When Is Vision Pro Coming to the UK? And Does Anyone Care?!

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They tried, didn’t they? A day before the doors to CES in Las Vegas opened, Apple announced that Vision Pro would be available for pre-order in just two weeks, with customer deliveries starting at the beginning of February.

There are just a few problems I’d like to address – immediately.

Firstly, this is a US-only launch, with no word on when the rest of the world can get its greasy mitts on Apple’s bid for the next generation of computing. Secondly, interest in Vision Pro doesn’t appear to be what one would call ‘significant’. Thirdly, it puts Apple-centric reviewers like yours truly in a very tricky position.

I’m writing this on the eve of Vision Pro pre-order day. And there’s a lot to discuss.

Vision Pro’s US-only launch

We knew this – it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. When Apple unveiled Vision Pro at WWDC in June last year, they made it abundantly clear that this was going to be strictly a US-only launch.

There was no nod towards other territories or sniff of a timeline for when the mixed-reality headset might make its way across the Atlantic.

There could be numerous reasons for this. Apple may want to test the water on its home turf before unleashing Vision Pro on the world. The manufacturing process may simply not be capable at this moment in time of the scale required for a worldwide launch. There may even be region-specific regulatory stuff that needs sorting out.

Who knows.

All I know is that the only way anyone can get their hands on a Vision Pro headset in February is if they either live in the United States or are prepared to travel over there (although the latter comes with a bunch of complications, which I’ll get to later).

Word on the street about Vision Pro (isn’t great)

With the retail launch of Vision Pro imminent, you’d expect there to be a surge of interest in what is arguably Apple’s most important product launch in recent memory.

Not so. Front Page Tech’s Jon Prosser recently published a damning report on the performance of Vision Pro-related content that has been published in the wake of Apple’s January launch announcement.

Prosser notes that the top-performing video on Apple’s YouTube channel is the original Vision Pro launch video, published some seven months ago. At the time of writing, it has clocked up 59 million views, which is impressive even for a brand of Apple’s size – until you dig a little deeper.

As pointed out by Prosser, a sizeable chunk of those views will have been the result of a concerted – and, no doubt, very expensive – YouTube advertising campaign where the video in question was boosted by Apple. We’ll never know how many of those views were ‘purchased’ in that way, but the mere 960,000 views clocked up by Apple’s most recent Vision Pro video suggests it was probably quite a lot.

Prosser admits that you can’t measure the interest in a forthcoming product by totalling the number of views achieved by videos previewing it, but there’s a discussion to be had (or, not had, as it seems) when you undertake a quick search for ‘Vision Pro’ videos on YouTube.

The views aren’t that impressive. There are a few fifty and sixty thousands here and there, but those are from channels which typically pull in far larger numbers for big product launches.

It’s telling that Apple has seemingly delayed any form of meaningful review program until after the pre-order date. Those who have been hand-picked by the company to try out Vision Pro have clearly only been allowed to post still images of themselves wearing the headset with small pieces of editorial charting their experience.

Even that hasn’t quite worked, though. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in Apple’s PR plan for Vision Pro to have the world’s most influential tech reviewer focus intently on how heavy the device is.

“Damn this thing is heavy,” posted Marques Brownlee on X recently. “Also the typing experience is decent. There are some new cool apps to check out. But wow. So heavy.”

This only serves to justify my fears that Vision Pro is a big punt by Apple. Launching such an expensive and cumbersome mixed reality device in an era of AI and dwindling disposable income feels incredibly treacherous.

When is Vision Pro coming to the UK?

I live in the UK, and I find myself in an unusual position with Vision Pro. I can’t think of another Apple product launch in my history with the brand that has been reserved solely for the US market, with no word on when it might reach my country.

Despite the apparent lack of interest in Apple’s spatial computing headset, I’m pretty sure there are still a lot of people in the UK who want to get their hands on one. Arguably, it’s why you’re reading this web page right now.

As noted, Apple hasn’t offered any kind of glimpse into their release strategy for Vision Pro beyond the United States. That means we have to rely on rumours to try and make sense of their plans. The bad news is that there aren’t many rumours on this subject, but the good news is that the most recent one does come from a decent source.

Renowned market analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo recently noted that he expects Apple to launch Vision Pro internationally before WWDC. Apple’s developer conference takes place in June, therefore, if Kuo is right, Vision Pro’s global launch could come as soon as Q2.

This makes sense. For developers to get excited about Apple’s headset, they need as big a market as possible for their endeavours. Being limited to the US market – no matter how big that might be – will further add credence to Vision Pro residing very much in the testing phase for Apple. And no one wants that.

This brings me to my big Vision Pro conundrum.

My options for a Vision Pro review

I ran a poll on YouTube recently to find out if my audience wanted me to review Vision Pro. Of the 2,000 people who responded, 63% of them said, “yes please!”

This leaves me with two options. And I have no idea which one to choose.

The first is to head to the US, buy one, and bring it home. This sounds like an incredibly exciting adventure, I agree – but it would also be an incredibly expensive venture, which means the resulting video needs serious sponsor-backed funding and a shed load of work behind the scenes to make it happen.

It’s a big lift for my business, basically, and a bit of a punt in terms of how successful the video might be – particularly given the aforementioned poor performance of the Vision Pro content that’s out there right now.

The second option is to wait and hope that Ming-Chi Kuo’s predictions are correct. If Vision Pro is indeed heading the UK’s way before WWDC, I’m more than happy to hold fire until then. That would give the US market a chance to settle a little, and also give me a far greater steer on how the content might perform. It would also be a far less expensive video to make!

Over to you. What would you like me to do? Get involved below, please – I need your help!

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