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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Priced surprisingly low at $1,799, half the cost of Apple Vision Pro.
- Includes “The Explorer Pack” with $1,000+ worth of premium subscriptions.
- Headset use cases center on immersive entertainment and professional spatial editing.
Samsung officially launched the Galaxy XR headset, and though most details were already available pre-launch, the company managed to keep the price point of $1,799 under wraps.
The news came as a surprise to many, as it places the headset at half the price point of the Apple Vision Pro. To justify the price point even further, Samsung is including a number of free extras with the purchase.
Also: Samsung offers free $100 deal to new Android XR headset users – how to redeem it now
Accessing immersive entertainment experiences, such as watching your favorite show on a screen that mimics the theater experience from the comfort of your living room, is one of the biggest draws to AR/XR headsets. To help users get the most out of the headset and discover their favorite use cases, Samsung includes “The Explorer Pack” with every purchase.
“I think the immersive entertainment to me is probably the most compelling use case,” Drew Blackard, SVP of Mobile Product Management at Samsung, told me.
This package gets users over $1,000 worth of subscriptions, including 12 months of access to Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, Google Play Pass, and an XR Pack, which includes a three-month subscription to YouTube TV, a 12-month subscription to NBA League Pass, NFL, PRO ERA, Project Pulsar from Adobe, Asteroid, and Calm. That’s a lot.
Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET
I had the opportunity to demo watching a YouTube video on the headset, which was automatically spatialized for an immersive viewing experience. Additionally, the video was playing on a suspended screen in my environment, with separate windows for comments, adding to the immersion. Given that it was one of my more memorable experiences, I can see how YouTube TV and YouTube Premium subscriptions could be beneficial.
Also: I wore smart glasses with xMEMS speakers and cooling fans – and wished my Ray-Bans had the same
Other integrations, such as Project Pulsar from Adobe, were demoed on stage to demonstrate how the headset can also benefit working professionals, enabling users to edit video spatially within their 360-degree environment.
Of course, Gemini was at the center of many of the demos, offering the AI assistant overlayed on any application the user had opened and the environment passing through the lenses.
The Google AI Pro subscription, which on its own costs $240 per year, not only allows users to experience higher usage limits when using the headset, but since it’s attached to their Google account, it also means they can take advantage of the Pro perks, such as 2TB of cloud storage, access to Whisk and Flow, Gemini 2.5 Pro model and Deep Search in AI Mode, higher limits to Jules, and more.
