Samsung has debuted its new mixed reality headset, and it’s a big step forward for immersive technology. The Samsung Galaxy XR is the first device to use Google’s Android XR platform, with cutting-edge technology and intuitive eye- and hand-tracking-based controls. It’s the culmination of Samsung’s Project Moohan that was announced late last year, and is not only a showcase of cutting-edge technology, but also a foundational device that could set the standard for future Android XR hardware, including headsets, smart glasses, and more. I had the chance to test the Galaxy XR at Samsung’s launch event, and it left a strong impression.
Design: A Better Fit and Feel Than the Vision Pro
In both design and philosophy, the Galaxy XR invites clear comparisons to Apple’s Vision Pro. Like Apple—which avoids the term “mixed reality” in favor of calling the Vision Pro a “spatial computer”—Samsung positions the Galaxy XR as the first in a “new category of AI-native devices” built for immersive, multimodal AI experiences. Let’s be honest, though: These are both mixed reality headsets. And they’re currently the most advanced ones you can buy, with next-gen specs and interaction models that far exceed anything else on the market.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The first thing I noticed about the Galaxy XR is how much easier it is to wear than the Vision Pro. It weighs 19.2 ounces to the Vision Pro’s 26.4, which is still pretty hefty for any device you’re going to wear on your head. The weight of Apple’s headset is exacerbated by its being very front-heavy, at least with the Solo Knit and Dual Loop straps it originally came with. It’s tiring to wear for any long period of time, and while the Dual Knit strap included with the new M5 Vision Pro might alleviate this problem, I haven’t tried it out yet, and it doesn’t change the overall heft of the pound-and-a-half-plus chunk of metal pressing against your face.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Galaxy XR immediately felt lighter, and its strap distributed its weight better than the Vision Pro configurations I’ve used. The strap is similar to the Meta Quest Elite strap, which is available as an option with Meta’s VR headsets. It features a large, cushioned back ring that fits snugly against the back of your head, complete with a wheel for easy loosening and tightening. Getting it secured was easy, and it stayed in position with no wiggling or shifting during the demo, whereas I often need to adjust the Vision Pro against my face.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Once the headset was strapped on, I could clearly see through the lenses of its displays in front of my eyes and physically through my lower periphery. The Galaxy XR’s design blocked out all light from eye-level and above, but unlike the Vision Pro, it left the area below completely open. This compromised the sense of immersion the headset would have otherwise provided, but it did let me stay more aware of my surroundings, and the pass-through camera view was aligned perfectly with my ordinary vision, so I never felt disoriented.
Clip-on light blockers that snap onto the headset below the lenses will be included, and I had the opportunity to try them out during the demo. They definitely improved the headset’s immersiveness, though they still let more outside light bleed through than the Vision Pro’s shroud. I’ll have to use it for a longer period of time before I can say whether I can get used to either configuration.
Controls: You Use Your Hands (and Eyes)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
For controls, the Galaxy XR offers multiple options that take advantage of its extensive internal and external cameras. My demo relied entirely on hand tracking, following my hands and allowing me to interact with the interface using points, pinches, and other gestures. Pointing with a finger aims a cursor at whatever you’re pointing at, regardless of the distance, and pinching once works like a click or a tap. Pinching and holding allows you to drag objects for actions such as moving windows or scrolling through a map. It’s mostly intuitive, and I could immediately jump into using the software in the demo. The only hitch was the two-handed pinch-and-hold gesture for rotating some objects. It would register as a single pinch and hold half the time, and I had to make sure that both hands were moving at the same time for it to work. It was a minor nuisance that I could probably get used to with more than half an hour on the device, and everything else involving hand gestures worked perfectly.
The headset features built-in eye tracking, similar to the Apple Vision Pro, and I was told that it would also serve as a control method. I wasn’t able to try it out during the demo, though.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
If you want more conventional VR interaction, Samsung will also offer dedicated controllers for the Galaxy XR. They’re very similar to the controllers included with Meta Quest headsets, featuring dual triggers, dual face buttons, and an analog stick on each of the separate left and right wands. I’m not sure how much Android XR software will function similarly to Meta Quest or SteamVR software, but having the motion controllers as an option is welcome. The headset will also work with conventional Bluetooth gamepads for compatible games.
Interface: The Android XR Experience
As the first Android XR device, the Galaxy XR offers a good first look at the platform. The experience is extremely similar to visionOS on the Apple Vision Pro, just with interface elements that fall more in line with Android compared with visionOS’s iOS-derived iconography. In fact, my time with the Vision Pro let me jump into the Galaxy XR headset and instantly recognize how to navigate the operating system. I’d liken it to switching between an iPhone and an Android phone: Some menus might be laid out in other ways, and some actions might use slightly different gestures, but the core experience is ultimately built around tapping icons to load apps that work virtually the same on either device.
I brought up the home menu by pressing the top button on the headset, or by turning my hand palm-up and pinching my thumb and index finger together. This made a window appear in the center of my vision, displaying the available apps on the headset, much like the home screen on a smartphone. I could open any app by pointing at its icon and pinching once, or I could move the window by pointing at an area around the window and then pinching and holding. Resizing the window uses the same gesture; you just point at a narrower border than its movement zone.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Since Android XR projects floating windows for individual apps, multitasking with them is easy. I could open Chrome, YouTube, and Google Maps, and arrange them all however I wanted around me, then they would stay in their virtual positions even as I moved. The demo also confirmed that, like iPad apps in visionOS, most Android apps should run on Android XR.
