Looking at the reviews of the Vision Pro online, you'll see that almost everyone agrees: the Vision Pro's display is excellent. When people talk about the visuals of a headset, they often use words like "clear", "smooth", and "4K". But what if I told you that the Apple headset actually has a lower effective resolution than the Quest 3?
I have to admit that from a purely perceptual standpoint, it feels like the Vision Pro has the best display of any standalone XR headset to date.
That makes sense, right? The Vision Pro has a monocular resolution of 11.7MP (3660 × 3200) (thanks to the hard work of iFixit), which means that it has a monocular pixel resolution of 3 4.5MP (2064 × 2208).
That should mean that the Vision Pro has 2.6x the resolution, right?
Despite the huge differences in the original pixels, there is now convincing evidence that the Quest 3 has a higher resolution than the Vision Pro thanks to the meticulous efforts of XR display expert Karl Guttag. This means that the combination of the Quest 3's display and lens can objectively address more detail than the Vision Pro.
This can be seen in the carefully calibrated lens photos of Guttag below, which show the same test images on both the Vision Pro and Quest 3.
It's clear that when comparing various font sizes, the Quest 3 shows sharper outlines. Even if the difference is small in the end, it's pretty incredible considering it has fewer pixels than the Vision Pro.
The lines under the label "3 2 1" are also a clear test of the ability to discriminate. As they get smaller, they need a larger resolution to appear as a line and not just a white blob. As we can see under the "1" on the Vision Pro, the lines are mostly undiscernible, while on the Quest 3, the line shape can still be seen roughly.
This is the result of each headset solving the resolution bottleneck on its own.
Since we can't discern the individual pixels seen through the lens, the Vision Pro is clearly limited by the lens, and a sharper lens means a sharper image.
On the other hand, there are limitations to the resolution of the Quest 3. The more pixels, the sharper the image will be because the lens is sharp enough to resolve more details.
Why do people look better on the Apple Vision Pro?
I don't know anyone who thinks the Quest 3's display looks terrible. You just don't hear the same compliments compared to the Vision Pro. So what is the reason? Is this just Apple fans at work? I really don't think so.
While this is a major factor, we believe that "good-looking images" are more than just absolute resolution.
Based on the experience of using both headsets, the biggest factor in the Vision Pro's perception that the display is better is the content displayed on the display.
If the display contains less information than can be parsed, it doesn't matter how high the resolution of the lens and display is.
On the Vision Pro, Apple has done an excellent job of matching almost every low-level interface to the headset resolution.
Each panel, window, icon, and letter is rendered using vector graphics, which have "infinite" clarity and can be rendered clearly no matter how close or far away they are. This means that these graphics almost always make the most of the number of pixels available to render them.
In addition, the default virtual environment is captured and rendered with very high fidelity and consistently matches the headset's resolving capabilities.
In the browser, most web elements, such as buttons and fonts, are faithfully rendered as vector objects and remain crisp regardless of distance or zoom level.
Apple also takes care to avoid situations where users scale text or other elements too small (which will make them difficult to read without a higher resolution).
There is a limit to scaling the size of a window, if you shrink a window very small, the window will automatically resize to the optimal size when you let go. Grab a window and move it away from you, and the system will automatically scale the window at the same time, making sure that the window becomes larger, proportional to the distance you moved the window. This means that text and other elements in the window are visually optimally sized, even if they are farther apart.
There is no doubt that Apple was able to achieve this extra fidelity thanks to the headset's powerful M2 processor and the use of dynamic foveated rendering, which focuses only where the user is looking.
In the case of the Quest 3, the interface is primarily rendered using raster (rather than vector) graphics, including fonts. This means that they only have the best clarity at a specific distance and angle. If you're too close to them, you'll see noticeable pixelation, and if you're too far away from them, you'll be more prone to aliasing (which makes the text look a bit jagged or flickering).
The default virtual environment on your Quest 3 doesn't match the headset resolution. It's easy to spot the low-resolution textures used throughout the environment (especially in the skybox that composes the distant background), often colliding with certain textures and geometry from the same experience, which are actually very sharp. Aliasing is also noticeable, making the edges of objects look jagged.
In the browser, web pages are rendered as textures and then placed on virtual displays, effectively converting all vector web graphics into raster graphics that look less crisp or less scaled at different distances and angles from the screen.
Ultimately, all these small details add up to make the image look less than expected and can't match the impressive resolution of the Quest 3.
It's not just clarity
The clarity of the content isn't the only thing that makes people feel like one image "looks better" than another. Factors such as color saturation, contrast, brightness, and frame rate can have a significant impact. Even high-quality sound can make one image feel like it's of higher quality than another.
With an OLED HDR display, the Apple Vision Pro is able to display richer colors at higher peak brightness, which further makes the headset's image feel "better" than the Quest 3. Thanks to native streaming apps like Apple TV, Disney+, and HBO Max, it's actually easier to find high-quality video content optimized for Apple's headset, whereas the Quest 3 simply doesn't have easy access to high-quality video content.
Although the Quest 3's maximum refresh rate (120Hz) is actually higher than that of the Apple Vision Pro (100Hz), very few apps run at this refresh rate on the headset. Few Quest 3 apps even reach the 90Hz mode of the Quest 3, while the Vision Pro app usually runs at 90Hz.
It's also common to see frame stuttering on the Quest 3, which makes the motion inside the headset look like it's skipping a beat. The Vision Pro, on the other hand, has an incredibly stable refresh rate with hardly any stuttering.
What does it all mean
Again, this illustrates that paper specs don't always tell the story of the actual experience. Human perception is too complex to simply attribute the perceived quality of a display to its pixel count.
In addition, all the resolutions of the Quest 3 come with a lot of overhead. Meta's next-generation headset may have the same combination of display and lenses, but with more powerful features (and more careful optimization), it can deliver an average sharper image.