Are you still using a Vision Pro? Owners split into daily power users and shelf-dwellers

A year-plus after launch, HN owners reported in. The honest answer: a minority wear it for hours daily as a private cinema and dev monitor; many have it in a case, untouched, because 10 minutes is the comfort limit.

In brief

The one use case everyone names is a giant private movie screen, especially while traveling. Almost no one cites a killer 'spatial' app.

The dealbreakers repeat: weight and neck fatigue, plus text that several owners call 'half-Retina' and unusable for real work.

The sharpest divide is owner-versus-owner on the exact same setup — a daily joy for one, a 10-minute novelty for the next.

The check-in

The Ask HN is a simple owner survey: more than a year after launch, are you still actually using your Vision Pro? The replies sorted cleanly into two camps, and the gap between them is the whole story.

The daily power users

A minority use it heavily, almost always as a private screen rather than for any "spatial computing" app.

"I use it every day, approx ~95% of the days since it launched over 2 years ago. Many hours a day. Far and away my biggest use-case is connecting it to my laptop for gigantic (private) movie theater-sized screen." — a daily user since launch

"Still using the AVP but not exclusively, about 3 hours a day, with a hardware Bluetooth keyboard. Mostly multiple safari windows … It's especially great when traveling." — a self-identified daily developer user

One owner even prefers it to a Quest Pro that now "gathers a lot of dust," and was "genuinely sad to see the project sunsetted" (on the AVP as a screen).

The shelf-dwellers

Just as many bought it and stopped, and the reason is almost always physical.

"having developed multiple apps on it … I have never been so happy to put a headset up on the shelf and never pull it out again … using as a spatial monitor was cool. for about 10min until my neck got tired of the added weight." — an owner who developed multiple Vision Pro apps

"Got mine on launch day. It's been sitting in the case for over a year. It's frankly just not comfortable to use for more than 10 minutes." — a launch-day owner

The split runs through identical hardware

The most striking thing is that the same use case lands oppositely for different people. Text fidelity is the fault line:

"It's literally half-Retina visual fidelity. I couldn't stand reading text on it for more than a few minutes." — asadotzler, on the display

"I bought the refreshed M5 version with the new headstrap … weight was just never an issue for me personally … For zoom calls, the persona thing is hilariously bad." — an M5 owner

Prescription inserts, the headstrap version, and battery wear (one owner's battery stopped lasting a full film within two months, with a $200 replacement) seem to decide which camp you land in. The consensus underneath both: rumors of Apple sunsetting the device are overblown given fresh visionOS work, but mass adoption waits for the day it weighs like glasses. For now the Vision Pro is the best private movie theater money can buy — and, for half its owners, the most expensive object in a closet.

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