Summary
Mixed reality took a massive leap forward in 2024, with Apple making its grand entrance into the mixed reality space through the Vision Pro, while Meta refined its approach with the Quest 3. Let’s compare these cutting-edge headsets in all the ways that really matter.
See (and Feel) the Difference
Apple’s Vision Pro showcases the company’s premium design language with a curved glass front panel and aluminum frame, paired with soft fabric elements that make it feel more like a piece of luxury eyewear than traditional tech. The Quest 3, while significantly more refined than its predecessors, maintains a more conventional VR headset appearance with its plastic construction and matte finish.
Weight and comfort present interesting trade-offs between the two devices. The Vision Pro tips the scales at approximately 1.3-1.4 pounds (varying slightly based on your choice of light seal and headband), while the Quest 3 comes in lighter at 1.1 pounds. This difference becomes more noticeable during extended sessions, though both devices distribute their weight differently.
The Vision Pro offers two wear options: the Solo Knit Band, which wraps around your head like a sweatband, and the Dual Loop Band, which adds an over-head strap for better weight distribution. The Quest 3 ships with a simple elastic strap, but an optionalElite Strapupgrade ($69.99) offers improved support. The Elite Strap can also be upgraded to include abuilt-in battery pack($129.99), mounted at the rear for better balance and longer playtime.
One of the Vision Pro’s most distinctive features is its outward-facing display, which shows a rendering of your eyes to others while you’re wearing the device. This “EyeSight” feature aims to make social interactions less awkward when wearing the headset. The Quest 3 doesn’t offer anything similar, keeping its front panel focused on housing its cameras and sensors.
Both devices handle visual passthrough differently. The Vision Pro uses high-resolution cameras to create an incredibly detailed view of your surroundings, with minimal latency that helps prevent motion sickness. The Quest 3’s color passthrough, while vastly improved from the Quest 2 with 10 times the resolution, still shows a slight delay and lower fidelity compared to the Vision Pro. Fortunately, both devices offer optional prescription lenses, ensuring everyone can enjoy each device equally.
Performance and Processing
The Vision Pro is powered by Apple’s M2 chip paired with a dedicated R1 processor for handling sensor input, delivering desktop-class performance for productivity applications. The Quest 3’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor, while less powerful on paper, is optimized for VR gaming and proves more than capable of handling its intended workload.
Battery life reveals another key difference: the Vision Pro manages 2-2.5 hours on a charge and requires an external battery pack connection, while the Quest 3 typically lasts 2.5-3 hours and can be extended with the Elite Strap with Battery upgrade.
Augment Your Vision
The AR experience is where these devices truly diverge in their approach. Apple’s Vision Pro introduces visionOS, a completely new operating system built around the concept of “spatial computing.” This system allows windows and apps to exist as physical objects in your space, with an interface that feels more like manipulating real objects than traditional computing.
The Vision Pro’s control scheme relies entirely on a combination of eye tracking and hand gestures. Looking at an element selects it, and pinching your fingers together activates it—no controllers required. While this creates an incredibly natural interaction method, it does come with a learning curve and occasional precision challenges.
The Quest 3 takes a more flexible approach to input, offering both controller-based and hand-tracking options. The included Touch Plus controllers provide precise haptic feedback and physical buttons, which many users find more reliable for gaming and detailed interactions. The Quest 3’s hand tracking has improved significantly but still feels more suited to casual interactions rather than primary input.
App windows and virtual screens behave differently on each device. The Vision Pro can display multiple 4K HDR windows simultaneously, letting you arrange them freely in your space with unlimited virtual screen real estate. The Quest 3’s mixed reality interface, while functional, focuses more on specific apps and experiences rather than a complete computing environment.
Virtually Incomparable
When it comes to pure VR experiences, both headsets offer impressive specifications but target different use cases. The Vision Pro features micro-OLED technology delivering a combined 23 million pixels across both eyes, with each eye enjoying a resolution equivalent to a 4K display. This makes text incredibly sharp and enables professional applications like 3D modeling andvirtual workspaces.
The Quest 3’s LCD delivers a resolution of 2064 x 2208 per eye, complemented by a 120Hz refresh rate—a level above the Vision Pro’s 90Hz. While the Vision Pro delivers a higher resolution invaluable for productivity, the Quest 3’s display provesmore than adequatefor gaming, with a higher refresh rate providing noticeably smoother motion.
The content ecosystem represents another major differentiation point. Quest 3 benefits from Meta’s established VR marketplace, featuring thousands of games and applications. It also offers compatibility with Steam VR when connected to a gaming PC, opening up an even larger library of content. The Vision Pro launches with access to the visionOS App Store, plus compatibility with many iPad and iPhone apps, though its gaming library is initially more limited.
The Price Is… Different
Arguably the greatest difference between these devices is their retail price. The Vision Pro starts at an eye-popping $3,499, positioning it as a premium device for early adopters. This base model includes 256GB of storage—just half of the 512GB offered by the Quest 3, which saw its price recently reduced to just $499.99.
The Vision Pro can be upgraded to 512GB or even 1TB of storage, while the 512GB Quest 3 is now the only option since the recent discontinuation of the 128GB model. Still, at a price of merely aseventhof the Vision Pro, it’s hard to find much fault in Meta’s strategy for Quest 3.
Which One Should You Choose?
It’s clear that the Vision Pro excels as a premium productivity tool and streaming device, and offers the seamless integration we’ve all come to expect with products in the Apple ecosystem. Its iOS-like interface and high-resolution passthrough make it ideal for those looking to replace traditional monitors or work in mixed reality environments. However, there are some clear signs of it being a first-generation device, and its price makes even the word “premium” feel like an understatement.
Meta Quest 3
Discover Meta Quest 3: the ultimate VR headset with cutting-edge performance, stunning visuals, and an all-in-one design. Explore immersive games, apps, and experiences like never before.
The Quest 3 provides an excellent balance of mixed and virtual reality experiences at a price point that’s far more accessible than what its competition can offer. Meta’s established content library, combined with Quest 3 being a device that’s clearly designed with gaming in mind, make it an attractive option for those seeking a new or enhanced gaming experience, while it’s just strong enough in other areas to tempt those who are curious about VR or MR technology. It’s not perfect by any means, but that’s exactly the expectation set by its price.
Apple Vision Pro
The question isn’t necessarily which device is better—when it comes to performance, the Vision Pro is the clear winner—but whether the Vision Pro offers features worth paying at least seven times more to experience. Those features are truly impressive, from the incredible camera and display technology to the “it just works” software experience that (in my experience) only an Apple product can consistently provide. However, when looking objectively at the experiences casual users will have with either device, the differences between the two become relatively minimal. So it seems reasonable that most will answer it with a confident “no,” making Quest 3 the resounding choice for the majority.
Regardless of what you choose, both devices represent massive steps forward for mixed reality, even as they approach the market from different angles. The Vision Pro showcases what’s possible at the premium end of the spectrum, while Quest 3 demonstrates how augmented and virtual reality can be made accessible to a broader audience.
As more applications and experiences are created for both platforms, it stands to reason that more consumers will want to give mixed reality a chance, creating greater demand for devices like the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3. No matter which device you choose, this new reality has an incredibly bright future.
