My Reality as a non-Pro

I had never put on any type of virtual reality headset other than Google Cardboard when it first came out, and I still was an Android user. That experience was a neat one-off where I looked around in a fake outer space scene and honestly do not remember much else. I let my kids play around, and they were bored with it along with me within five minutes.

I’m sure Apple’s Vision Pro headset will be a nicer experience than a cardboard box, rubber bands, and magnets that constituted the Google Cardboard. Furthermore, I’m not sure that it’s going to be much more exciting than the experience I had with the cheap Google product. The hardware will be better, but how much better of an experience can it create that will be made available to everyday users?

The first major knock on the hardware is the price. At $3,499 just to get started is too steep for me, not to mention that I will need to buy lenses because I have to wear glasses. I’m looking at this thing as a person who works a 9 to 5 in northeast Tennessee. I spend a lot of money on tech, but a device that only I am going to use by myself while isolating my family around me is not a device that I am particularly interested in.

This is honestly perfectly fine in my blurry eyes. Apple makes products that I do not want and have never had a desire to purchase. For example, I have Rokus on every TV in my house and do not have any desire to switch to AppleTV on any of my TVs.

Reviewers who have put on the headset have raved about how great the product is as far as the screen and the majority of the demo. For my use case, I am not convinced that I would want a computer on my face, no matter how great the experience is. As someone with four kids, I cannot imagine using this at any point when they are awake and at home with me, for obvious reasons. So that leaves me with late nights and early mornings. My early mornings are for workouts, and having all that weight while I’m sweating and moving around is a quick, fast no for me.

The only time I could imagine this being useful for me would be at night while watching TV or movies, which I do on my iPad Pro. I do think that the experience of laying in bed and watching a movie on the fantastic screens an inch from my eyes would be ideal. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a glasses wearer, which means that if I am in bed, I’m lying on my back to watch anything. If I lay on my side, my glasses get pushed into my head. I wonder if Apple’s headset would be comfortable to watch while lying on my side in bed?

So, is a multi-thousand-dollar headset worth a couple of hours at night? Maybe if money isn’t an issue. For a normal user like myself, I do not see this device being used by me as Apple intends and that is ok, I can take a pass on this technological advancement.