Here’s what it’s like to use Vision Pro guest mode if a friend has bought one

If you can’t afford or justify your own spatial computer, we learned last year that there would be a Vision Pro guest mode to you borrow someone else’s.

We discovered that Apple doesn’t exactly encourage this, as there are some fairly major gotchas, and a new video now gives an idea of what the experience is like …

The biggest problem we uncovered is that there’s no way to store guest settings for re-use later.

The main issue with Guest Mode is that it won’t store any settings from that session – and that includes calibration data. Every time a guest wants to use Vision Pro, the person will have to go through the process of eye tracking, hand scanning, and pairing ZEISS Optical Inserts.

Apple could let Vision Pro store multiple profiles with different calibration settings, but it won’t. While this makes sense for showing off your new toy to your friends, it ruins the experience of sharing the headset with someone else who lives with you. 

CNET’s Scott Stein let his colleague Bridget Carey try his, and they share the experience in a video.

The first issue is the fit.

Sharing headsets is always awkward because people don’t want to sweat other ones up, but here there’s a different fit. There are all different sizes of pieces inside and the bands are different, and you got the prescription eyewear.

There are also costs involved in making the headset fit more than one person.

Buying an extra light seal is about $200 if we have the same seal size, but we just want another cushion. These cushions are about $30 each. And the headbands, depending on which one you get, they’re each about a hundred dollars.

But Carey found the fit wasn’t an issue for a brief tryout.

That was cool. And I wasn’t feeling woozy even though it wasn’t a long time I was in it, nor was it my fit, but it was definitely comfortable enough for me to just dive in and get a good sense with it.

The bottom-line seems to be exactly as Apple intended: Two or more people can’t realistically share a single Vision Pro between them, but if you want to give your family and friends a taster of the experience, you can.

Watch the video over at CNET.

Photo: Apple