An Apple Vision Pro has been tested to perfection – and you might be surprised by the results
The Apple Vision Pro comes with a hefty price tag, and you’d think anyone who bought one would be very careful not to break it. Well, that doesn’t apply to YouTuber Sam Kohl, who wore the headset horrifically destructive series of tests on his AppleTrack channel to see how much punishment the device can take before it breaks.
In the video, Kohl tried several (rather unscientific) tests, such as walking into walls and hitting doors with the headphones. After about twenty hits, Kohl noticed only a few minor scuffs, declaring himself “super impressed” with the headset’s durability.
However, after a few drops, Kohl noticed that the right speaker no longer worked. Then, after what the YouTuber described as an “extreme” drop test – the eighth drop the headset went through – the glass on the front finally cracked. Interestingly, Apple applied multiple layers of glass to the Vision Pro, and only the front broke in Kohl’s test. When he removed this broken panel, the underlying glass remained intact.
That suggests the Vision Pro is a lot more durable than you’d expect for something made of so much glass. The Vision Pro’s glass only cracked completely when dropped from a great height (as high as Kohl’s ceiling) and never shattered into thousands of pieces, but instead remained one mostly continuous piece of broken glass. It also withstood multiple drops and knocks against a wall, with only a few minor scuffs. Remarkably, the device still worked without the glass front panel.
Kohl also shared a few interesting tidbits. For starters, the magnetic connection that connects the light seal to the headset isn’t particularly strong, and the headset can come loose – and possibly fall to the ground – if you try to lift it with just the light seal. In addition, Kohl discovered that the Vision pro only alerts you when you are close to a wall in virtual reality (VR) mode, and not when you use passthrough augmented reality (AR). So pay attention to your surroundings when using AR!
The iFixit teardown
Kohl’s drop tests weren’t the only destructive process the Vision Pro has undergone recently. This weekend the repair experts from iFixit arrived Broken Apple’s device to reveal its insides and find out how repairable it really is.
The outlet noted that it was difficult to get into the Vision Pro because the glass panel on the front only came loose after “a lot of heat and time.” Inside was a small army of screws, tape and brackets holding a huge array of components in place. The whole process looked incredibly difficult.
Good, almost the whole process. The Vision Pro received some praise from iFixit for how easy it is to remove the battery and speakers, which only require a SIM card removal tool to loosen the connectors. However, that approval was somewhat diminished by Apple using its own jumbo Lightning connector instead of USB-C.
The headset didn’t get a repairability score because iFixit is still doing its full review, but it did get an initial verdict: “As far as repairability goes, it’s not great, but on the plus side, some of the connections are quite delightful.” That said, it will Most people probably wouldn’t want to repair it themselves, given how complicated it is inside.
But considering how durable the Vision Pro appears to be after AppleTrack’s testing, you might not need to repair it after all.