I’ve spent the last two months working in mixed reality for at least half my day. Not because I think it’s the future of work, but because enough companies are now deploying MR headsets as workspace tools that I wanted to understand whether it’s genuinely useful or just tech people justifying expensive purchases.

The short answer: it’s better than I expected, worse than the marketing claims, and weirdly dependent on what kind of work you do.

The Setup

My primary test rig was a Meta Quest 3 running the latest Horizon Workrooms and Immersed apps, paired with a MacBook Pro. Secondary testing was on Apple Vision Pro with its native workspace tools.

The Quest 3 approach involves passthrough—you see your real desk, real keyboard, real coffee cup—with virtual monitors floating wherever you place them. You can pin a browser window to your left, a code editor to your right, and Slack straight ahead. It’s like having five monitors without any physical monitors.

Vision Pro does essentially the same thing but at significantly higher resolution and with better passthrough quality. You’d hope so, given it costs eight times as much.

Where It Actually Helps

The multi-monitor scenario is the genuine productivity argument, and it holds up.

If your work involves referencing multiple documents simultaneously—comparing spreadsheets, checking design specs against code, monitoring dashboards while writing reports—virtual screens are genuinely useful. I could arrange five or six windows around me in a semicircle, each large enough to read comfortably, and glance between them without the neck strain of physically turning between monitors.

For video calls, the spatial audio effect is surprisingly good. Having a meeting participant’s voice come from the left while your notes are to the right creates a natural sense of spatial awareness. The Team400 team have been exploring how AI can enhance these spatial work environments, and the direction is promising—imagine your virtual workspace adapting its layout based on what you’re working on.

Travel is the other clear win. In a hotel room or airport lounge, I had a full multi-monitor setup without carrying anything beyond the headset and my laptop. That’s genuinely valuable for people who travel regularly and hate working on a single laptop screen.

Where It Falls Apart

Text clarity on Quest 3 is acceptable but not great. At the equivalent of arm’s length distance, I could read code and documents fine, but small text—like status bar indicators or footnotes—required leaning in or making the virtual window larger. After about 90 minutes, my eyes felt tired in a way they don’t with physical monitors.

Vision Pro largely solves the text clarity problem, but introduces its own issue: weight. At roughly 600 grams on your face, the fatigue moves from your eyes to your forehead and cheeks. After two hours, I needed a break regardless of what I was doing.

Typing remains the biggest friction. Both headsets support Bluetooth keyboard connections, and using your physical keyboard works fine—you can see it through passthrough. But the slight latency between pressing a key and seeing the character appear on the virtual screen is perceptible if you’re a fast typist. It’s maybe 20-30ms more than a physical monitor, and it’s enough to feel wrong.

Notifications are another pain point. When you’re in MR, you can’t easily glance at your phone. You need to either take the headset off, or have your phone’s notifications mirrored to the virtual environment, which requires additional setup and doesn’t always work reliably.

The Software Problem

The virtual workspace apps themselves are fine but limited. Immersed and Horizon Workrooms both let you arrange virtual monitors and customize your environment. But they’re essentially screen-mirroring tools with extra steps.

There’s no native MR-first productivity software that takes real advantage of spatial computing. I want to grab a paragraph from one document and physically toss it into another. I want to arrange research materials on a virtual wall and draw connections between them. I want my email to be a stack of physical cards I can sort and file.

That software doesn’t exist yet, or exists only in demo form. Until it does, we’re using spatial computing to replicate a flat-screen workflow, which is like buying a sports car to drive in a car park.

Who Should Actually Try This

Remote workers with limited desk space get the most practical value. If you’re working from a small apartment and can’t fit multiple monitors, a Quest 3 at $700 AUD gives you effectively unlimited screen real estate. That’s cheaper than two decent monitors plus a monitor arm.

Frequent travellers benefit for the same reason. A headset in your carry-on bag replaces a portable monitor setup.

Developers and designers who regularly need many reference windows open simultaneously will appreciate the arrangement flexibility, though the text clarity issue on Quest 3 is more of a problem for code than for other content.

What I’d Recommend Right Now

If you’re curious, try it with a Quest 3. The financial commitment is low enough that it’s not a disaster if it doesn’t work for your workflow. Give it two weeks of consistent use—the first few days feel awkward, but your brain adapts to the spatial layout faster than you’d expect.

Don’t buy a Vision Pro specifically for productivity. It’s a better experience, but not eight times better, and the weight issue limits session length more than the Quest 3’s lower resolution does.

Set realistic expectations. This won’t make you twice as productive. It might make you 10-15% more efficient in specific workflows, and it will definitely make your commute or travel workspace better. But it’s still a v1 experience that needs another hardware generation and significantly better software before it’s a genuine recommendation for most knowledge workers.

The potential is real. The execution isn’t there yet. Check back in 18 months.