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Google Maps was one of the key components of the demo, and it extended beyond the flat window view. An immersive mode placed a 3D model of New York in front of me, allowing me to explore it from an elevated view using gestures. Certain restaurants, bars, and other venues even had internal views that I could access with a simple touch, allowing me to look around the interior. This indoor view wasn’t fully modeled like the city buildings, but rather based on spatialized 360-degree photos that allowed me to see some depth (similar to looking at a stereoscopic 3D video) as I turned my head to view every angle. It’s more like being inside a sphere than actually navigating the inside of an establishment, but still more immersive than plain photos. Zillow’s visionOS app offers similar views for some of its listings, and it’s likely that Android XR will also receive a version of that app.
I also watched an immersive 3D trailer for Asteroid, a short film about astronauts mining in space under dangerous conditions, specifically made to showcase Android XR. This was a 180-degree experience, featuring a 3D video projected onto a hemisphere in front of me. It brought to mind sitting near the front of an IMAX theater with the screen completely covering my view, but much less disorienting since it was filmed with the intention of a single viewer seeing it at a time. It looked great, with a strong sense of depth in the video, especially as a wave of dust rushed toward the location at the end of the trailer.
Asteroid features Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf as one of the astronauts, and as the trailer loaded on the headset, I could, in a way, talk to him. The loading screen involved getting a voice call from an AI version of Metcalf through the headset, to whom I could ask questions about the movie. It’s a cute idea, but it offered no interesting information and really gave only the barest and most generic statements about how cool it was to be in the movie. Ultimately, it felt like a voice-controlled back-of-the-box blurb generator that happened to have Metcalf’s voice.
Under the Hood: A Competitive Display, Camera, and Processor
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Galaxy XR uses a micro-OLED display system with a total of 29 million pixels, showing a 3,552-by-3,840-pixel picture to each eye in a 109-degree (horizontal) field of view. That’s more than the Vision Pro’s 23-million-pixel setup, though Apple doesn’t specify the per-eye resolution for its headset. For comparison, the Meta Quest 3 has a resolution of 2,064 by 2,208 per eye, which is only a third of the Galaxy XR’s resolution. A significant part of the mixed reality experience is seeing your surroundings, and having a view that’s comparable to your own makes a massive difference.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
A pair of 6.5-megapixel stereoscopic cameras with 18mm, f/2.0 lenses stream video of your surroundings to the display. They’re accompanied by six additional outward-facing cameras for position and hand tracking, four inward-facing cameras for eye tracking, flicker and depth sensors, and five additional Inertial Measurement Units. They all work together to follow your movements as closely as possible.
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For processing power, the Galaxy XR uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip, an upgraded version of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 in the Meta Quest 3. It enables the higher-resolution visuals of the Galaxy XR, and according to Qualcomm, it has a 15% higher maximum GPU frequency and 20% higher max CPU frequency than the XR2. The Snapdragon XR2 chips are specifically designed for use in XR devices. The Vision Pro, for comparison, initially had Apple’s M2 chip at launch and now uses the M5 chip, both of which are multi-purpose hardware and tablet processors also found in MacBook and iPad models, and are paired with a separate R1 co-processor for spatial processing.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Like the Vision Pro, the Galaxy XR uses a separate battery pack that connects to the headset by a wire and can be placed in a pocket or at your side. It’s a small rectangular slab weighing 10.7 ounces, similar to the Vision Pro’s battery but 1.8 ounces lighter. According to Samsung, it can last up to two hours with general use or 2.5 hours for video watching, matching the stated battery life of the original Vision Pro but coming in about half an hour less than the updated M5 Vision Pro.
Price and Availability: Lots of Free Extras for Early Adopters
The best mixed reality tech comes at a price, and the price of the Galaxy XR is $1,799. That’s certainly a lot, but not nearly as much as the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro, which is nearly twice as expensive. It’s definitely an investment compared with less advanced headsets like the Meta Quest 3 ($500) and Meta Quest 3S ($300), but it doesn’t feel outright exorbitant like Apple’s headset. Samsung and Google are also sweetening the deal for the Galaxy XR until the end of the year, adding a bundle of services and apps, including year-long memberships to Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, and Google Play Pass that Samsung says are worth more than $1,000 separately.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
If you’re interested in the Galaxy XR, you can order it now from Samsung’s website or buy it at a Samsung Experience Store. There are four Samsung stores in the US: in Frisco and Houston, TX; Garden City, NY; and Glendale, CA. No other physical retail availability for the headset has been announced.
The Verdict: To Be Determined
I’ll reserve final judgment on the Galaxy XR until I’ve had a chance to test it thoroughly, but my early impressions are strong. It delivers the intuitive, refined mixed reality experience that the Vision Pro introduced—yet it does so at just over half the price. That alone is a big deal.
But the Galaxy XR represents more than just a single headset. As the first Android-based XR device, it opens the door to a broader, more open ecosystem. Android XR has the potential to drive both hardware and software innovation across the industry, much like Android did for smartphones. Instead of one company controlling the entire experience, we could see a wave of headsets and smart glasses from multiple manufacturers, all running compatible software.
Apple may own the Vision Pro, but Android XR could power the future of mixed reality.
About Our Expert
Will Greenwald
Principal Writer, Consumer Electronics
Experience
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I’ve served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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