In his latest appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Apple Vision Pro is better than Quest 3 for watching movies.
Shortly after Apple Vision Pro released last year, Zuckerberg posted a three minute video in which he reviewed the headset and compared it to Quest 3.
In that video Zuckerberg stated that while he previously expected that Quest 3 would just offer better value than Vision Pro, after using it he now believes Quest 3 is outright “the better product, period”, because it’s “better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for”, and claimed he was actually surprised to discover this.
David Heaney
Now, almost a year later, Zuckerberg admitted to Rogan that there is “one” use case Apple Vision Pro is better for: watching movies. Here’s a transcript of the section of the episode where this was discussed:
Mark Zuckerberg:
“They shipped something for $3500 that I think is worse than the thing that we shipped for $300 or $400. So that clearly was not going to work very well.
Now look, they’re a good technology company. I think their second and third version will probably be better than their first version. I think the Vision Pro is one of their bigger swings at doing a new thing that they tried in a while, and I don’t want to give them too hard of a time on it because we do a lot of things where the first version isn’t that good, and you want to kind of judge the third version of it, but I mean, the v1 definitely did not hit it out of the park.”
Joe Rogan:
“I’ve heard it’s really good for watching movies.”Mark Zuckerberg:
“Well, the whole thing is it’s got a super sharp screen. So if you want to have an experience where you’re not moving around much in VR, you just want to have the sharpest screen, then for that one use case, I think the Vision Pro is better than Quest, which is our mixed reality headset.But in order to get to that, they had to make all these other tradeoffs, right? In order to have a super high resolution screen, they had to put in all this more compute in order to power the high res screen and then all that compute needed a bigger battery. So now the thing is really heavy. So now it’s uncomfortable to wear. And then because of the screen that they chose, as you move your head, which you would if you’re actually interacting, if you’re playing games, the image blurs a bit and that’s kind of annoying. So it’s actually worse for things where you’re moving around in. But if you’re going to sit, if you’re like on a flight, and you want to have a $3500 device that you use to watch videos, Vision Pro is better for that use case.”
Zuckerberg points to Apple Vision Pro’s ultra high resolution displays as the reason for this. Vision Pro’s displays have a resolution of 3660×3200 each, significantly higher than the 2064×2208 of Quest 3. And while Quest 3’s displays are LCD, Vision Pro’s are micro-OLED with high dynamic range (HDR).
But it’s arguable that this isn’t the only, or arguably even the primary, reason that Vision Pro is better for watching movies, especially on a flight. The bigger issue is content.
On visionOS you can download movies you have access to on Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and more, and you can rent or buy from a huge catalog of movies from Apple TV (formerly iTunes Store). Meanwhile, the only service with movie downloads on Quest is Amazon Prime Video, which it got in September.
Further, Disney+ and Apple TV offer hundreds of 3D movies, giving a stunning sense of depth without the drawbacks of 3D glasses. No such option officially exists on Quest.
David Heaney
Thus, while it would be relatively simple for Meta to launch a headset with 4K micro-OLED displays, as Samsung, Sony, and Play For Dream are doing, this alone wouldn’t be enough to match the Apple Vision Pro movie experience. To truly do this, Meta will have to forge further partnerships with the entertainment industry, including with Disney.
(It’s also notable, though, that neither company has yet convinced Netflix to release an app.)
