The Apple Vision Pro’s laminated glass doesn’t break, but scratches easily

Apple‘s $3,500 ‘spatial computing‘ platform, the Apple Vision Pro, comes with a laminated glass exterior that covers the front. Notably, this glass has a plastic layer on the outer surface of the device, unlike cars where the plastic layer rests inside. This laminated glass is the lens cover for most of the cameras, through which you view the world. Any scratch in front of the lenses will mean a significant hit in your vision while wearing the Apple Vision Pro.

The front glass (or plastic) of the Apple Vision Pro is susceptible to scratches with simple day-to-day uses

The Vision Pro has gone through a durability test from famous YouTube creator Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything. He notes that the front glass starts scratching significantly at level 3 on the Mohs scale of hardness. If you aren’t familiar, most smartphones today “scratches at level 6 with deeper grooves at level 7.”

Surprisingly, the weirdly expensive Apple Vision Pro is a significant downgrade on this front. The only recent product category susceptible to this level of scratches is the foldable phone category. Those folding devices have to have a soft plastic screen in order to fold but a plastic material on the solid exterior of the Vision Pro looks a bit confusing at first.

However, it turns out that Apple was on to something while choosing plastic for the exterior. Notably, the Vision Pro is heavy ( nearly 600 – 650 grams) and an accidental drop from even waist height means significant impact.

While susceptible to scratches, the laminated glass is really hard to break. AppleTrack dared to drop the Apple Vision Pro intentionally, to test out its resilience. Surprisingly, the exterior glass-plastic layer survived until the test height increased up to 12 feet (the ceiling of the room). While dropped on a flat surface, this device is likely to survive in most cases.

So how do you protect the laminated glass from getting scratched?

Always carry and store the Vision Pro with the protective cover for the front which comes in the box. The front glass (or plastic) catches a lot of fingerprints. Well, be careful when cleaning the fingerprints, as the plastic surface will do very differently than the ‘Ceramic Shield’ on your iPhone does.

Apple recommends you use its microfiber-based polishing cloth for this purpose for a reason. The same goes for the lenses through which you see the incredible micro OLED displays. Apple notes “Wipe the optical displays with a clean, dry microfiber cloth – like your included Apple Vision Pro polishing cloth”