Google and Samsung have been building the Galaxy XR headset for years, and now it’s officially available as of October 21, 2025. Galaxy XR was once known as Project Moohan, which means “infinity” in Korean, referring to the infinite amount of space you have to work with in 3D virtual space.
Galaxy XR represents the biggest investment Samsung and Google have made into the VR and AR category in years. Galaxy XR isn’t just a gorgeous, premium mixed reality headset; it’s also the catalyst for Android XR, a new version of Android built from the ground up for mixed reality in the Gemini era.
Samsung Galaxy XR: Launch and pricing
The Galaxy XR is available starting October 21, 2025, for $1,799, through Samsung.com and Samsung Experience Stores. Samsung also offers financing options, bringing the price down to just $75 per month for 24 months.
Early buyers get The Explorer Pack for free, a bundle worth over $1,140 that includes Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, Google Play Pass, Calm Premium, an NBA League Pass for the 25/26 season, 12 months of Adobe Project Pulsar, the full NFL PRO ERA game, and more.
Samsung also sells an official travel case, a pair of motion-tracked controllers, and prescription lenses built for Galaxy XR.
Samsung Galaxy XR: What can you do with it?
Samsung Galaxy XR is a mixed reality headset that’s designed for augmented reality and virtual reality experiences. The primary use is for productivity and entertainment, as Samsung envisions people using it to make videos using Adobe Project Pulsar, working with giant virtual monitors that can be easily moved around, watching movies in an immersive virtual theater, and even playing games on a huge virtual screen using cloud services like Xbox Game Pass.
Galaxy XR also supports native VR games built for the headset, including popular VR games like Demeo, Arizona Sunshine, Job Simulator, Walkabout Mini Golf, and more. It also supports PC VR gaming via apps like Virtual Desktop, which provide full access to SteamVR, making it the ultimate wireless PC VR headset because of its capabilities and resolution.
Samsung Galaxy XR: Headset and controller design
Samsung Galaxy XR looks a lot like the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest Pro had a baby. Galaxy XR will allow users to wear it with or without light blockers to better tailor the experience. The light blockers are magnetically attached, making them simple to pop on and off as needed.
This is identical to how the Meta Quest Pro functioned, as users could easily remove the light blockers for a more open mixed-reality experience. This made it possible to see the periphery around the headset, including to the sides and below.
Overall, it looks a lot like a pair of ski goggles, a description that’s been used for both Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest Pro.
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Samsung Galaxy XR is smartly using a rigid strap similar to the Meta Quest Pro instead of the uncomfortable cloth strap used on the Apple Vision Pro. This helps better distribute weight and provide stability across your head, complete with a nice thick pad along the back of the cranium.
The strap’s size can be quickly adjusted via a dial on the back, similar to Meta Quest Pro or the best Meta Quest 3 accessories. A generous forehead pad keeps all the weight spaced out between the user’s forehead and the cushion on the back of the head for maximum comfort.
That also means there’s no weight placed on a user’s face at all, a significant improvement to Apple’s face-heavy design. Samsung is keeping the battery as a tethered accessory instead of packing it into the headset, ensuring that it weighs as little as possible. Thankfully, you can charge the battery pack while using the headset, potentially adding unlimited time to the estimated 2.5-hour battery life.
Hidden behind the gorgeous glass front is a set of six tracking cameras, two high-resolution passthrough cameras, one depth sensor, and one flicker sensor. These ensure that tracking the space around you feels as accurate and natural as your own movements and that controllers and hands can be accurately tracked for input.
On the inside of the headset, you’ll find a pair of pancake lenses that provide the utmost clarity for the micro OLED panels Samsung is using. The 109-degree FoV of these lenses is nearly identical to the Meta Quest 3. Four eye-tracking cameras ring the lenses, and an iris sensor acts as a way to biometrically authenticate yourself for payment apps and unlocking the device.
Galaxy XR uses a cutting-edge micro-OLED display with 3,552 x 3,840 resolution (29 million pixels), 96% DCI-P3 color gamut, and support for 60Hz, 72Hz, and 90Hz modes. By comparison, Apple Vision Pro’s display packs in 23 million pixels, giving Galaxy XR a sharper look.
Samsung Galaxy XR: Controllers and gaming
Galaxy XR is designed from the ground up to be used without controllers, but Samsung sells a set of motion-tracked controllers on its website for $250 (price as of October 2025). These controllers feature standard XR button inputs similar to systems like the Meta Quest 3 or PlayStation VR2. That includes six buttons on the front, two triggers, two grip buttons, and a pair of joysticks, all split between each controller.
The controllers are tracked via IR lights and the cameras on the headset, ensuring the utmost accuracy when playing VR or mixed reality games. Samsung doesn’t provide a battery life estimate for the controllers at this time, although it’s expected that they will last several hours on a single charge.
These controllers can be used to play games that run on the headset’s hardware or used in conjunction with an app like Virtual Desktop to play SteamVR games. As of launch, Galaxy XR features around 30 games that can be purchased and downloaded from the Google Play Store.
Developers have told Android Central that porting Meta Quest games to Android XR is relatively easy and requires very little time, encouraging the possibility of seeing many games on this platform in the future. Popular titles like Walkabout Mini Golf look and run perfectly on the headset, offering hundreds of hours of fun with friends in an immersive space.
