I love my Apple Vision Pro headset. It’s premium, polished, and peak Apple. It’s also heavy as sin, and I often find myself running out of things to do with it. So I can’t help but turn my head towards Samsung’s new Galaxy XR, the tech giant’s first proper crack at a mixed reality headset after its Gear VR headsets from a decade ago.
It’s hard not to feel a bit rattled by what Samsung’s cooked up – we might finally have a real Vision Pro contender. And it’s one with Android in its corner, Gemini whispering in your ear, and an official Netflix app. Yes, I’m still bitter about that. It’s also lighter, cheaper, and built to play nice with the entire Android ecosystem.
The Galaxy XR headset runs on the new Android XR platform, a joint effort from Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm. Gemini is baked in from the get-go, and not in a half-hearted Siri way either. This thing is context-aware – it sees what you see, hears what you hear, and can respond like a real assistant. For example, you can ask it what building you’re looking at in Maps, or have it clean up your workspace by reorganising floating windows.
Samsung’s hardware is no slouch either. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 chip, with visuals delivered through 27 million pixels worth of Micro-OLED – slightly more than the Vision Pro’s 23 million pixels. Samsung’s claiming a 109 degree field-of-view horizontally, and 100 degrees vertically, wider than Apple’s, but still limited compared to AR specs. Eye tracking, passthrough, hand tracking, spatialised audio are all included, and Circle to Search even makes an appearance.
Qualcomm’s dedicated chip keeps everything ticking for up to 2.5 hours – identical to Apple’s battery claims. Both have external battery packs, so that’s not something you’ll be able to avoid. I actually don’t mind this so much – I’d rather the headset be lighter.
Gemini is built into Android XR from the ground up, if you’re into AI. That means conversational help that reacts to what you’re seeing, doing, and hearing. Siri is still a little disappointing, so I wouldn’t complain about the addition of Gemini. Galaxy XR also brings Android’s sprawling app library with it. You can run familiar apps like Chrome, YouTube, Netflix, and Google Maps, but also get reworked XR experiences from developers, and new immersive tools like Adobe’s Project Pulsar.
Of course, I have a soft spot for the Vision Pro’s magic tricks. Eye tracking feels like a party trick, and Apple didn’t hype that up enough. Apple’s headset still leads in finish, feel, and arguably polish. I’m not sure Galaxy XR will be able to live up to this, having clearly copied Apple’s design here – even if it changed a few bits here and there. But there’s no denying Galaxy XR is an extremely compelling option.
Galaxy XR is available now for $1799 or $149 per month in the US and Korea via Samsung.com and Samsung Experience stores, with global availability yet to be announced. Optional extras include the Galaxy XR Travel Case and Controller at $250 each. Buyers can also snag the Explorer Pack, which throws in 12 months of Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, NBA League Pass, Play Pass, and various streaming and sports subscriptions to sweeten the deal.
