Apple Reveals Pricing and Availability for Apple Vision Pro
The original iPhone was announced in San Francisco during CES week, so it is not at all surprising that the availability and additional pricing details on Apple's next new category product, the Apple Vision Pro, were released this morning. (This time it was just a press release; I didn’t need to leave Las Vegas for a day trip like I did back in 2007.) It's all good news: the base model will be slightly better equipped and significantly less expensive to customize with prescription lenses than might have been anticipated.
The exact sales process has not been disclosed, but Apple's retail store footprint gives the company a significant edge in launching an experiential product that requires a demo and a personalized fit. Advertising, YouTube videos, and big box retail stores can only go so far; if Meta, Samsung/Google, or others want to compete at the high end, they will need to address this piece of their go to market strategy.
The Apple Vision Pro goes on sale for $3499 in the U.S. (only for now) with pre-orders on January 19, and sales starting February 2. The base model comes with 256GB of storage; presumably there will be SKUs with 2x and 4x the storage at price bumps equivalent to Apple's other products. I expect that the more expensive/higher storage tier variants will actually be the most popular -- you don't want to run out of storage and limit what you can experience (3D movies and immersive entertainment are typically very large files).
The headset comes with two different strap options in the box, along with cabling and a battery. Additional batteries and cases are likely to be commonly purchased accessories.
Prescription ZEISS lens inserts will be available for just $150 (the price was not previously disclosed), which is quite reasonable for high quality lenses. Readers are available for $100. Zenni Optical offers $50 prescription inserts for Meta's Quest 3 but getting them is not part of the sales process, and those lenses and the Quest itself are at a completely different price segment of the market.
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