Gamers interested in playing PC VR titles at ultra-high resolutions should use Virtual Desktop to connect to their PCs, as it officially supports the headset’s use of face tracking, eye tracking, hand tracking, passthrough up to “Monster Resolution,” and up to 90Hz refresh rate support. Eye and face tracking means apps like VRChat can show your real expressions to other players, making it an excellent choice as an ultimate PC VR headset.
Samsung Galaxy XR: Specs and performance
Samsung Galaxy XR uses some of the most cutting-edge hardware that can be found on any XR headset to date. That includes micro-OLED panels with extremely high resolution, pancake lenses for the clearest imagery possible, eye tracking built into the lenses, and ultra-high-resolution cameras for clean passthrough mixed reality vision.
Additionally, Samsung and Google have partnered with Qualcomm and will include the Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 inside Galaxy XR. This chipset delivers 20% higher CPU frequency and 15% higher GPU frequency than the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 in the Quest 3 and Quest 3S. Essentially, this extra horsepower is required to run the experience smoothly at the ultra-high resolution that Samsung’s displays offer.
Based on our hands-on time, the headset feels snappy and processes tasks quickly, including locally processed Gemini commands. Games released so far
|
Category |
Specs |
|---|---|
|
Display |
3552 x 3840 pixels, 90Hz |
|
Lenses |
Pancake, 109-degree horizontal by 100-degree vertical FoV 54-70mm IPD Supports prescription add-ons |
|
Chipset |
Qualcomm Snapddragon XR2+ Gen 2 |
|
RAM |
16GB |
|
Storage |
256GB |
|
Camera |
6.5MP 3D camera, f/2.0 |
|
Sensors |
2 high-resolution passthrough cameras |
|
Security |
Iris recognition |
|
Audio |
6-microphone array, two speaker pairs (woofer + tweeter) Supports 8K video playback at 60FPS |
|
Battery |
Up to 2.5 hours of use per charge |
|
Connectivity |
WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 |
|
Weight |
545g |
Samsung Galaxy XR: Software
Samsung Galaxy XR, like Apple’s Vision Pro, targets the mixed reality UI paradigm first introduced by the Meta Quest Pro. Mixed-reality passthrough will enable apps that sit on virtual screens within your real living room, letting you see the world around you while still using virtual apps. It’s all powered by Android XR, a new version of Android that Google says is “the first Android platform built entirely for the Gemini era.”
This means that the entire UI can be controlled via multimodal input, including eye tracking, hand tracking, controllers, and voice input. Gemini has full power over the experience and can do virtually anything you need it to do, helping to change the paradigm of how we interact with mixed-reality apps. You can even ask Gemini to organize the windows of apps you have running, making it a very powerful organizational tool.
When Google revealed it on stage, the company said, “You can talk to your device as if you were talking to someone in the physical world.” This is because Gemini can see what you see and hear what you hear, including using the cameras on the headset to help identify things around you. This means you can circle to search for things using your hands, so it’s easy to find great cooking recipes and cook hands-free, for example.
In a surprise move, Google confirmed that all Android apps on the Google Play Store will work on Galaxy XR from day one. That’s a massive leg-up on both Apple and Meta, as it means all your favorite apps already work on Samsung’s new headset.
Google touts many of its apps running on Galaxy XR, including Google Photos, Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and others. The headset works for both entertainment and productivity thanks to its hardware design, which allows for high-quality immersive and mixed-reality experiences alike.
Apps like YouTube can be run in a floating window or in fully immersive theater mode. Better yet, the headset is capable of enhancing 2D videos by adding a convincing layer of 3D depth using onboard AI. In our hands-on, Michael Hicks noted that “while Galaxy XR’s hardware is impressive, I wouldn’t be as excited for the headset if it weren’t for unique Android XR tricks like this.”
While browsing the web, you can pull Chrome tabs off the main window and place them in a floating window, giving you “unlimited monitors” to work on, no matter where you’re working from.
Beyond comparisons to existing headsets, Google hopes to pave a new way to the future through communication with Gemini. Since Gemini can see and hear everything in the real and virtual worlds, it has a significant advantage over Apple’s Siri in the Vision Pro and Meta AI in the Quest 3.
This allows you to have a conversation with Google about what’s happening in any app you’re using, as well as the room around you, melding the two together in a way that we simply have not seen before.
Google showed off a brief Gemini on Android XR showcase during The Android Show on May 13, 2025. This particular demo showed off how Gemini can be used to search for information, but it doesn’t work exactly like you’re used to. Instead of just pulling up the search results on a single browser tab, Gemini can open multiple applications at a time and give you extensive information with a single query.
In the example, the person was researching vacation options and Gemini was able to pull up Google Maps, YouTube videos, and even assemble a draft itinerary in Google Docs, all on “the infinite screen,” as the presenter called it. This lets you “create an itinerary in minutes” with tons of useful information at your fingertips instead of needing to cycle through multiple apps on a tiny phone screen.
The most cutting-edge XR headset ever made is here, and it runs all Google Play apps in a new version of Android called Android XR. Plus, it’s got VR games, immersive experiences, live sports, and more.
