Official: Samsung Odyssey could be the Windows VR headset to beat
You know Galaxy. Now, meet Odyssey:
This image is official, unlike the product page images that leaked this morning.
MicrosoftIt's a new VR headset, from Samsung, designed for your Windows PC. It's coming Nov. 6 for $499 (roughly £375 or AU$640). As of 11:00am PT, it's now totally official, after originally leaking in a Microsoft product page this morning.
To tell you the truth, it doesn't look all that special, because it's just one in a barrage of Windows VR headsets coming this fall: Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo all have them too. But the Odyssey has two things they don't: Samsung's increasingly sought-after AMOLED screens, and built-in headphones.
AMOLED technology generally offers far deeper blacks than the LCD panels every other PC manufacturer is building into their headsets, which can be quite useful for a realistic VR experience. Plus, Samsung's panels appear to be higher resolution too -- while every other Windows Mixed Reality headset has a resolution of 1,440x1,440 pixels per eye, Samsung's displays will apparently offer more vertical real estate at 1,440x1,600 pixels.
(For context, those are notably higher-res than the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, which offer just 1,080x1,200 pixels per eye.)
The leaked Samsung controllers look very similar, but perhaps with slightly more ergonomic grips, to other ones we've seen demoed with Microsoft VR headsets.
MicrosoftBuilt-in headphones, meanwhile, are just plain convenient for VR -- you don't have to worry about cords getting tangled, or whether the band of your existing headphones will fit around the headset's straps. We've definitely preferred having them on the Oculus Rift, compared to the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, which require you to plug in additional parts.
But there's a lot we don't yet know about Samsung's headset. Is it any good? Is it comfortable? We'll need to find out -- not to mention whether it's worth $499, as much as you'd pay for a complete Oculus Rift kit, and more than Microsoft's other partners are asking for their Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
So far, we've been cautiously optimistic about Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality platform. It's neat how the headset's built-in cameras mean you don't need to mount base stations around your room. (You do with the existing Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR.) But we haven't yet tried it under real-world conditions, only in fairly dim rooms, and we had some tracking issues in early demos.
Plus, like most VR platforms, we're still waiting for a piece of content that'll make us want to buy it. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Microsoft is hoping that it can make VR headsets as simple as PC monitors -- you just plug one in, and it works, with no additional setup. We'll let you know if Samsung's headset is the one to buy when we've had some time with it this fall.
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