Apple Vision Pro teardown uncovers pixels the size of red blood cells

If you ask anyone who’s actually tried an Apple Vision Pro what the best feature is, they’ll likely call out the dual micro-OLED displays. These screens produce especially crisp visuals, and iFixit has taken it upon themselves to find out why. The publication conducted a teardown on the Apple Vision Pro with an emphasis on those glorious displays.

The big takeaway? The screens are incredibly pixel-dense, with 12,078,000 pixels smushed into 0.98 square inches. This means that each individual pixel is just 7.5 μm, which makes them roughly the size of a red blood cell. Yeah. The ones in our bodies right now.

This is much more dense than just about anything else out there. For instance, you can fit 54 Apple Vision Pro pixels inside of a single iPhone 15 Pro pixel. No wonder that dinosaur looks so real. The publication indicates that the micro-OLED displays are likely custom-made by Sony, based on various design decisions.

An important measurement with pixel density is PPI (pixels per inch) and the Vision Pro came in with a “stunning” 3,386 PPI. The iPhone 15 Pro boasts a PPI of 460. As astounding as these metrics are, Apple Vision Pro displays are still not 4K. 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of around 4,000 pixels, and so the Vision Pro misses the consumer UHD standard of 3,840 pixels wide by just a hair. However, this doesn’t really matter when the displays are like an inch from your retinas. After all, a standard 4K TV features a pixel density of around 140 PPI.

Another important data point here is PPD (pixels per degree), which takes into account how far you are from the screen and the overall angle. iFixit estimates that the Vision Pro has an average of 34 PPD. This is a very good number for something so close to the eye. As a comparison, the PlayStation VR2 has an average of 19 PPD and the Meta Quest 3 features an average of 25 PPD.

As for the infamous repairability score, iFixit awarded a provisional score of 4 for the Apple Vision Pro. This is brand-new technology, after all, which would make DIY repairs difficult even without Apple at the helm. The publication has yet to test various aspects of the headset for repairability, so the score will likely be updated in the near future.