Pros
- Affordable
- Comfortable to wear
- Easy setup
- Wide variety of content
Cons
- Only compatible with a handful of Samsung phones
- Drains your phone battery
- Not as robust as upcoming PC and console-based VR headsets
Summary
Samsung's Gear VR is the
company's first virtual reality headset designed for everyday consumers.
For just $99 and a compatible Samsung phone, you can dive into an
incredible experience that'll have you watching 360-degree movies and
playing super immersive games. Yes, it only works with a limited number
of phones, but right now, there's no better option if you want to give
VR a try.
Hardware
Samsung never made any pretensions that the Gear VR would
be small and portable -- it's always been a rather large headset that
looks like you have a giant pair of ski goggles strapped on your face.
But every iteration of the Gear VR has been more lightweight than the
last, and the new consumer-ready version is no exception. Samsung says
it's about 19 percent lighter, and I definitely feel it. The previous
models had chunky white plastic around the head straps while the current
model has none. This not only reduces the headset's overall weight, but
makes it far less cumbersome to put on. All you do is strap the headset
to your head with a couple of elasticized Velcro straps -- one around
the back of your head and the other around the top -- and you're ready
to go. The top strap is technically optional, but I liked having it on
for a more secure fit.
The fit, by the way, is pretty excellent. The soft foam
padding around the eyes and the nose bridge makes the fit very
comfortable (My discomfort came from nausea instead; more on that
later). Another upside is that new Gear VR also easily accommodates most
glasses -- I was able to wear mine without too much shifting around.
That said, if you have a relatively lightweight prescription, you might
want to go without your glasses entirely for additional comfort. Plus,
the Gear VR has a focus wheel at the top so you can easily adjust the
focus to match your eyesight.
Like all the previous Gear VRs, the new model is not a
standalone headset -- it's essentially a VR viewer for your phone; sort
of a fancier version of Google's Cardboard,
if you will. Except that unlike Cardboard, the Gear VR has additional
hardware -- an accelerometer, a gyroscope and proximity-based sensors --
on board to reduce latency and increase the performance overall.
To get started, you'll have to snap the phone onto the
front of the Gear VR so that the display faces the headset's
stereoscopic lenses. Simply dock the phone into a micro-USB dock on the
left and then lock it in place with a plastic holder on the right. At
least for now, the Gear VR is compatible with four different Samsung
phones: the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge, the S6 Edge+ and the Note 5. Since
the latter two phones are slightly larger than the others, the Gear VR
has a toggle that you can use to slide the micro-USB dock to the left or
right to accommodate the different sizes. Though it seems like the
headset's use is limited to just these four phones, Samsung told us that
it's highly likely the current Gear VR could be compatible with future
Samsung phones too.
By default, controls are relegated to the four-way
directional touchpad on your right temple. It's much more contoured than
previous Gear VR models plus there's a raised center nub, which makes
the whole thing far easier to use -- you can just feel your way around
to figure out the controls. Above the touchpad is a back button, which
has been relocated slightly to the right for easier accessibility, while
a volume rocker is located to the front.
Though it's not included with the Gear VR, I also
recommend you wear a pair of headphones with it, as it'll make your VR
experience more immersive. There are also a few games that would benefit
from the use of a dedicated gamepad controller (again, this isn't
included with the headset), which you can connect to the phone via
Bluetooth.
In use
I tested the Gear VR with a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+. Setup
was pretty easy; once you have the phone loaded into the headset,
you're pretty much ready to go. As soon as it docks into place, the
handset will automatically launch Oculus Home, a VR content portal from
where you can launch a variety of apps, movies or games (if you don't
have the Oculus app installed, it'll prompt you to do so). Virtual
reality content has exploded in the past year, and nowhere is this more
evident than the variety available on the Oculus Store -- Samsung and
Oculus tells us there are already more than a 100 apps and games on
board, with even more coming down the pipeline.
