What you need to know
- On Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he'd tried the Apple Vision Pro and compared the experience unfavorably to the Meta Quest 3.
- He called out the Vision Pro's flaws, like lack of controllers, wired battery, motion blur when moving, and smaller game selection.
- He also made fun of Apple fanboys while hinting that future Quest headsets will bring eye tracking back and could use a "neural interface."
Mark Zuckerberg did his best impression of a tech reviewer on Tuesday, posting on Instagram his thoughts on why his Meta Quest 3 is "better for the vast majority of things people use mixed reality for" than the Apple Vision Pro.
Despite the fact that people "assumed" the Vision Pro was better because of the $3,500 price tag — and despite "fanboys" who "get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple's going to be the leader in a new category" — Zuckerberg laid out a case for why the premium headset falls short.
He filmed his criticism using a Quest 3's mixed-reality cameras while claiming it has "high-quality passthrough just like Vision Pro." Of course, Apple's cameras use 6.5 megapixels instead of 4MP, giving the Vision Pro the advantage.
In the 3.5-minute video, Zuckerberg claimed to be "surprised" at the "trade-offs" Apple had to make to the "comfort and ergonomics" to achieve its epic 3660 x 3200 pixels per eye.
He noted that the Quest 3 weighs 120g less, ships without a wired battery pack, and doesn't struggle with "motion blur" when turning your head during passthrough, as the Vision Pro's micro-OLED display does. In each case, many independent Vision Pro reviews made the same complaints.
Of course, the Quest 3's passthrough has its own issues, specifically warping around moving objects.
Comparing the Apple Vision Pro vs. Meta Quest 3, Zuckerberg did praise some of the "really nice" features of the rival headset, such as the higher resolution and eye tracking. He then casually mentioned that the Quest Pro had eye-tracking sensors first and that they intend to "bring them back in the future."
It's unclear whether he's referring to the Quest 4 or the Quest Pro 2 here, but he evidently sees this as an area where he needs to compete with Apple in the future, after cutting the feature for the Quest 3 to keep it affordable.
At the same time, he followed up the faint praise by claiming that eye tracking is "not a perfect control system" and that you need a keyboard, controller, or "neural interface" for a better experience.
Before you get futuristic visions of Neuralink-style VR controls, we've heard this expression before: in February 2023, The Verge posted a leaked Meta roadmap for future devices, including a "neural interfaces watch" that tracks your hand movements for more accurate gesture controls and virtual keyboard tracking.
Essentially, Zuckerberg is saying that hand-tracked controls need more than just cameras to be accurate and convenient, making Apple's dependence on them premature. In theory, the Quest 4 would benefit from a wearable controller for better hand-tracking accuracy.
At the same time, he claims that the Quest 3's hand tracking is "a little more accurate" than the Vision Pro's already, which is hard to quantify.
Rounding out his combination Vision Pro roast and Quest 3 hype video, Zuckerberg noted how his headset has applications like fitness and VR gaming where the Vision Pro falls short, including YouTube VR and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Many high-profile apps like Netflix have snubbed the Apple Vision Pro, at least initially.
The VR wars have begun in earnest
After decades of console wars between Nintendo vs. Sega, Microsoft vs. Sony, and so on, Apple vs. Meta is the newest battleground in the VR space.
Mark Zuckerberg never felt the need to attack the Valve Index or PSVR 2, but the Apple Vision Pro and its "fanboys" struck a nerve. His video on Tuesday is full of cherry-picked data that ignores the Quest 3's own drawbacks — which triggered an infuriated response from our colleagues at iMore that plays right into Zuckerberg's stereotype.
The main takeaway is that Zuckerberg is challenging the Vision Pro directly, and that's wonderful news for both Quest fans and Vision Pro fans.
We called the Meta Quest 3 the "best VR headset you can buy" in our review last year. Then, the Apple Vision Pro launched with a more powerful M2 chip, more cameras, better resolution, and thousands of App Store apps that Meta will never get for its headset. That doesn't necessarily make it the new "best" headset, however.
Zuckerberg is right that gaming and fitness are the two most popular applications for virtual reality and that having dedicated controllers is better than having to constantly keep your hands in view to control the UI. Apple's headset is painfully expensive, with a more narrow use case of streaming spatial videos or working in the headset with virtual displays. For the everyday person, the Quest 3 is the better headset.
That being said, if Tim Cook decided to take a page out of Zuckerberg's book and roast the Quest 3 for three minutes, he'd have plenty to criticize: The uncomfortable cloth strap that Meta makes you pay extra to replace, the lenses that fog up easily, the short battery life, the updates slowing down games, the defective accessories, the lack of an EyeSight equivalent for people in the room to know you're looking at them, and so on.
Future Quest headsets will have to adapt to compete against Apple's strengths, and competition breeds improvement in the tech world. Meanwhile, Apple plans to launch cheaper mixed-reality headsets in the future to appeal to a wider audience, meaning it will have to focus more on gaming and fitness to succeed — challenging Meta where it's strongest.
