Budget Apple Vision Pro faces tough trade-offs between price and features

At $3500, the Vision Pro isn’t a mass-market device. However, this may change with Apple’s next virtual reality headset.

Unlike most Apple devices, the Vision Pro has been unable to get the cash registers ringing. You can blame the hefty price tag of $3500 for this.

This is why Apple may have stalled Vision Pro 2 and decided to train its focus on a cheaper virtual reality headset.

According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, this upcoming virtual reality headset, Apple Vision, has been in the works for some time and has a codename “N107”.

He says that this stripped-down headset may come with multiple compromises to cut costs and may arrive “as early as the end of 2025.” 

One of the most significant trade-offs could be a narrower field of view compared to the original Vision Pro. He also suggests that Apple is “considering making the device reliant on a tethered Mac or iPhone.”

This will not only let the company shave off costs by not including processing units in the headsets but also make it more portable. That said, this means that the affordable Apple VR headset may not be a standalone device and could be similar to various smart glasses we’ve reviewed.

Even after all these strip-offs, the Apple Vision may be costly. Gurman feels that even at “$1,500, the product would cost three times as much as rival devices.”

Apple

He also says that while Apple focuses on the budget VR headset, it is still working on the Vision Pro successor. It is called “the N109 internally. It looks much like the current model but includes a faster processor and improvements to external cameras,” he adds.

He reiterated that Apple would continue making premium MR headsets. While the Vision Pro successor will look similar to the original Vision Pro and be lighter and more powerful, its release date has been moved back to the end of 2026, says Gurman.