Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrcwinn | Hacker News Reader

In no way is Quest 3 better than Apple Vision Pro for desktop work. I’ve used both. It’s not close.

(There are other critiques of AVP that might not make it the right choice, but desktop work experience isn’t one of them.)

View on HN

Wearing the AVP 3 days in a row for 30 minutes each day leaves me with neck pain that lasts another 3 days. It’s just too heavy for me and for a lot of others, even if the visual quality is very high the overall experience is very poor if it leaves me with a medical issue. I’m still impressed with some aspects and look forward to a lighter weight HMD from Apple but right now… can’t do it.

Research has repeatedly shown it’s less about the weight and more about it not being balanced properly. Yet they continue to insist on imbalanced VR systems so that it seems lighter and has less weight on the packaging (because otherwise you’d have to counterbalance the heavy display + battery).

Wait so if it’s about the balance and you need to add weight to get it to balance properly isn’t it also about the weight?

It’s about the imbalanced weight which is meaningfully different from total weight as you have 3axis involved. Reducing the weight won’t solve the pain problem from prolonged use but you frequently hear this complaint from customers that the headset is too heavy when in reality that’s not actually it. If you counterbalance it helps but most such techniques still only counterbalance front/back and not side to side. There are even extended battery packs that help with this which seems like a good albeit expensive compromise but I haven’t tried them. But still that’s only back/front and not side to side.

Well the AVP has a massive battery that contributes to the weight and adding it w/ a strap to the back to add balance did not help me. I tried back-mounted battery with a 3rd party head gear thingy which alone (no battery) makes the AVP more comfortable; with the battery strapped on the back it is more balanced and somewhat comfortable but just far too heavy for me.

I’m not saying total weight doesn’t matter at all. I don’t know the weight of the AVP setup. And as you not properly balancing helped. Also remember that I note that you’re laterally imbalanced even when you fix the front/back issue.

But it’s obvious that total weight does matter (eg a 1 ton weight would crush your spine) but below some threshold it’s more about weight distribution and balance than total weight.

Yes but by your definition then it's weight without balance and weight with balance.

The first one can't be fixed without removing weight.

The second one can be fixed by adding more weight with the total weight not being the cause of the problem but rather the distribution of the total weight.

I've only briefly used an AVP (used a friend's before he returned it), but I didn't really notice that much difference in screen quality between it and my Quest 3. That's really what I was hoping it'd excel at given the price, but the real killer for me was just the bulkiness/weight of it compared to other headsets. I can't see myself working in it for longer than maybe 30-45 min compared to the 6+ hours I've put in with virtual desktops in Quest 3/Vive.

I haven't tried AVP because of the price. But surely would love to.

Perhaps on macOS, but I'd be surprised if the AVP has the same experience for Linux/Windows/ChromeOS?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com