The announcement of the Vision Pro headset was certainly impressive, however as per Apple tradition rather poor in terms of technical specifications, partly because the device is not yet final and there are at least six months before it is available for sale, partly because the company does not often mention many of the technical specifications in the presentation phase.
In advertising materials, Apple stated that each micro-OLED display mounted exceeds 4K resolution, with a total of 23 million pixels. However, it does not refer to “ProMotion” nor does it mention the refresh rate of these panels, other than stating that the overall system latency is about 12 milliseconds. Fortunately, during a developer session, some details emerged.
An Apple official reported during the ‘Optimize app power and performance for spatial reality’ session that the display’s refresh rate is “usually 90 frames per second”. We will therefore be faced with a dynamic management of Hz. We know that on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro they reach 120 Hz and that 90Hz are generally considered the minimum recommended for virtual reality experiences, since it is a value high enough for the human brain, such as to make every animation realistic and convincing.
However, the Apple Vision Pro’s display system can actually run at a speed above 90Hz in some cases. For example, when watching cinematic content at 24 frames per second, the display will increase the refresh rate to 96Hz, thereby reducing the flickering effect of frames. This is similar to the way ProMotion displays on iPhone and iPad dynamically adapt to the content being viewed. Some virtual reality headsets currently on the market can go up to 144Hz, but of course no other headset can handle as many pixels as the Vision Pro.