Apple’s 2025 report card - Vision Pro

This is the fourth in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s 2025 across their major product lines. You can also read my Vision Pro 2024 and 2023 report cards.

Vision Pro, gen 2

I'm going to give myself a round of applause here, because absolutely no one this time last year was expecting new Vision Pro hardware in 2025, except me.

I would be positively shocked if I’m writing my 2025 report card a year from now and the current Vision Pro is still in stores and selling for $3,499.

Well, I got it right, as we have a new Vision Pro on store shelves now.

Of course, this upgrade was about as unexciting as it could have possibly been. Effectively, the only change here is to the processor, which jumped three generations from the M2 to the M5. Apple also advertised some benefits to display clarity and refresh rate, but the display hardware remained exactly the same, and the M5 just seems to have been able to push that display a little harder.

I think overall it's good that Apple updated the Vision Pro, but I think even the product's most ardent supporters would admit this wasn't a super compelling upgrade. I know these people exist, but I literally don't know anybody personally who bought the original Vision Pro, loved it, and has upgraded to the M5 edition. There's just not enough value there. This was also made worse by the fact there was no trade-in program for owners of the original model. If you are a day one owner of the original Vision Pro and you want to get the second model, you got to pay full price, there's absolutely no trade-in. If I had to guess, it's likely because the resale market for this product is so anemic that even Apple doesn't want them back because they can't resell them for any reasonable amount.

Overall score - D

Is it too sensationalist to say this has been a terrible year for the Vision Pro? I guess it's been a fine year for people who already like it, but for a product that's only two years old and which has not proven to be remotely successful in the market, I feel like it made zero progress this year. This is a product that should be finding its stride. It should be a place where we see new and innovative software released that gets people on board. It should be a playground for developers to find new and interesting solutions to problems that could not be solved with 2D screen-based computing platforms. We've seen none of this in 2025. There's positively no energy around this product and no interest from the general public that I can see.

Let's look at this another way. Can you name a single app that released for the Vision Pro this year? Can you name a single moment where the Vision Pro broke out of its diehard fans and got other people excited about it? I can't. Maybe you're thinking about that Marvel What If… game, but no, that came out in mid 2024. Maybe the television app from Sandwich? Nope, that was February 2024. Maybe it's that Lapz F1 app that was based on some pretty cool concept videos? Nope, that never even released. Their last updates on the blog were in November 2024, and you can no longer join the TestFlight at all. Apple's Vision Pro app of the year was Explore POV, which appears to be a collection of 3D videos from beautiful places around the world. I guess that's something, but I don't think that's a ticket to mainstream success anytime soon, and to be fair, also launched in early 2024.

I still think spatial videos are kinda cool, but even those have lost their luster for me. Last year, every time a new spatial video came out, I would charge up the Vision Pro and watch it, no matter the subject matter. In 2025, I can't be bothered unless it's something I find particularly interesting. The Metallica and MotoGP ones were pretty cool, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Movies are a tough one too. I liked watching movies on this last year, but I think I watched a grand total of 2 on it in 2025 (and that's not a lot considering I watched 100 movies this year). I won't name names, they can do their own updates, but I know for a fact that several people who were high on this for watching movies last year have also basically stopped using it for that as well.

visionOS 26 released in the fall, with widgets and controller support, which are nice. As we‘ll explore more below, the OS is not the problem, and it’s continued to improve. Shout out to the dev teams working on this.

I know some Vision Pro fans will be reading this and might be upset, and I really don't want to take anything away from those who enjoy the product as it is. My point is that if the Vision Pro is only ever going to be a product made for a small slice of relatively wealthy VR enthusiasts, then that's fine. If this is meant to appeal to a wider audience, then Apple made zero progress towards making that a reality in 2025.

What I want/expect in 2026

It’s always tough to set expectations for the Vision Pro because, honestly, I feel like I have to be vague. I really don't have a clear vision of what I even want from this product or what I think will help it go mainstream. I literally can't think of anything Apple could do to make me start using mine on a regular basis, and I certainly don't know what use case is going to get people buying a $3,500 VR headset in any sort of mainstream capacity.

In the product world, we often talk about the MVP, or minimally viable product. This is usually a little rough around the edges, but it exists to prove whether there's a good market fit for the thing you're making. Once you prove people want it, you invest in polishing the experience. When I look at the Vision Pro, I feel like we’ve done the inverse of that. People often complement how nicely made VisionOS is, but I’d argue maybe that's part of its downfall. It's incredibly well thought out and well implemented for a thing that doesn't solve problems or desires that most people actually have.

So with that in mind, my broad hope for the Vision Pro in 2026 is to see some sort of software experience that can only happen in virtual reality, and which I—and a decent chunk of the rest of the world—find compelling. Yeah, that's not very specific. And yeah, I'm offloading figuring out what that thing is to other people, but I honestly don't know what it is. Speaking for myself, I've spent all of 2025 identifying problems I have with the computers in my life and building solutions to those problems. Personally, none of the problems I currently have are solved by a virtual reality headset. What I'm craving is something that wins me over.

Additionally, and I know this is a hard one to solve, but I continue to believe that a fundamental problem with the Vision Pro is its price. At $3,500 or more, it is simply a product that too few people could purchase, even if they loved the idea of it and desperately wanted one. You can make the product twice as good in every spec, and I still don't think it would move the needle much because the raw cost is simply too much for most people to stomach.

Frankly, at the amounts we're talking about, shaving even $1,000 off the price might not be enough to move the needle meaningfully. We really need to get down to a place where this is closer to a $999 starting price. Unfortunately, everything we know from the rumor mill is that a product like that is nowhere close to happening. I guess my realistic hope for 2026 is that the M5 Vision Pro gets some sort of permanent price drop. $2,999 isn't great, but it would be something to move it in the right direction.

As for hardware predictions, my honest prediction is that nothing changes, and the M5 Vision Pro remains the only product in the lineup and remains at the same price. If there is new hardware, the boring safe bet is that it's going to be an M6 version of the current product. But I think there's a sliver of a chance that will get some sort of cheaper model, either the more affordable Vision Pro (or Vision Air?) is closer to reality than we think, or they've made serious progress towards a more Meta Ray-Ban-like product that gets announced before the end of the year.

Tune in tomorrow for the final in the series, and thank you for reading Birchtree through 2025!