This Gaudy, Golden Apple Vision Pro Will Only Set You Back $40K

With its new Vision Pro headset, Apple announced the onset of a new age of "spatial computing." Anyone who can afford to pay Apple $3,500 — and help it extend its market cap beyond the recent $3 trillion evaluation — can break free of the boundaries of fixed-size screens. That said, if you weren't already among the people who found the headset too expensive, an extremely limited edition of the Vision Pro with 18-karat gold accents will be available for roughly $39,900 sometime next year.

The Apple Vision Pro with golden accents — called "CVR Edition" — comes from Caviar, a company famous for special edition technology products laden with rare materials. The special edition Vision Pro is just one of Caviar's countless pompous offerings: including iPhones with actual pieces from the Titanic, golden AirPods, a broad range of Apple Watch upgrades, a special version of the Sony PlayStation 5 with 20 kg gold strapped to it for a ludicrous $500,000, and a lot more. For those who want a relatively more affordable display of prosperity, Caviar also makes gold-plated iPhone cases that set you off just by a few thousand dollars.

The CVR Edition takes the already premium Apple Vision Pro up by several notches by replacing the silver-colored chassis with one made of 18-karat gold. Inspired by Tom Ford flip-up glasses and Gucci ski masks, the 18k gold chassis is equipped with a flippable lid. 

As Caviar puts it, the objective is to enhance privacy by hiding EyeSight — a feature that projects users' eyes on the external display when they are engaged in augmented reality experiences or talking to someone in real life. Not that anyone who can afford to buy one or more of these experiences a scarcity of privacy anyway.

To ensure your headset is luxurious and comfortable simultaneously, Caviar is replacing the stock headband on the Vision Pro with a leather one. Material for this leather headband is supplied by Connolly, a company that delivers leather to the likes of Rolls-Royce and the British Royal Court. The same leather also wraps the cushions that go around your eyes, but Caviar does not clarify if it will upgrade the cushions to something more plush too.

Like most collector items and other things uber-luxury, Caviar will make a limited number of these gold-plated headsets. For now, it says there will be only 24 units manufactured. But given Caviar's history, we might see a fairly large pool of customizations and options with other materials, such as diamonds, carbon fiber, platinum, and more after this variant is made available in fall 2024. Understandably, this concept is based on images shared by Apple, and not an actual unit. Thus, we might see some changes to Caviar's design when the headset is widely available.

The extravagant use of gold is also expected to add considerable weight to the headset. While Apple hasn't revealed much about the Vision Pro's weight, initial reports suggest it may already be on the heavier side and too uncomfortable to be used for longer hours. That said, Apple already has a solution in mind — a band that goes above the head and will likely have to be bought separately. But the added price is obviously not a concern for anyone willing to shell out $40K for the golden Vision Pro.

Of course, none of these modifications will be covered under any warranty from Apple, but who cares when you can afford to buy a dozen Vision Pro headsets? You might as well just buy a regular one for actual use.