Apple Vision Pro Teardown by iFixit: ‘Virtual Nightmare’ [VIDEO]

Apple’s Vision Pro headset has received a teardown by the experts at iFixit, who just posted their video on Saturday afternoon.

iFixit describes the Vision Pro as “Apple’s most complex piece of hardware yet.” The intricate teardown, which required more than one video to capture fully, reveals the sophisticated technology and design challenges behind this much-anticipated device. The teardown shows a super densely-packed headset with tonnes of parts jammed together in a tight space with precision.

The iFixit team embarked on what they termed a “speedrun disassembly” to uncover the layers of technology that make the Vision Pro a standout piece of augmented reality (AR) hardware. Despite its impressive capabilities, the device’s pass-through video quality was critiqued for its resemblance to a “slightly laggy 2010s webcam,” highlighting a potential area for improvement in future iterations.

The teardown highlighted the Vision Pro’s unique design features, such as its external monitor that attempts to mimic eyes, and the highly customized face seal and headband, which underscore the device’s focus on a personalized user experience. However, this customization also limits the Vision Pro to a “single player experience,” according to iFixit.

Diving deeper into the hardware, iFixit encountered a series of challenges, including an intricate power cord mechanism, a hefty battery pack designed for comfort, and a knit band that showcases Apple’s textile engineering prowess. The device’s disassembly revealed a multi-layered construction, including a massive curved sheet of glass that posed a significant challenge for the team. You can see it cracked along the edges as part of the disassembly. Update: Actually, the glass was unscathed but it was just protective plastic film on the glass that got melted during the teardown.

One of the more fascinating discoveries was the display’s use of lenticular lenses to create a three-dimensional effect, a technique that, while effective, sacrifices some of the display’s resolution. This finding sheds light on the technical compromises necessary to achieve the Vision Pro’s immersive experience.

Despite the hurdles, including a complex array of screws, connectors, and brackets, iFixit’s teardown ultimately unveiled the intricate design and engineering that underpin the Vision Pro. From its innovative use of technology to enhance AR experiences to the challenges of maintaining such a complex device, the teardown offers a deep dive into what makes the Vision Pro both a marvel of modern technology and a daunting challenge for repair and maintenance. There’s no way you will be able to fix this yourself unless you have skills to make it happen.

As iFixit concludes, the Vision Pro teardown was a “virtual nightmare” of convoluted construction and finicky fasteners, but it also revealed the potential for future innovations in AR technology.

Check out the full video below: