Apple Vision Pro 2 could see its price slashed by $2,000, claims leaker

News
By published

But is a $1,500 price even plausible?

Apple Vision Pro on table
(Image credit: Future)

The Vision Pro isn’t even available outside the United States yet, but Apple reportedly has one eye on its successor in 2026. And according to one tipster, the company will have a pleasant surprise for those who balked at the first generation’s $3,500 price tag.

According to @Revegnus1 on X (formerly Twitter), “the retail price is between 1500 to 2500 dollars,” which would be a remarkable turnaround if true, suddenly putting the headset in high-end MacBook territory, cost-wise. 

That’s a big "if," however. Though the name ‘Revegnus’ may sound familiar to readers of the site, this isn’t the same @tech_reve X account that has proved accurate in the past. 

That was deactivated, and while the @Revegnus1 account claims to be the same person, it’s too early to tell if it will prove as accurate with its insights. That said, the old account did share a report making similar claims back in March.

Could the Vision Pro 2 really cost less?

While Apple does, of course, enjoy charging a premium for its best-selling products, in the case of the niche Vision Pro headset, it’s a negative. A $3,499 MSRP is clearly the biggest barrier preventing mixed reality from becoming the next iPhone, which is apparently Apple’s long-term aim. 

Indeed, the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple has slashed its shipment forecast for the headset to around 450,000 units — a fraction of the 232 million iPhones the company shipped in 2022 (or even the 11.6 million it managed in 2008 — its first full year). 

Still, technology does get cheaper over time. Samsung was able to slash the price of its Galaxy Z Flip foldable phone by nearly a third in just 18 months, and without the pressures of an annual upgrade cycle, we’re talking about a longer timeframe for Apple to reduce its costs on the Vision Pro.

All the same, you can’t just wish components into being cheaper, even if you’ve got Apple’s resources, and the parts that make Vision Pro tick are necessarily expensive. 

A breakdown of the cost of Vision Pro 1 suggests each headset costs $1,542 in materials, not including development, packaging or marketing. Even with some pretty heroic forecasts about the long-term pricing trends of components, getting a headset at the low end of Revegnus’ estimate seems like a stretch.

That leads to the possibility that Apple will square that circle with cheaper components than the first-generation, but even then we’ve recently heard that Apple is “flummoxed” as to how to reduce the costs with a possible ‘Vision SE’. 

Keeping a device ‘Pro’ while trying to lower the MSRP to consumers will be even more of a challenge, though Apple reportedly sees the dual Sony-made 4K micro-OLED displays as one area to make efficiencies on.

In short, it’s probably worth taking the $2,500 with a pinch of salt, and the $1,500 one with a whole shaker full. 

As the prospects of a cheaper Vision Pro in the near future seem dim, you may want to check the pre-owned market. The Verge found a bunch of mint-condition headsets that sold for between $2,575 and $3,348 within the first 84 days of launch. 

TOPICS
Alan Martin
Alan Martin

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.