Battery and Performance

Apple promises two hours of battery life for the Vision Pro. Many early reviewers have found that the actual battery life exceeds those expectations, offering enough juice to get you through an entire movie with power to spare. However, although you can plug the Vision Pro in to use it, that’s kind of awkward, so you may want to spring for a second battery pack if you plan to use it untethered for longer periods. That will set you back another $199, but in for a penny, in for a pound, considering we’re talking about a $3,500 headset.

Just keep in mind that there’s no reserve power in the Vision Pro, so you can’t “hot swap” batteries; disconnecting the battery will power the headset down entirely, requiring a complete reboot after you connect the new one.

The Vision Pro also stays on in a lower power mode for 24 hours after you take it off, letting it sync your data in the background so it’s ready to go when you put it back on. After that, it will power down automatically, requiring you to press and hold the top button for three seconds to turn it back on.

It will probably be a while before this becomes a problem, but keep in mind that the Vision Pro still uses a lithium-ion battery, so it’s subject to the same chemical aging problems as the batteries in Apple’s other devices — and Apple says that it will also throttle performance in the same way when the battery gets too old. The upside is that while the Vision Pro battery doesn’t come cheap, it’s much easier to replace than an iPhone battery.