There have been a bunch of rumours over recent days about it and now it’s here – a second version of the Vision Pro headset with the latest M5 chip. It’s still called Apple Vision Pro rather than Apple Vision Pro 2, and rumours continue to swirl that Apple’s true next-gen Vision Pro will actually be more like a pair of smart glasses.
As well as increased power, the M5 also brings ‘extended battery life’ to the $3,499/£3,199 Apple headset. That’s perhaps the best thing about this upgrade; having used a Vision Pro for several months last year, I found battery life to be the main concern and hopefully that will be resolved in part here.
In Apple’s press release to announce the new headset, the company says that the “high-performance battery now supports up to two and a half hours of general use, and up to three hours of video playback, all on a single charge. And it’s easy to use Vision Pro for longer periods at home, at an office, or while commuting by connecting the battery to power.” The original Vision Pro would do around 2 hours of general use and 2.5 hours of video playback.
The headset now comes with an upgraded Dual Knit Band for a more comfortable fit. The original one was really comfortable at the back on the head, but you needed to tighten it significantly using the ‘Fit Dial’ to support the weighty headset at the front. This time the lower strap features “flexible fabric ribs embedded with tungsten inserts that provide a counterweight for additional comfort, balance, and stability”. So it should support the Vision Pro itself a lot better.
The Dual Knit Band comes in small, medium, and large sizes and once again you can use the Apple Store app to find the right size for you.
Naturally the latest Apple Vision Pro supports the newly-released visionOS 26 software which now features widgets, new Personas, an interactive Jupiter Environment, and Apple Intelligence.
There are now over 3000 specific Apple Vision Pro apps. Apple adds that new Apple Immersive titles from the Audi F1 Project, the BBC, HYBE, and Red Bull will launch in the coming months.
The Vision Pro does get a serious power up by utilising the 10 core M5 based on the latest 3nm manufacturing process. Previously, it was running the now outdated M2 (8 core) chip. There’s also a new 10 core graphics engine, as you’d expect, with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading for a lot more detail.
Apple says the new Vision Pro renders 10 percent more pixels on the micro-OLED displays compared to the previous generation, meaning your eyes see a sharper image with crisper text while there will be more detailed graphics elsewhere. And it’ll be a lot faster and smoother to navigate visionOS, too, which is a welcome change in my book.
The refresh rate can now hit 120Hz, reducing motion blur, and is smoother when used as a monitor for your Mac with Mac Virtual Display. The same R1 companion chip is used to process the input from the Vision Pro’s huge array of sensors – 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones.
The new Apple Vision Pro is available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage capacities. It’ll be available from 22 October. You can book a demo online at any Apple Store and I’d really recommend trying Vision Pro if you haven’t already.
You can pre-order Apple Vision Pro with the M5 chip and Dual Knit Band now in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UAE, the UK, and the U.S. It will be available for pre-order in China mainland and Singapore on Friday, 17 October.
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