Performance
Knowing what the Gear VR does, it’s time to don it, and if you can believe it, we’re actually playing with the third version of this hardware this year.
Up until this time, Samsung’s Gear VR has been a concept and project for the early adopters and developers out there, affording each group the chance to experience a technology ahead of the curve and possibly make something for it.
As such, its price and design, as well as the requirements, have been less than palatable for most people, with the former ranging from $249 to $299 not including the phone — and having pretty specific needs on that front — while the latter was large, bulky, and tended to remind you of a B-grade science fiction movie.
Those pretty specific needs were a major limiting factor for people to try the technology out, too, with the original Gear VR that arrived early 2015 requiring 2014’s Galaxy Note 4 handset and only working with that phone, while the mid-year Gear VR needed a Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge and only worked with those handsets.
Without these phones, the Gear VR was useless, basically resembling a plastic shell with lenses and microUSB plugs, and that’s partly why the old models were labeled with “innovator edition”, because innovators and early adopters were the market Samsung was going for.
Now, though, it wants everyone, and so the design has been tweaked, the price has dropped, and the general feeling is that the late-2015 Samsung Gear VR is about as close to a consumer-grade virtual reality product that we’re going to see ahead of next year when more of these gadgets are set to come out.
But hey, at least Samsung can say it was first. Now is it any good?
Grab the headset and remove the rear cover, and you’ll find a device that has much less plastic than we’ve previously seen. Indeed, this is a Gear VR on a diet, and that’s a good thing.
This isn’t like the smartphone race where thinner and lighter are better for reasons of superiority and competitiveness.
No, this is about something you’re going to wear, and something that will push down on the bridge of your nose. The lighter it is, the more weight it can take from your phone, and these factors have to all be light enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s crushing your skull, your nose, and giving you a headache in the process.
For the gen 3 Gear VR, it’s quite clear Samsung has been tweaking and scaling back the plastic, slimming everything down in such a way that this is now less ornate and out there, and more just a holder for something that can lead to bigger things.
The plug at the bottom has also changed, and this is for the better. Now there is a little push mechanism that can let you switch between the regular sized phones of the S6 and S6 Edge (setting B) or the big phones of the S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 (setting A), meaning you’re not locked into buying sort of phone in order to use the Gear VR, something that was basically holding back the previous designs.
Will this design work with the Galaxy S7 phones? Time will tell on that one, but we’ll hazard a guess that because Samsung knows what its design is going to be by now, since we’re expecting announcement in February, it should at least make it semi compatible. We’ll just have to wait and see.
For now, worry about the phone you can buy, and that means any of the S6 models or a Note 5, the latter of which we’re using for our review.
Load the phone into the slot and push it into the Gear VR microUSB plug, and it already feels like the phone holder has been tightened up, with a positioning that is harder to get wrong.
You will want to unlock the phone before you do it, so if you have a fingerprint lock in place, unlock the phone, otherwise it will just switch on the voice-to-text and tell you that in spoken terms.
From here, Samsung’s Oculus software will load up providing you a grid-like interface for you to browse apps from.
You can actually install apps outside of here, with the Oculus app on the smartphone allowing you to nab them from the smartphone, but inside the interface works just as well, even if looking at descriptions and images is a little more clumsy. You can also play the apps, loading videos in the Oculus Video cinema, which now includes an ant cinema with the videos playing handily on a Samsung phone, while the 360 degree videos and photos are also provided.
Apps and games have also been released in time for the third generation Gear VR, and two of them are standouts, though they do cost money.
“Land’s End” is worth a look (above), providing a light on colour and graphics take on the adventure genre, asking you to pretty much move objects with your mind and walk do small puzzles, while “EVE: Gunner” (below) is a fun on-rails shooter where you just aim your head and fire a gun at spaceships. Easy.
There are other games in the system, and while most don’t require a game pad, some will, which means you’ll want to check the specs before you download.
Apps are also here, and while most are experiences, Samsung does have an internet browser that works, allowing you to surf a mobile web inside of the helmet.
For the most part, though, the experience is pretty solid, with a high definition experience allowing you to explore a digital world.
Where the Gear VR goes a little awry is with regards to picture quality, with most videos streamed to the device. As such, video experiences can be rendered a little blocky, making it difficult to have a proper immersion.
Others can be downloaded altogether, and you get the feeling that with a movie store in the Oculus video menu — a menu that merely says “coming soon” — Samsung and Oculus will be doing more in this area shortly.
Another catch with the Gear VR is that while it has been put on a diet, it can still hurt the bridge of your nose, eventually giving you a headache.
By the time that happens, it’s likely almost two hours will have passed, and in that time, your phone will have heated up quite dramatically, bordering on running out of power. Fortunately, there’s a microUSB port at the bottom of the headset to keep charging the phone, but your head may need a little more time.
Foggy lenses is also something that can still happen, because when it’s warm outside or slightly humid — or your face is a little hotter than it should be — the lenses inside still go a little foggy.
That’s nothing a quick wipe down can’t resolve, but it’s still worth noting all the same.
Conclusion
Despite the few small catches, we’re already entranced with the Gear VR, with the gadget offering a fair amount of promise for the future for not too much cash.
The entry level sub-$200 price makes it worth looking at especially if you have a Samsung phone from this year, even if the company still has some tweaking to be made, with the next model likely shedding even more weight.
If you’re interested in the idea of virtual reality, though, Samsung’s Gear VR is definitely worth a look, not just because there’s no other way to find properly immersive apps, games, and experiences, but because it’s one of the best ways to try it until 2016 rocks up.
