Ubergizmo co-founder Hubert Nguyen trying Gear VR for S6
A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the consumer version of the Samsung Gear VR would be available for pre-order. If for some reason you missed this piece of news and wanted to get your hands on the device, fret not because the Gear VR is now available for purchase and it will set you back $99.
Customers will be able to find the device via a number of retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon, so if you want to get your hands on it, those are some of the potential channels that you can check out. Now before you get too excited, there are some caveats that you should be made aware of in case you didn’t know already.
For starters this isn’t a “true” VR headset unlike the HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, or the Oculus Rift. Instead this setup is similar to the likes of Google Cardboard where your phone will act as its display and users will have to download VR-specific apps to truly take advantage of it. Speaking of phones, the Gear VR is also limited to Samsung devices.
As it stands, the Gear VR will only play nicely with Samsung phones like the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, so if you don’t own any of those flagship devices from Samsung, you’d be out of luck. No word on whether Samsung will expand support anytime soon, so if you have an older Samsung device, you should probably not hold your breath.
Filed in . Read more about Gear VR, Samsung, Virtual Reality (VR) and Wearable Tech.