Mark Zuckerberg tries out Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro and was ‘quite surprised’ that it was WORSE in every way than his $500 budget headset: ‘It’s not just a better price, it’s a better product’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Apple’s new Vision Pro headset in an Instagram video on Tuesday, calling the device inferior to the Quest 3 headset.

Zuckerberg said he recently got his hands on the rival $3,500 headset and, like many, expected it to be “higher quality” as it is several times more expensive than his device, which ranges from $500 for 128GB of storage to $650 for 512GB. GB of storage space.

However, after testing the Vision, he said he was “surprised” to find that in his opinion his device beat the Vision in every aspect, from the screen brightness and comfort to the software.

Apple officially launched the Vision Pro earlier this month for a starting price of $3,500, ranging to nearly $4,000 depending on memory space and add-ons like a $199 travel case and $99 optical inserts.

Apple’s Vision Pro headset launched earlier this month with a price tag of $3,500

“It seems like there are a lot of people who assumed Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and costs $3,000 more,” Zuckerberg said.

“But honestly, I’m quite surprised that Quest is so much better for the vast majority of things people use these headsets for, with that price difference.”

In the videoZuckerberg said the Quest is superior to the vision pro, specifying that it has a brighter screen, more immersive content, no wires, is lighter and is generally easier to use.

He did give two compliments to the Apple device, saying that the “eye-tracking feature is very nice” and that it has a “higher” resolution than the Quest – but that’s where the compliments ended.

“After using it (the Vision Pro), I not only think Quest is the better value, I think Quest is the better product period,” Zuckerberg said.

“Apple’s screen has a higher resolution which is very nice, but I was surprised by the many trade-offs they had to make in terms of device quality, comfort and ergonomics,” he added.

Zuckerberg compared the Vision Pro to Meta’s Quest 3 headset and said there was no comparison: Quest is the better model

Ahead of the Vision Pro’s release, Richard Howarth, Apple’s vice president of industrial design, acknowledged the device’s weight, but said VanityFair it consists of the lightest materials on earth: magnesium, carbon fiber and aluminum.

“There’s nothing we could have done to make it lighter or smaller,” he said, adding, “This is the state of the art.”

Zuckerberg strongly disagreed with this in his review, drastically contradicting the buzz that had been building around the Vision Pro headset since it was announced at TK last year.

“I know some fanboys get angry if anyone dares to question whether Apple will become the leader in a new category,” he said.

‘But the reality is that every computer generation has an open and a closed model. And yes, Apple’s closed model has won in mobile, but that is not always the case.’

Zuckerberg doesn’t appear to be alone in his opinion, as people have been flocking to Apple stores to return their Vision Pro headsets weeks after release.

One of the main reasons consumers want their money back is the Vision Pro’s bulky design, according to Farzad Mesbahi, a tech influencer on YouTube.

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The passthrough technology, which allows the wearer to view the real world while wearing the glasses, is not good, Mesbahi wrote, and the grainy screen makes it difficult to view a phone or read small font on a piece of paper .

Despite Apple CEO Tim Cook’s assurances that the Vision Pro is the “way of the future,” Zuckerberg said he believes Meta’s Quest is outperforming in almost every way.

“If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner, and in this next generation, Meta will be the open model. And I really want to make sure that the open model wins,” Zuckerberg said, adding, “Again, the future isn’t written yet.”