Apple VisionPro's Unique Cooling Fan Speed Control

TapTechNews, June 25th. According to the discovery of VR developer MaxThomas (online name ShinyQuagsire), the way the cooling fan speed of Apple's VisionPro head-mounted display is set seems to be different from previous products. Usually, previous electronic devices rely on temperature sensors to adjust the fan speed. When the processor load increases and the temperature rises, the fan speed will increase accordingly to lower the temperature and maintain performance.

However, Apple's VisionPro doesn't seem to rely solely on temperature to control the fan speed. This developer Thomas, who transplanted the SteamVR streaming tool ALVR onto visionOS, found that the head-mounted display will also use the microphone array to detect noise and use it as another basis for adjusting the speed. It is speculated that the purpose is that in the case of a noisy surrounding environment, the noise of the fan is less likely to be noticed, so as to ensure the user experience (reduce fan noise) while maintaining the device performance as much as possible.

TapTechNews noticed that Thomas also said in a reply to a netizen's comment that the microphone seems to mainly monitor the ambient noise level, and playing music around will also keep the maximum fan speed at a higher level.

This discovery also leads to an interesting conclusion: In a noisy environment, the performance of Apple's VisionPro may be better than in a quiet environment instead. Because in a quiet environment, the fan speed will be limited, resulting in the system starting to downclock (reducing performance) at a lower temperature. Thomas verified this by playing white noise to interfere with the microphone picking up the fan noise.

So far, few other devices on the market adopt a similar cooling mechanism. This design consideration may be that Apple considers that excessive fan noise will affect the user experience, after all, VisionPro is used worn on the head. Of course, different people may have different opinions, and some people may think it is over-designed.