Apple Vision Pro review with M5: Better than the first, and still alone
Apple Vision Pro review with M5: Better than the first, and still alone
By Todd Haselton | Published: 2025-10-29 12:00:00 | Source: The Verge
Apple’s Vision Pro remains the best VR headset ever, and there are plenty of moments when using it is magical. I love staring at 3D images, watching movies on huge screens, and working through a bunch of floating windows. But I noticed something strange after I wrote my first review in 2024: I took the headset off, put it back in its box, and never put it back on.
The new M5 remains a very good headphone, and is now a bit faster and more comfortable than its predecessor. But I still find it difficult to get back into it instead of just watching a movie on my iPhone or TV, or working directly from my Mac. It requires putting something on my head, above my eyes, and creating an environment I’m not yet used to.
This is the struggle that Apple and other companies will face trying to sell these devices: using it feels a bit isolating – like I’m isolating myself from the real world. It’s a neat device, but I can live without it.
$3499
Goodness
- It feels better balanced on your head
- Watching movies, working, and viewing immersive images are fun
- Battery life is slightly improved
The bad
- Very expensive
- Still alone inside
- The transit can still be blurry
Perhaps the single most noticeable upgrade to the Vision Pro this year is the addition of a new Dual Knit strap. A new belt, which also works with the original belt, is important. It adds a band across the top of your head and incorporates weights into the band behind it. This helps balance the headphone so it doesn’t feel front-heavy, a complaint many had with the First Edition and its single-band band. The entire setup is heavier than a hair, but the better balance on my head is easily worth the trade-off. The strap can be tightened in two places – on top of your head and at the back – using a single handle on the right side. Twist to tighten one strap, then pull and twist this handle to tighten the other strap. It’s a smart design.
As for the actual hardware, not much has changed: it’s the Vision Pro with an M5 processor inside. What does that mean in practice? Turns out the M5 allows for some quality of life upgrades. Apple is now allowing the micro-OLED displays inside to refresh faster, at a rate of 120Hz compared to a maximum of 100Hz in the first version. I don’t remember feeling like the screens in the M2 version were blurry when I scrolled through websites or photos or moved my head quickly across the Mac screen in the headset, but that should make that experience smoother if it bothers you.
Battery life is better thanks to the M5 too. I’ve streamed three episodes of to cut respectively before I received a 10 percent warning, which is within Apple’s promise of three hours of video playback. That comes down to two and a half hours of “regular use,” which means just browsing the web, playing in apps and watching some movies.
The tools are new since I last used the Vision Pro in 2024, though they’re not limited to the M5, and I like that I can clip them into specific spots around my house and leave them there. So, I have some photos and a playlist “hanging” on the wall in my living room, and it’s always there when I put my headphones back on.
Looking at photos remains one of my favorite uses of the Vision Pro. The M5 uses AI to turn ordinary photos into immersive images in just a few seconds – a bit faster than the M2, I’m told (I don’t have the original anymore for comparison). These immersive photos and videos, which you can also record with a headset or a modern iPhone, seem to come back to the present moment, bringing 3D people and scenes to life with a kind of colorful blur around them. And right now, it’s the closest I can get to my loved ones. Which has since died and I love seeing my daughter’s toes from a year ago in 3D.
There are a lot of “you have to see it to believe it” moments. It’s fun to watch Apple’s immersive videos of animals in the wild or helicopters flying over mountain peaks. I’m annoyed that the library is still small and the videos are all relatively short. Apple continues to add more clips and “shows” that serve as mini-documentaries, showing how a headset can make you feel transported to another world. But I would love a larger library of full-length feature films. Most of what’s there is more or less like demo content, and generally lasts anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes. It’s comfortable to sit inside a huge movie theater and watch it on a huge screen that sounds clear and real with high-quality spatial audio pumped into my ears. It’s a bit sad that there’s no one to share it with (unless you’re a family member who has enough dough for several of these things!)
The new chip also offers 10 percent more viewable pixels. This doesn’t mean there are more pixels on displays – they are the same – but rather it means that the chip can show more of them to your eyes at once. This is part of the preferred display used by headphones like the Vision Pro. The pixels your eyes focus on are sharp, while the system smoothly reduces quality in your surroundings. As a result, text on sites and apps became clearer, but it wasn’t a drastic change that I could discern.
The characters – the 3D versions of people introduced in the first release – look more detailed and alive than ever before. This makes the solitary feeling a little better! But the only people I was able to chat with were Apple employees at a press conference. My friends don’t have Vision Pros. They probably won’t even cost much less.
Then there’s the big promise of Vision Pro: that this is a new, serious, and productive way to work for professionals. You can really get work done with it. Most of the apps I needed were available in the App Store or worked well enough in the browser. I was able to see all my open apps very clearly, edit review text in Google Docs, Slack with colleagues, and more. It did this for several hours without eye strain. To the extent that Apple wanted to build a computer for your face, it did.
But I also don’t like using it for long periods. I started to feel a little afraid of having something so important on my face after a few hours. I’d also prefer to be able to make regular human movements, like rubbing the bridge of my nose when I’m feeling down, covering my eyes and combing my hair when I make a mistake, or walking around the room without something on my head.
I’d rather sit here on my couch with my dog next to me, writing this review and seeing the real world without a headset on my face. It might be a Vision Pro crossover Clear enough For a lot of things — and a little clearer thanks to the M5 — but I’ll always raise it to talk to someone face-to-face, answer the phone, pet my dog, or just walk around. To do anything, really.
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Kralis/The Verge
The new Vision Pro is fun and sometimes charming, just like the first version. But as Nilay Patel and I said in our first reviews at the time, it’s lonely out there. I want to share my experience and feel less like I’m in another world and more like I’m in this world.
Apple needs to give me a reason to keep coming back. Perhaps the company’s move towards live sports is one way to help with this. It will offer NBA games in 2026 that will make you feel like you are sitting on the court. But Apple needs a smaller, lighter product if it really wants to remove the friction between “I’ll watch this movie in Vision Pro” and “I’ll just use my Mac.” And I hope I look less stupid in this one too.
Photos by Amelia Holowaty Kralis/The Verge
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