[Review] A virtual reality experience with your smartphone

Hey everyone,

Today I am here to review a fun little gadget that I have had for a while now.

It's the Samsung Gear VR - virtual reality headset. I received them when I got my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and have had a lot of fun with them since that. The headset has pretty limited compatibility and you would have to own a Samsung Galaxy S6/Edge/Edge+, S7/S7 Edge,S8/S8+ or the Note 5/Note 8. If you do have one of those devices though and are looking for a VR headset that isn't too expensive then this is the one for you.

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The headset was made together with Oculus and does work surprisingly good for using only the phones performance. You basically attach your phone to the headset and it automatically launched the Oculus app on your phone. It brings you to the main menu where you can choose from your library of apps and games. There are a lot of free applications and games to choose from in the Oculus store and also a lot of great paid ones.

I used the headset the most in the beginning and sadly didn't use it too much after that but now when I though I'd try it out it surprised me how much the store had expanded and it seemed like the community had become larger too. Now there is also a Gear VR Controller which really makes it a lot more enjoyable. When I used it a lot I didn't have the controller and it always felt like that was missing. You can see it in the picture above.

I took some pictures to show you what my headset looks like so you can kind of see how you attach the phone and how it works overall. Here they are:

As you can see in the picture where the red arrow is, that's whre your phone is attached to the headset through USB. The other side helps hold the phone in it's place. In this other picture you can see the touchpad and buttons that are on the side of the headset and can be used to navigate through menus and controls in games.

The headset can also be used with other bluetooth controllers that you can find online and as long as they are compatible with Android they should work. The headset can be found on a lot of different internet shops but the prices differ a lot from country to country so I would recommend you check them out yourselves if you are interested.

In Finland the headset with the controller will cost you around 49€. My opinion on these is that they actually are really good for trying out the whole virtual reality genre. But the graphics and performance are of course a little limited since VR is a fairly new things and even PC's are struggling to use it so the phones do have their limitations in those areas.

I've had the most fun watching others try out my headset and it's always really funny to see other peoples reactions to it. Depending on the age they can be really funny reactions. I am thinking about maybe getting myself a controller so I can trythat out and play some games. Without the controller it can be very annoying to have to hold up you hand to yur head to use the touchpad all the time.

The games I've tried so far have been some horror games and a lot of roller coaster games. Good examples of those are "Epic Roller Coasters" and "Face your fears".

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That was it for this review of the Samsung Gear VR. I hope you like it and if you have tried any kind of VR yourselves then please let me know in the comments below!

Merry Christmas everyone who celebrates it and hope your all having a great Sunday!

Strawhat