New insight from a top insider claims the optical inserts supplied by ZEISS for glasses wearers who want to buy Apple's Vision Pro headset could cost as much as $600 on top of its $3,499 price tag.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman tweeted overnight stating; "I would guess that the Zeiss prescription lenses for the Vision Pro will be at least $300-600 a pair, unless Apple is eating part of the cost given the already high price of the headset itself."
While Gurman has a track record of inside knowledge of Apple's plans, it seems that this piece of information is purely speculation at this stage.
Optical inserts
Apple unveiled Vision Pro at WWDC 2023 on Monday, confirming that "users with vision correction needs will use ZEISS Optical Inserts to ensure visual fidelity and eye tracking accuracy."
Those lenses are sold separately, and when approached for comment about the price of lenses, ZEISS said they would provide information closer to the time of launch, which isn't until early 2024.
Apple says that the inserts are needed "to ensure visual fidelity and eye tracking accuracy" suggesting that wearing glasses underneath the headset is simply not an option. Beyond using the display and tracking, the design and shape of the headset, at first glance, seems to preclude wearing glasses underneath it.
In contrast, a device like the Meta Quest comes with a glasses spacer that you can attach to the headset, providing more clearance between the screen and your head to make wearing glasses bearable, if not necessarily comfortable. Third parties do offer optical insert options for those headsets too, but it's unclear at this time whether any other company except ZEISS will be able to offer these inserts.
All of this is to say that Apple Vision Pro is very expensive, and glasses wearers could be asked to foot an even heftier bill to enjoy the experience. Apple's headset is a spatial computing device capable of content consumption, watching movies and TV shows, playing games, videoconferencing, and collaborating for work.
