After a month of regular use, we found little need to modify our initial impressions of the Gear VR as a piece of hardware. It's the first truly comfortable headset that provides a viable, "good enough" virtual reality experience within the reach of a high-end consumer, both in terms of price and ease of use. Hardware is only as good as the software that runs on it, though, and despite four weekly updates to the Oculus Store since launch, the content on offer for early adopters is still largely a mediocre mixed bag—especially when it comes to gaming.

Let's dive into the hardware a bit more, though. Anyone who has tried on an Oculus development kit is going to be amazed by how much more comfortable the Gear VR is. Though the weight of the two units is comparable, the Gear VR benefits from a strap system that distributes that weight on the upper forehead and the back of the skull rather than through an elastic death grip around the eye area. The Gear VR also doesn't have any annoying wires tethering it to an external computer, which has a freeing effect in apps where swiveling around in 360 degrees is a must. It's not quite comfortable enough to make you forget you're wearing it, but it is comfortable enough not to distract from a properly engaging VR experience.

The Galaxy Note 4's 2560x1440 resolution screen is the bare minimum necessary for a VR experience that's going to come off as clear and comfortable for the masses. In-app text is rendered crisply, and while you can make out a bit of fuzziness between pixels, the lens system makes it feel less like you're looking at a phone display inches from your face and more like you're looking down a 3D tunnel.

The additional angular tracking provided by the Gear VR headset is also crucial to making the virtual worlds feel rock solid and locked in place, especially when compared with competing VR solutions that only use the phone's default accelerometer. The only thing that's still missing is positional tracking; Gear VR can't tell when you lean forward or shift your shoulders to the side, for instance, making the whole world lurch along with you in these cases. Gear VR apps are designed with this limitation in mind, though, and they work perfectly well sitting and rotating in a swivel chair, looking every which way to your heart's content.

While the Gear VR supports standard Bluetooth control pads (some games require one), the small, built-in touchpad sitting near your right temple is all you'll need for most apps. Using your gaze as a sort of quasi-mouse-pointer—with a quick tap on the touchpad filling in for a click—quickly becomes second nature, as does the idea of quick swipes in cardinal directions for scrolling through menus or directional input.



































My main complaint is that the touchpad can be a little too sensitive—I often had swipes mistaken for taps or vice versa when not moving an index finger with precise enough timing. There's already a separate clickable "back" button for retreating through menus; one or two more physical buttons for selection may be useful for a future edition of the Gear VR. For the time being, though, this is a decent stopgap control solution until something comes along to accurately track hands naturally in three-dimensional space.

Despite the over-the-top warnings , prolonged use of the Gear VR hasn't necessarily led to any negative physical effects during testing. Even wearing the unit for nearly two hours straight during a marathon Darknet session didn't leave the slightest feeling of nausea or discomfort. This in-world comfort depends largely on the software design, though. Games like Dreadhalls and Temple Run VR practically forced me to look in one direction while moving laterally in another, a situation that was an almost instant invitation to nausea. When a game in the Oculus Store warns you that it's "comfortable for few," there's usually a darn good reason.

A fully charged Note 4 battery can last a good four to four-and-a-half hours of constant use in the Gear VR carrier. That's sadly about par for the course as far as portable gaming devices these days, but heavy use can definitely be a problem if you're also planning to use the Note as your primary phone throughout the rest of the day. You can always swap in a second battery, but be warned that the massive battery pack takes an inordinately long time to charge through the phone's standard USB slot. Also keep in mind that the Gear VR design means it's impossible to charge the phone while you're using it as a VR headset. Leaving the phone in standby mode while still in the headset can drain the battery quite quickly.