With Apple’s Vision Pro headphones struggling to sell in enough volume to justify an actual successor, the company has reportedly turned its attention to a cheaper model.
This certainly seems like a reasonable strategy. While there are a number of design reasons why headphones might not have the mass appeal of an iPhone or iPod—weight, comfort, and form factor to name just three—they all pale into insignificance compared to the $3,500 price tag.
It’s already been rumored that the upcoming headset may require connecting to a Mac or iPhone to reduce processing costs, but a new report in Korean publication The Elec hints at another way Apple could look to cut costs for a cheaper product.
According to the site, Apple has reached out to manufacturers of small OLED-on-Silicon (OLEDoS) panels that require units of 2.0 to 2.1 inches in size with a pixel density of 1,700 pixels per inch (PPI).
By comparison, the current model has 1.42-inch Sony OLEDoS panels with a pixel density of 3,386 PPI. That works out to a resolution of 3,660 x 3,200 per eye, and assuming the new panels share the same aspect ratio, that would mean a resolution up to around 2,600 x 2,300.
This would obviously lead to reduced image sharpness, which is a drawback for displays that are held too close to the eye. That said, 2,600 x 2,300 is still high compared to the competition, with Meta Quest 3 recording a per-eye resolution of 2,064 x 2,208 and Sony’s PSVR 2 at 2,000 x 2,040.
Elec points to LG and Samsung as potential partners for the new panels. While Samsung has a production line of OLED panels with color filters similar to those used by Apple in the Vision Pro, LG currently does not. However, the report adds that Samsung would prefer to steer Apple towards a slightly different technology that uses RGB pixels in the OLED panel for higher brightness levels.
With the Apple Vision Pro emphasizing the ‘Pro’ part of its name, it sounds like a cheaper headset might just be the Apple Vision. Lowering the resolution and ditching other Apple devices sound like two reasonable measures to keep the price down.
But with Meta’s $499 Quest 3 still a seventh of the Vision Pro’s price, Apple’s unlikely to ever be the value option — especially with a rumored cheaper version of Meta’s headset on the way.
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