Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional worth: How does the Imaginative and prescient Professional headset value evaluate towards the remainder?
3 min read
The Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional appears to be like to be one among, if not the, most succesful AR/VR headsets round – no less than will probably be at launch in early 2024. Nevertheless, with spectacular tech comes not-so-impressive pricing, and that’s very true of the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional and its whopping $3,499 price ticket.
Now we’re not saying that VR headsets are low-cost – some, particularly people who connect with beefy gaming PCs can value effectively over £1000/$1000 – however that’s nonetheless fairly a soar to get to the value of the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
The HTC Vive Professional 2 is without doubt one of the priciest PC VR headsets round in 2023 and that’ll set you again £1,399/$1,249 with the controllers, base stations and all the pieces else you want. That’s beneath half the value of the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
The comparisons solely get extra stunning when narrowing the dialogue to standalone VR headsets just like the Quest 2 and extra premium choices just like the Meta Quest Professional and HTC Vive Elite XR. In truth, the latter two could possibly be thought of direct rivals to Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional with a give attention to AR in addition to VR with color passthrough capabilities.
Regardless of the similarity in design and focus, the Meta Quest Professional has a comparatively reasonably priced RRP of £999/$999, down from the preliminary £1,499/$1,499 price ticket when it launched in October 2022. That makes it 3.5x cheaper than the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. It’s a really comparable story with the £1,299/$1,099 HTC Vive Elite XR.
Once more, these have been thought of top-end Professional choices with value tags to match till this level.
However regardless of this reality, you’d nonetheless be capable to purchase two Vive Elite XRs and a Meta Quest Professional within the US and nonetheless have sufficient change left over to choose up a £299/$299 Meta Quest 2 as a substitute of shopping for the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
It’s comparisons like this that basically drill residence simply how costly and, primarily, unattainable, the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional will probably be to the on a regular basis shopper as soon as it’s launched in early 2024. It’ll possible be fodder for the wealthy and eager builders that need to get their apps onto the platform, however not a lot else.
It’s potential that that is the top-end model with Apple planning a extra reasonably priced headset to return additional down the road, doubtlessly with out the Professional moniker of the first-gen headset, however that’s very a lot hypothesis for now.
With all that stated, right here’s an entire breakdown of widespread VR/AR headset pricing from huge producers and the way they evaluate to the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional:
- Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional: $3,499
- HTC Vive Professional 2: £1,399/$1,249
- HTC Vive Elite XR: £1,299/$1,099
- Valve Index: £949/$999
- Meta Quest Professional: £999/$999
- Sony PlayStation VR 2: £529/$549
- Meta Quest 3 (launch in late 2023): $499
- HTC Vive Stream: £499/$499
- Meta Quest 2: £399/$399
