Having reviewed tech for various sites for over a decade, I’ve had a fair share of people accusing me of brand bias in the ever-entertaining and overly serious comments sections (Sony and Microsoft evangelists being the oddest of oddballs, in my experience).
Having worked in the industry for some time, my feeling is that accusations of bias are overstated. They fundamentally misunderstand the reviewers, who tend to just not feel as strongly about brands as the readers.
But even I think that if you’re looking for an unbiased review of Apple Vision Pro, you probably don’t want to go to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who would like it very much if you bought a Quest 3 headset. Or seven Quest 3s, as it would cost the same price.
Nonetheless, he’s posted his thoughts on Vision Pro on Instagram — another product he owns — and, surprise surprise, he’s not that keen on it.
“After using it, I don’t just think the Quest is the better value — I think the Quest is the better product, period,” he begins. “Different companies made different design decisions for the headsets, they have different strengths. But overall, Quest is better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for.”
Some of the points are fairer than others, you’ll be unsurprised to hear. The fact that Quest 3 is seven times cheaper than Vision Pro is just objectively true, as is that it’s 120g less in weight. It’s also fair to point out that while both have hand tracking, only Quest 3 has dedicated controllers, which work far better with certain applications (games, especially).
But other points should come with pretty heavy caveats, like highlighting the Quest 3’s substantially larger app library. That’s unsurprising given it’s had a five-year headstart: Vision Pro has only been out for two weeks, give it a chance!
Zuckerberg did have a couple of (caveated) nice words to say about Vision Pro. The high resolution is “very nice”, as is the eye tracking. The latter, he assures us, will be returning in future Quest models after only appearing on the poorly-selling Quest Pro so far.
Maybe those nice words will prevent Tim Cook from doing an Elon Musk and challenging Zuckerberg to a fight. But really, the Meta CEO should be hoping that Apple brings more people into virtual reality — after all, it’s likely the only way tech headwear can go mainstream and make his slightly creepy vision of the future an even creepier reality.
