{"id":183322,"date":"2025-12-14T12:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T12:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/183322\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T12:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T12:36:08","slug":"samsung-galaxy-xr-review-needs-more-polish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/183322\/","title":{"rendered":"Samsung Galaxy XR Review: Needs More Polish"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had the new M5-powered Apple Vision Pro<\/a> and Samsung Galaxy XR<\/a> headsets sitting on my desk for several weeks. These are expensive, cutting-edge pieces of hardware. Apple’s version is $3,499! Samsung’s headset is roughly half that\u2014still a pretty penny at $1,800. Mustering the energy to don them has been a task.<\/p>\n

You can watch movies, play immersive games, and get some work done with multiple virtual screens. None of these experiences has been so compelling that I want to wear a headset on my face for more than an hour. Still, I gave it the ol’ college try, and my takeaway is that Google and Samsung have more work ahead of them to improve the Android XR experience; I’ve also had a strange and newfound appreciation for the quality of Apple’s mixed reality headset<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Silver<\/p>\n

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu<\/p>\n

Finding Comfort<\/p>\n

I purchased the Galaxy XR from Samsung’s website, and the company offers a handy link to EyeBuyDirect<\/a>, where you can buy prescription Kodak magnetic inserts for $100 so you can use the headset without glasses. The process was seamless, though long shipping times meant my inserts arrived weeks before the XR.<\/p>\n

While I appreciate how much more lightweight the Galaxy XR is compared to the Vision Pro, I constantly struggled to find a comfortable fit. You put the headset on and turn a knob at the back to tighten the band around your head, but there’s often a good amount of pressure resting on your forehead, which also gets warm when the audible fans kick in; it’s near impossible not to have a sweaty brow after a bout in XR. Two magnetic light shields in the box do a decent job of blocking ambient light from filtering into your virtual reality, but they’re not perfect, as I still encountered some slight light bleed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have had the new M5-powered Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR headsets sitting on my desk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[771,22975,367,10600,111,139,69,762,763,869,1243,145,360,362],"class_list":{"0":"post-183322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-android","9":"tag-augmented-reality","10":"tag-google","11":"tag-google-gemini","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-review","16":"tag-reviews","17":"tag-samsung","18":"tag-shopping","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-virtual-reality","21":"tag-vr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}