When it comes to virtual reality (VR) in its current form, Google was one of the first companies out of the gate with Cardboard. But the hardware consists of little more than a set of lenses in a cardboard holder for your smartphone. The Samsung Gear VR is similar in concept, in that it needs a smartphone to serve as your display, but there is a lot more going on here than just a slot to hold your phone. The $99.99 headset is compatible with four different Samsung smartphones, and incorporates some very useful technology into its design. However, VR itself has yet to see a killer app that makes a case for mainstream adoption, and the Gear VR doesn't change that. It's the best consumer-level VR headset we've tested, though it isn't much more than a novelty. Still, as far as novelties go, it's a fun one, and it won't cost you a fortune.
Editors' Note: There is a newer version of this product, read our review of the 2016 Gear VR.
Design
The Gear VR looks and feels very similar to the Innovator Edition ($29.99 at Amazon) we tested previously. It's a large, white plastic visor you wear on your face, held in place by a set of elastic and Velcro bands. One large headband stretches around the back of your head behind your ears, and another stretches over the top of your head to keep things secure.
The black front panel pops off to reveal the recess where a compatible Samsung smartphone fits. While previous Gear VR development kits were built with specific smartphones in mind, the consumer Gear VR will work with the Samsung Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge, the S6 edge+, and the Note 5. It's still a limited selection, but it's a selection nonetheless. No matter which compatible phone you use, a spring-loaded arm on one side of the recess holds a micro USB connector for the Gear VR, while a second spring-loaded arm on the opposite side clicks into place to hold the phone secure.
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While Google Cardboard devices are almost completely mechanical and lack any sort of electronic connection to your installed smartphone (aside from the magnetic actuator switch on the right side of the device), the Gear VR is packed with electronics to drive physical controls and sensors that work with your connected phone and compatible VR software. The right side of the Gear VR holds a large, cross-shaped touchpad, a volume rocker, and a Back button. The touchpad is much more prominent and easy to find than the tiny recessed square on the development Gear VR. A micro USB port has also been added, just under the right edge of the headset. This lets you keep your connected smartphone powered while you use it (though you can also use go wireless for as long as your smartphone's battery holds out).
A mechanical dial on the top of the Gear VR adjusts focus by moving your connected smartphone further or closer to the lenses. You can't use the headset with glasses, but the focus range is very generous, and I had no problem getting the picture to look crisp without mine on.
The elastic headbands held the VR securely (and comfortably) to my face. However, while a thick padding around the eyes helps keep the headset in place and block out light, it also made that part of my face very warm. I found that the lenses fogged up occasionally, though you might have a different experience depending on the temperature of the room you're in and the shape of your head.
Using the Headset
Setting up the Gear VR is a simple, but slightly awkward process. You need to plug your compatible Galaxy smartphone into the headset, then remove it once the voice prompt tells you to do so. This triggers your phone to download the necessary Gear VR apps. After that, the remaining software setup, including logging into the Oculus app and making an Oculus store account as needed, is done on your phone outside of the headset. Only after everything is installed does the phone go back into the Gear VR.
The headset is powered by Oculus, basing much of its interface, software, and engineering around the company's work in virtual reality. Unlike the upcoming consumer Oculus Rift, however, the Gear VR is designed for use with a smartphone rather than a computer. The Gear VR Oculus software runs as soon as you load your configured Galaxy phone into the Gear VR and place the headset on your head (a built-in sensor tells the phone when you're wearing the Gear VR, so it doesn't constantly run when no one is using it).
The software provides a VR-friendly way to navigate compatible content with the headset. It loads a virtual space with a menu system in front of you, arranged into pages you can navigate by swiping on the touch pad and looking at the desired item. The software displays your library of Gear VR-compatible apps, along with a built-in store for downloading new apps for the headset. You can also download and organize content in regular smartphone mode, in a view similar to the Google Play app store.
The software provides a quick access menu you can load in almost any app by holding the Back button on the Gear VR. It offers a few useful functions, like immediately jumping to the home screen, manually re-orienting the view if it gets out of whack, and activating a pass-through camera to see what's in front of you (though with a reduced field of view, and you need to remove the black backplate from the Gear VR to see through it at all).
What It Looks Like
Thanks to the excellent Super AMOLED displays on Samsung's most recent Galaxy smartphones, the Gear VR's picture looks excellent. I used the headset with a Galaxy S6, and the virtual space looked very crisp and easy to read. I could still see pixels on the screen, particularly in flat colors and the edges of text, but it didn't impact the overall experience. There was very little blurriness or image ghosting when moving my head or viewing moving objects, which should assuage the concerns of users worried about motion sickness.
