The new Gear VR eschews the white of Samsung's previous headsets for a near-black midnight blue finish. Besides the color change and the expected iterative adjustments to work with the latest Galaxy phones, however, the latest Gear VR looks and feels very similar to previous models. The horizontal headband is fairly wide, and pulls through loops on either side of the headset. The thinner vertical headband has a plastic hook that clicks into place on top. Once adjusted, the Gear VR felt comfortable on my head, staying pressed snugly against my face without any irritating rubbing of plastic on skin or awkward distribution of weight against the straps. Installing a phone in the Gear VR is simple. Once the correct docking connector is attached, set its position between A or B using a small button located under it ( A is for Galaxy Notes, B is for Galaxy S smartphones) . Plug the phone into the connector and push it down, locking it in place using the latch opposite the docking connector. If the software isn't already installed, the phone will prompt you to remove it from the connector and install the Gear VR and Oculus apps before returning it to the headset. After everything is installed, you're ready to use VR. it uses Galaxy smartphones with 2, 560-by-1, 440 screens compared with the Rift and Vive's 2, 100-by-1, 200 panels. That doesn't tell the whole story, though. The Gear VR has to adjust to work with multiple Galaxy smartphones, and those phones aren't built with VR as the primary use case. I also used Samsung's Internet for Gear VR, a virtual reality Web browser. Conclusions
The new Samsung Gear VR is a functional, accessible, and affordable way to play with VR if you have a compatible Galaxy phone, and anyone with even a passing interest in VR should seriously consider giving it a shot.
