Apple has announced an earlier-than-expected Vision Pro release date, right at the start of CES.

As we talked about in our 2023 retrospective, Apple Vision Pro was certainly the most talked about story of the year. And now we’ve learned that Apple is sticking true to its word of the headsets release in “early 2024.”

Apple today announced the Vision Pro release date will be February 2nd, and affirmed the eye-popping price of $3,500. However these dates are only for the U.S.; release dates in other countries have not been announced. In the U.S. the headset will be available both in Apple stores on at Apple.com.

Apple Vision Pro pre-orders will start on January 19th at 5AM PT.

The company also announced that Vision Pro will be equipped with 256GB of storage, and didn’t imply that any higher capacities would be available at this time.

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The headset will ship with the headstrap we’ve all seen in the marketing, plus an over-head strap for those that want to offset additional weight (after our hands-on we think that will be most people!). The headset will also include a Light Seal (eye-shroud), two Light Seal Cushions (facepads), a Vision Pro Cover for the front of the unit, polishing cloth, the external battery, USB-C charging cable, and USB-C power adapter.

Additionally, Apple has confirmed the price of the headset’s ZEISS optical inserts: $100 for ‘readers’ (off-the-shelf vision correction), and $150 for prescription-specific vision correction.

With a Vision Pro launch date less than a month away, how do you think Apple will influence the XR space? Let us know in the comments below.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • gothicvillas

    I’ve heard some lacklustre reviews about their latest iPhone and how Apple shares have nose dived.. Im wondering if Apple Vision will ensure the downslide trend even further?

  • Duane Aakre

    Could someone please explain to me why you would need corrective lenses for ‘readers’? Every other headset I’ve seen have everything focused at a distance of around six feet, which seems to beyond the range of ‘readers’.

    • Sean

      This is the first article that clarified it. “Off the shelf correction” most like distance correction that doesn’t account for astigmatism. Definitely would not need traditional readers for far sighted issues.

  • Dragon Marble

    I hope Apple realizes — as Meta does — that it has started a journey that requires long-term commitment. Don’t be the next ByteDance, or Microsoft, who cut and run. Don’t be the haft-hearted Sony either. Never mind the mystic Valve, who somehow inspires a following by doing nothing. If you want to do this, you need to be all in, and stick to it.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Funny, but Sony just presented another headset for creators.

    • Octogod

      Apple is known in the Tim Cook era for launching products and committing to them, only launching products/apps they will support in near perpetuity.

      A solid example is Apple Watch. The first version was awful. While all of the competitors bowed out of the market or swung for yearly reinvention, they pushed forward with incremental improvements. Never a reinvention, they tried to refine it. Today, the Apple Watch is kind of amazing, especially when you’re fully in the ecosystem.

      I expect the Vision Pro to be the same. It’s what makes Apple different: they don’t quit when things get tough.

  • XRC

    Apple don’t need to influence the XR space, the real action lies with the mass market

  • Stealth Ico

    me on my way to book the AVP demo knowing full well I can’t afford it and will just be wasting the retail worker’s time

    • Hussain X

      Nah, you won’t be wasting their time. You’ll be telling everyone how amazing it is, and the ones that can afford it will then go buy it.

      • david vincent

        Completly useless unless you are architect maybe.

  • Dragon Marble

    I hope Apple realizes that that’s just a small step, and nothing compared to the work ahead. There will be billions upon billions more to lose before “special computing” stops being a marketing stunt and becomes reality.

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    The U.S. government is preparing a big antitrust lawsuit against Apple – that’s why their shares dropped.

    • DIPPED.
      Slightly.
      Not “nosediving”.

  • Jlm70

    Tried it as well: IMHO it will be a revolution, on par to the web invention. Not joking. Not only for the AVP, but even for all of the other competitors that in short will come along with cheaper prices.
    The AVP is simply fenomenal. Full stop. Never tried anything that amazed me that much (and I try any innovative tech).
    But, other than productivity (super!), we need to create a new kind of entertainment in REAL 6DoF (degrees of freedom), not the fake stereoscopic content (like Avatar 2, tech of 1838…) or VR360 (=vomit): all of these techs, with no parallax, will always get you sick. And videogames have not the cinema quality we need.
    We need offline pre-rendered cinema-grade movie contents like the ones that are possible (now) with V-Nova PresenZ technology (try the free Construct VR demo on Steam). And if very soon we’ll have more PresenZ 6DoF contents, with real storyteling and production budget… wow!