The Apple I remember was a very litigious company, suing Samsung for every single thing from the radii of their phone corners to the shape of icons on the home screen. Cut to 2024, and we don’t have one but have TWO Apple Vision Pro-inspired gadgets. Samsung unveiled the Moohan headset at their keynote in January, and now vivo’s lifted the lid on its new MR device, the vivo Vision – an MR device that feels a little heavily inspired by Apple’s own headset from WWDC in 2023.
From the moment you lay eyes on it, the resemblance is uncanny. There’s the same sweeping glass front, wrapping around the face like a cyberpunk visor. The headband mimics the Apple solo loop with a ridged, adjustable design. Even the external battery puck, tethered by a cable to the left temple, echoes Apple’s approach almost to the millimeter. The only think I hope vivo doesn’t copy here is Apple’s eye-watering $3,400 price tag.
Designer: vivo
Of course, a convergence of hardware design isn’t new. The smartphone industry practically runs on it. But there’s something oddly direct about the vivo Vision. Even the name feels lifted—Vision. It’s not bad branding, just… familiar. And in a product category trying to define a future beyond the screen, it’s hard not to notice when that future looks a lot like something we already saw last year.
Apple’s Vision Pro set a high bar last year, and if you’re entering the MR arena in 2025, you may as well study the playbook that got the most applause. What vivo seems to be doing here is anchoring its device in something familiar before it defines what makes its own vision different. That’s not a bad move, especially when the MR category is still waiting for its iPhone moment—the point where things shift from intriguing to essential.
So far, vivo’s headset is still playing the mystery card. There are no confirmed specs yet—no word on resolution, field of view, processor, or refresh rate. What we do have is a glimpse of its hardware choices: a visor-style front shielded in glass, several front-facing and downward-pointing cameras (likely for passthrough and gesture tracking), and a two-button interface on the right temple. There’s also a crown-style dial, which may control volume, zoom, or spatial navigation, depending on the software.
And that brings us to the real question: what software, exactly? If vivo’s planning to run Android XR—the platform Google’s been quietly building as the backbone for spatial computing—it would slot the Vision right into the growing Android MR ecosystem. With Samsung’s Project Moohan headset expected later this year, the timing here gets interesting. vivo could be positioning itself as an early Android XR player, or it may be building something more proprietary. We’ve seen OEMs go both routes, and neither guarantees a smooth experience. The difference lies in how well the ecosystem supports it—and who shows up to build for it.
Design-wise, the vivo Vision does a lot to suggest it’s more than a prototype, even if it’s not quite ready for shelves yet. The overall finish looks polished, and the blue colorway adds a bit of personality to an otherwise familiar silhouette. Whether it’s intended for mass market release or more of a flagship concept to generate buzz, it’s clear vivo wants to be part of the larger MR conversation. And with big names like Meta, Apple, Google, and Samsung all in the room, the more voices in that conversation, the better.
Of course, styling alone won’t carry the Vision. Apple’s Vision Pro wasn’t just a headset—it was a platform wrapped in silicon muscle, running an M2 chip, backed by 16GB of RAM, and packing dual micro-OLED displays with eye-tracking and spatial audio. If vivo wants to stand toe-to-toe, it’ll need comparable specs and a frictionless experience to match. That’s the hard part—the part we haven’t seen yet.
Still, there’s something refreshingly direct about vivo’s approach. Instead of reinventing the headset form, they’ve leaned into what works. Now the question is whether they’ll bring enough under the hood to move the category forward. Hardware is the handshake; software is the conversation. And right now, we’re still waiting for vivo to say more than hello.
So no, the vivo Vision isn’t pretending to be radically different—and that’s fine. Sometimes, evolution starts by borrowing familiar shapes before carving out new ones. If the final product delivers a great experience and opens up the space for more accessible mixed reality, then who really minds if the crown looks a little familiar?
The post Vivo’s New Headset Basically Feels Like the Apple Vision Pro’s Android Doppelganger first appeared on Yanko Design.