Review: Samsung's Gear VR shows the promise of VR - today

The Vive, along with the Sony PlayStation VR and the Oculus Rift, will do much more than Gear VR, but will likely cost many times the $100 the Gear VR will set you back. Samsung’s gadget is impressive for the price.

So, once again, Sony is already playing catch-up to Samsung in a cutting-edge technology. When will they learn that their name can no longer command a premium price, and figure out how to compete with the likes of Samsung, rather than blame "fierce price competition" when they fail to meet expectations?

The elephant in the room remains the unresolved problem of motion sickness that users feel. The cheerleader PR writers masquerading as journalists working for the controlled media don't like to write about that.

Jerseyboy: exactly! M

I tried it in Bic Camera and it was amazing. Not the 'perfect' VR experience, but definitely worth the $100. You launch the app on your Galaxy S6 and then the phone basically clips into the headset. Very clever!

I'm going to wait for the 'full fat' Oculus system though - going to be a game changer! GTA 6 in VR - oh my the mind boggles!

Sony, Nintendo, Panasonic, Toshiba... oh how the mighty have fallen. I still believe in Sony tho.

Unfortunately Japanese users can't buy this. But they will wait for a non-Samsung/Korean brand comes out with with a competing product.

Unfortunately Japanese users can't buy this. But they will wait for a non-Samsung/Korean brand comes out with with a competing product.

Is that why nobody buy iPhone in Japan ? /s

Interesting, but I don't have an S6, so this is no good to me. I'm angling for the Occulus Rift since I'm already building a PC capable of supporting it. Still, I should imagine this appeals to the high-tech lovers who always have to stay at the cutting edge of technology. The low price tag would also appeal to many people, but I'm more of a "whole hog" kinda guy.

the PlayStation.VR is all about quality, it's like Oculus Rift with PlayStation Exclusives in it. I'm sure this PS Experience 2015 is gonna blow your mind.

Yawn...boring, still looks goofy. It will fade out like the 3D TVs.

Sony and the Japanese manufacturers arent playing catch up to Samsung. They are offering different products. Samsung just released a glorified head mounted smartphone holder, and restricted it to their own phones.

For all the rest of us without Samsung phones; VR headsets which do exactly the same thing have been available for years, popularized by the 'Google Cardboard' project (the cheapest of which will only cost you $5-10, but plastic ones that rival the Samsung offering are out there for about $20 or so).

This sort of thing is fun, the wow factor lasts for about a week. But its not going to be very popular in the mainstream market

You have your facts wrong.

It's not just a phone holder like cardboard. Samsung allows the Oculus software root access to the phones hardware. When you are in Gear VR mode its bypassing most of the OS and allows for sub 20ms latency when head tracking. The Gear VR also contains its own sensors that track much better than the phone could by itself.

The only way it can be compared to cardboard is that they both use phones as a display. The experiences are not comparable.