Before we delve into the content, let's talk about the
display quality. In short, it's not great. Since you're essentially
pressing the phone's screen up to your face, there's definitely a slight
"screen door effect" where you can spot individual pixels. This effect
seems a lot more reduced than previous Gear VR headsets, but it was
still noticeable. As a result, videos looked pretty pixilated and games
just didn't look as sharp as I would like. Of course, a lot of this is
dependent on the phone's display -- the S6 Edge+ has a very good 1440 x
2560 Quad HD resolution, but even that didn't prove sharp enough when
magnified with the Gear VR's lenses. I'll admit to brushing aside the
need for phones with 4K displays, but perhaps there's a real benefit if
you plan to use them with VR headsets.
That said, once I started really playing around with the
content, I found myself casting those display quibbles aside. Viewing
360-degree video of an ocean landscape was wonderfully serene and
peaceful, and I also enjoyed watching episodes of Doctor Who on Netflix as if I were in movie theater. Playing games was especially delightful: Shooting at incoming drones in EVE:Gunjack and flying around on a jetpack in Omega Agent
was fun and engaging. Being able to look around you to home in on enemy
targets feels a lot more interactive than just waggling a thumbstick.
My favorite game by far, however, is Land's End, a puzzle game akin to Myst or Monument Valley.
Set on a rocky island, you solve puzzles by staring at dots to
illuminate them, tracing a line from dot to dot in order to unlock a
path. The immersive VR environment coupled with the game's tranquil
soundtrack makes this one of the more meditative games I've ever come
across. Note: I recommend using a swivel chair to play some of these
games so that you don't suffer from too much neck strain.
As much as I was having fun however, I found that I could
not wear the Gear VR for very long periods of time. That's because it
does make me feel a bit nauseous; I had to take the headset off every
half hour or so to stop my head from spinning. Of course, your mileage
may vary here, but it's worth the warning. I happen to be one of those
people who suffers from motion sickness on boats and while traveling
down windy roads, so I'm perhaps more susceptible to this kind of thing.
Another thing to watch out for is battery life. After a
solid hour of VR time, the phone's battery dropped by as much as 20
percent. After four or five hours, the phone was nearly dead. Also
beware if you do want to keep the phone in VR mode for very long, as it
does occasionally get hot enough to overheat.
The competition
If you just wanted to get your feet wet with virtual
reality, Google's Cardboard is not a bad start. After all, it costs
close to nothing and it's dead easy to set up. The downsides, of course,
is that it doesn't offer nearly the same degree of sophistication and
immersion that the Gear VR does. The Gear VR has straps so you can wear
it for hours on end, additional on-board sensors to reduce latency, plus
it has a dedicated touchpad for greater control. At the end of the day,
Google Cardboard is just, well, cardboard, while Samsung's Gear VR is a
full-fledged dive into virtual reality.
Then again, Gear VR's performance doesn't quite compare to more advanced VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, the PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive.
For one thing, Samsung's Gear VR doesn't have positional head tracking,
so you can't do things like duck behind walls or bend your head down to
take a closer look at something on the ground. The other headsets also
promise to be far more powerful -- the Rift and the Vive will be powered
by high-end gaming rigs while the Playstation VR will harness the
computational prowess of the PS4.
That should lead to a higher fidelity experience with better graphics
and better physics -- features that even the best smartphone won't be
able to match.
Yet, those other systems aren't even available to the
public yet. Plus, they promise to be much more expensive. Though the
prices aren't official just yet, rumor is that they'll cost at least $300 each. And that doesn't even include the cost of a high-end gaming PC, which could be well over $1,000.
If you plan on going with the Playstation VR, a PS4 isn't cheap either,
retailing at around $350. Even if you were to buy a Gear VR along with a
compatible Samsung phone, that would only run around $500 to $700 if
you get your phone off-contract. Additionally, all three rival headsets
need to be tethered to their source computer, which limits your
movements when playing games. The $99 Gear VR, on the other hand, is
completely mobile, letting you swivel around on your chair or take it
anywhere.
Wrap-up
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For a minute there, I was worried that virtual reality was going to
be something
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