Kyle Orland







About a year ago, Samsung and Oculus released the Gear VR "Innovator Edition," a phone holster/virtual reality headset that straddled the line between dev kit and early adopter hardware. This month, Samsung updated that early access hardware to a bona fide consumer product; the new Gear VR is the first explicitly consumer-facing offering from Oculus in its more than three years of public existence as a company.

We've had a few days now to play around with that retail hardware, enough time to determine that Oculus and Samsung have squeezed an impressive virtual reality experience out of common smartphone hardware and a relatively cheap headset. At $100, the consumer Gear VR is a no-brainer for anyone who already uses a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone. For everyone else, it's an impressive bit of technology that could be a deciding factor when choosing your next phone.

Superb comfort

The biggest refinements in the consumer Gear VR over last year's Innovator Edition come in increased comfort. The headstrap has been completely redesigned. The curved, cushioned hard plastic of last year's model has been replaced with a relatively simple elastic strap behind the head and an optional, rigid fabric strap over the top of the skull. The new design makes the unit easier to adjust for a comfortable fit thanks to velcro pads that now bend properly around the hinges.

The consumer edition also shaves about 70 grams off the 380 gram weight of last year's edition. That might not sound very significant, but it's definitely noticeable, and it's important in a device whose weight is carried by sensitive parts of your face and skull. The 2015 Samsung Galaxy phones that work with the consumer Gear VR (the Note 5, S6, S6 Edge, and S6 Edge+) are also a few grams lighter than the Galaxy Note 4 that was used in last year's model, adding to the apparent weight difference.





















The consumer edition Gear VR also sports newly designed cushioning around the eyes. This padding resembles a fabric-covered stuffed pillow more than the harsh, rubbery foam on last year's model. Samsung and Oculus have also added some discrete vents underneath the eye area for the consumer model. These allow for enough airflow to prevent the occasional fogging that plagued the Innovator Edition and make the phone less likely to overheat after prolonged use. The downside to this change is that the vents let in some additional light from below, causing the slightest bit of glare in dark scenes.

All these changes combine to make the consumer edition of the Gear VR much more comfortable than the Innovator Edition, which was already relatively comfortable. Compared to last year, there's much less pressure around the eyes and on the back of the skull. The hardware isn't exactly light enough to forget about altogether, but I was able to easily wear it for an hour at a time without any desire to pull it off to let my face breathe or rest my eyes. If the Innovator Edition felt like a pair of snug ski goggles, the consumer Gear VR feels more like a pair of extra-chunky sunglasses resting on the bridge of your nose.

The new Gear VR also comes with changes to the touchpad on the side of the headset, which acts as the main tangible input for most VR apps. The touch area is larger now, with a more noticeable lip to indicate the edge of the touch-sensitive area. More importantly, there's now a cross-shaped divot cutout to guide your finger through swipes in the cardinal directions and a raised pip in the middle of the pad to serve as a central tap point.

On the one hand, these changes make it much easier to find the touchpad when feeling around blindly on the side of the headset. They also make it easier to figure out where precisely your finger is resting when you do tap and swipe. On the other hand, it's a bit annoying having swipes across the touch surface interrupted by these rough raised and lowered sections. I found myself missing the long, smooth swipes I could make unperturbed on the Innovator Edition's uninterrupted surface.

Surprising performance

If your only experience with mobile phone VR has been the cheap-by-design Google Cardboard or strap-on plastic holsters that merely hold a smartphone in front of your face, you owe it to yourself to see the difference the Gear VR makes. The added tilt-sensing hardware and other processing offered by this $100 headset makes the virtual world around you seem much more solid and stable than the bare bones sensors in a standard smartphone can provide.

Combine that additional hardware with the quick-refreshing AMOLED screens on the Samsung Galaxy line, and you get the ability to look around 360-degree 3D environments with no discernible lag between your head movement and the change in your VR viewpoint. And because the Gear VR and phone form a self-contained portable headset, there are no worries about wires getting in the way or tethering you to a certain point in the room.

We tested the consumer Gear VR with the Galaxy 6+ Edge. That has the same size screen, resolution, and pixels per inch as the Galaxy Note 4 we used with the Innovator Edition a year ago, so the visual experience was, unsurprisingly, not very different.

The resolution is still just above the minimum that's viable for a comfortable virtual reality experience; there's only a slight, hazy "screen door effect" in the space between pixels and some slightly noticeable jagged edges on angled lines. Your experience may actually improve a bit with the Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, each of which has a higher pixel density. (The extra GB of RAM on the S6 Edge+ seemed to improve loading times slightly, as well.)













The main issue hampering the Gear VR's ability to deliver totally engrossing VR, as with the Innovator Edition, is that there's still no positional head tracking. If you lean your head or body forward or side to side, the entire virtual world comes sickeningly along with you rather than staying solidly in place as you move through.

App makers can design around this problem to some extent, but users still have to be careful not to shift their position too much. While Gear VR does support standard Bluetooth controllers, there's no built-in support for any kind of hand-tracking solution available in other upcoming VR headsets. For most apps, instead of reaching in and messing with the world, you're limited to looking around and interacting by using your head as a kind of virtual mouse pointer.

Then there's the field of view—a relatively limited 96 degrees. This is narrow enough that the black edges of the virtual view are somewhat apparent in your peripheral vision even when you're focused straight ahead, and those edges are definitely noticeable if you shift your eyes left or right. It's easy to forget about this problem when you're engrossed in a well-designed 3D VR world, and you quickly learn to simply turn your head rather than darting your eyes to see things to the side. Still, the tunnel vision effect does limit the sense of presence a bit.

The S6 Edge+ battery seems to last for about four hours of constant VR use, comparable to what the Note 4 got on the Innovator Edition. The consumer Gear VR also includes a pass-through USB plug, however, letting you charge the phone as you explore the virtual world. This is especially convenient if you have a portable USB charger that you can place in your pocket or lap to avoid getting tangled as you rotate.

Impressive, entry-level consumer VR

We'll have more in-depth analysis of the most compelling VR apps available for Gear VR soon. For now, though, we're comfortable calling Oculus' first consumer product a comfortable and surprisingly powerful entry-level virtual reality experience. If you're already part of the Samsung Galaxy ecosystem and have a compatible phone, $100 is a steal to try it out. I wouldn't recommend buying an expensive Galaxy phone just to try it, but if you're considering a new phone and have any interest in trying out virtual reality at home, the Gear VR should be an important factor in your decision.

Listing image by Kyle Orland