More importantly, motion is very smooth and head tracking is very accurate. The Gear VR seamlessly followed my head across all axes of movement, and I didn't experience any sort of jumpiness or disorientation. The only time this was thrown off was when I removed the headset and put it back on, which was easily fixable through the quick access menu.
What Can You Do
The current selection of VR software and media is much more varied than it was a year ago, when the Gear VR was still a development kit. It's still not a particularly robust library, but you can find a good handful of games, 360-degree movies, and media players with virtual theaters to try with the headset. You can even use Netflix and Hulu through the Gear VR, which put you in a virtual living room with a big HDTV in front of you to watch your favorite shows, or browse the Web with the Samsung Internet app's browser tabs projected in virtual space.
As odd as it seems, the whole pretend-there's-a-big-screen-in-front-of-you concept on the Gear VR works very well. The simulated HDTV on the Netflix app and the large, floating windows of the Samsung Internet browser really feel like you're in a set space in front of a large HDTV or monitor. You can look around to see the virtual environment (in the Netflix app) or additional floating Windows (in the Samsung Internet app), and it all feels like a very natural way to interact. Like most couch-bound interfaces for media services and Web browsers, though, it's difficult to input text without a keyboard in front of you (or when you can't see the keyboard if it is in front of you).
I tried watching two short VR films on the Gear VR, Cirque du Soleil's Zarkana and Battle for Avengers Tower. The former is a short Cirque du Soleil trapeze performance recorded from the perspective of the very front of the stage. I watched several monochrome clowns sit next to me before the curtains opened and two performers did an aerial gymnastics act. I could look up and down as they flew on the stage rigging, watch the reactions of the clowns in the audience, and even look behind me to see the empty theater seating. I was really getting into it, but rather than a full show, this is a short performance that lasts only a few minutes.
Battle for Avengers Tower is a computer-generated movie similar to a theme park theater ride. It starts with a first-person view from Iron Man's armor as the system is booted up, then shifts into an extended slow-motion scene where the Avengers fight Ultron's robots, similar to the penthouse battle in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. My perspective slowly flew forward, tracking through the action around me as the Avengers beat robots in a nearly still tableau. It's a striking effect.
The Oculus app store has many different games to try, both in demo/lite forms and as full mobile versions available for around $5 each. While they don't offer a very deep, lengthy "core" gaming experience, for mobile games they can be fairly well developed.
One particularly enjoyable game, Darknet, puts you in the first-person perspective of a hacker who must unlock nodes in a network to get to the core and steal data. It's a puzzle game built around strategically causing chain reactions to get your pink hacking waves to reach the yellow core without becoming undone by blue antivirus programs. The networks stretch around you in a 360-degree area and all interaction is done by aiming the cursor through head movement and tapping the touch pad. It's the sort of unrealistic, but fun puzzle game that works really well with the Gear VR, letting you sit in a swivel chair and just solve puzzles all around you.
Ongoing Issues and Conclusions
Unfortunately, the Gear VR and the connected Galaxy S6 I was using didn't seem as interested in a prolonged gaming experience as I was. After about 40 minutes, the game stopped and the Gear VR software displayed a warning message to remove the phone from the Gear VR and let it cool before using it again. The smartphone was overheating from playing a game too long in the headset. That's a big concern, because while Darknet does have 3D graphics and nice, colorful effects, it's not nearly the most complicated or resource-intensive mobile game out there, and the Galaxy S6 is a flagship smartphone with plenty of power. Thermal issues with this type of game after less than an hour makes using the Gear VR for any greater length of time an uncertain proposition.
Potential thermal issues aside, the Gear VR apps range in quality from, somewhat useful and genuinely entertaining, to empty tech demos. But none of them are the killer app that virtual reality as a category desperately needs. Nothing on the Gear VR manages to rise above the proof-of-concept technology the headset had when it was a development kit, or that the Oculus Rift has had in its first two iterations. The apps are neat, work well, and there are more of them than there were last year, but nothing is truly going to bring VR into the mainstream.
Virtual reality is set to spike next year, with the anticipated consumer releases of major, comprehensive virtual reality headsets with integrated displays, like the HTC Vive/Steam VR, the Oculus Rift, and the PlayStation VR. That said, if you already have a compatible Samsung smartphone, $100 isn't a bad price to pay to experiment with a slowly growing selection of genuinely well-conceived virtual reality concepts right now. There's much more work put into the Gear VR's fit, design, and electronics than any Google Cardboard product, and it shows when you strap it on your head.
If you already have a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone, the Gear VR headset is a well-built, relatively inexpensive way to see if virtual reality is right for you.
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