumer electronics product, Vision Pro still has a lot to optimize.
Xiaolei analyzed the four major reasons for returning Vision Pro above. The real reason for these reasons is the psychological gap between consumers and other types of devices.It is undeniable that Vision Pro is at the ceiling level in terms of spatial display and can give users an excellent viewing experience. However, these surprises cannot cover up shortcomings such as weight, battery life, and single usage scenarios.
At present, Vision Pro still has not transcended the common difficulties of head-mounted display devices.
The failure of the first generation Vision Pro does not mean anything. As one of the most innovative technology companies, Apple does not lack the ability to continue iteration. If Apple can figure out the direction of subsequent improvements based on the feedback from the first batch of users, I believe the second-generation Vision Pro will be a better head-mounted display device.
As for how many generations of products are needed to reach the ideal form and become an industry benchmark product, Xiao Lei believes that this may be a long process.
