Apple Vision Pro

1) It looks gawky, but it's packed with tech

Apple is somewhat prone to hyperbole, so you many eyes were rolled at its statement that the Vision Pro is "the most advanced personal electronics device ever". But when you break down what's inside, that claim could well be true – and at least partly explains that painful price tag.

The Vision Pro effectively gives each of your eyes a 4K screen, with 23 million pixels spread across the two panels. In front of those are three-element lenses, while around the edge of the headset are 12 cameras tracks your hand and eye movements for the controller-free operation.

Naturally, the Vision Pro needs a fair bit of processing grunt to handle all of this data, so it combines the M2 chip found in Apple's latest laptops with a new R1 chip, which handles the real-time processing and promises to eliminate the lag that's dogged similar headsets and made them difficult to use for extended periods. We're looking forward to finding out if that's the case.

2) Glasses wearers are invited to the party

Strapping a computer to your face doesn't sounds like an ideal setup for those of us who wear glasses, but Apple says spectacle wearers will also be invited to its spatial computing party.

Apple says it's teamed up with lens giant Zeiss to make some custom optical inserts that magnetically attach to the Vision Pro's lenses. Exactly how these will work isn't clear, but Apple says they support a range of vision correction strengths without compromising the quality of the display or the headset's eye-tracking performance.

Even so, these lenses sound like they could be a pricey optional extra, so we'll be keeping a close eye on that when the full pricing is likely announced later this year.

3) The Vision Pro has a modular, adjustable design

If we're going to start strapping computers to our faces, they better be comfortable – and fortunately Apple seems to have put a lot of effort into making sure the Vision Pro has a snug fit, whatever your face shape.

Rather disturbingly, Apple says its "studied thousands of heads" in order to get the full spectrum of head shapes, which led to a modular design that can apparently be tailored exactly to your particular face.

The Vision Pro's light seal apparently comes in a range of shapes and sizes (as does the headband), while flexible straps keep the audio pods close to your ears for good spatial audio. So while you might look ridiculous wearing Apple's headset, the level of comfort it offers means you probably won't care.

4) Its Digital Crown lets you turn reality on and off

We first saw the Digital Crown on the Apple Watch back in 2015 and now the little dial has reappeared on the Vision Pro – only this time it does something slightly different.

Rather than letting your cycle through menus, on Apple's headset the crown both pulls up the 'home' view (the familiar grid of app icons) and also rotates to control how immersed you are in a digital world.

5) The Vision Pro could replace your TV

Okay, this might not go down too well with your partner or roommates, but TV is definitely one of the best use cases for Apple's new headset.

You can have a 100-foot display hovering in the middle of your living room, complete with spatial audio, which looks like a a pretty incredible solo viewing experience (and certainly beats tiny airplane screens).

There's potential for new kinds of experiences here, too. Apple is promising 3D movies, along with over 100 Apple Arcade games available from day one. It also invited Disney to show off some new some pretty exciting Vision Pro ideas, including ones for National Geographic, watching sports and turning you into a Marvel superhero. Disney Plus will also be available on the headset at launch.