So Samsung has just recently started teasing this unreleased prototype VR headset called Project MUHAN and they haven't actually let anyone outside of the company show it to the public yet... until now. So welcome to your exclusive first look and early impressions of the very collaborative Samsung and Google headset that looks a lot like a Vision Pro. Actually want to take a step back real quick though because this isn't just a Vision Pro lookalike, this is potentially a huge step towards fixing the fragmentation in the world of VR and mixed reality headsets right now.

Because right now there's Vision Pro obviously running Apple's Vision OS. There's the MetaQuest running Horizon OS. And those major ones will probably keep running those. But then there's the world of all the other headsets out there.

And we just saw CES. There's a lot of other headsets around just popping up left and right. And what software should they run? So this is the first Android XR headset.

So it's a pretty deep collaboration between Google and Samsung. Think of it as like the Nexus or Pixel, but for headsets. It's a huge baseline amount of software.

It's an OS with tons of features that give it a really high baseline for functionality. And then some example hardware to show it all off on. Now, again, this is technically an...

unfinished prototype that they're showing me. So it could still have a few tweaks and things that they changed before the end. But Samsung has also made it very clear that it's intending on shipping it this year. So I feel pretty good about evaluating what they've put in front of me. And it's honestly pretty solid.

Does it look like a Vision Pro from the front? Yes, of course. I mean, it's got the light colored fabrics, obviously. It's got the huge reflective glass piece at the front, although there is no screen showing your eyes on the outside. So that's a nice difference.

I actually posted this on Twitter. And half of the comments were like, oh, you're making another Vision Pro video because it just looks so similar. The way the removable forehead rest looks is definitely inspired.

And there's also another removable magnetic light shield that you can easily drop in the bottom to block out more light or keep it off for more peripheral vision. But then the back borrows more from the now discontinued Quest Pro, I would say, with this sthis isa test of dediting some notes. I’m not sure what issues people are having. ?????

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ort of cup on the back of your head plus a dial to adjust how snug it is. I found that with this setup, basically most of the weight or the.

The pressure now is on my brow above my eyes, unlike with the Vision Pro, it was more below my eyes because of the way it sort of sagged. So I thought I might like an over-the-head strap option too at first, but I actually don't think this one's going to need it. So then this thin metallic frame at the front has all the computer guts in it.

It has the Snapdragon chip. It has these fans with exhaust holes at the top, like you can see. There's a single button at the top right and a volume rocker at the top left. And there's...

sensors and cameras all the way around facing all directions. And there's even a touchpad on the right side strap, right where this raised bar is right here. And then there's even one more thing that you might have noticed that they copied from Vision Pro, which is the external battery pack on a cable that goes into your back pocket.

But there is one pretty key difference here. So it connects to the headset with a removable battery like Apple's. It has a decently long braided cable like Apple's. And relatively small first-party battery, just like Apple's.

But unlike the Vision Pro, this cable on the battery side is removable, and it's just USB Type-C. So you can use this included battery, which has a more secure fit, obviously, but if you want to plug in a bigger battery or whatever other battery you own, then you can do that too. Thank you. But I've actually come away from this experience not really thinking that much about the actual hardware, because that's not actually what makes this headset so cool.

It's Android XR. Think of it this way. If you are Google and Samsung and you're trying to put together the pixel of headsets and you want to give people an actual reason to buy it over a Vision Pro, for example, what do you do?

What's your move? Hint, it's the exact same move that they use for the Pixel software. So a lot of the basics, a lot of the fundamentals are going to be the same, right? There is a home menu, which has a scrolling list of all your apps, plus some quickly accessible settings and recent apps.

And then instead of a digital crown, you can always go home by hitting the top button once or do this hand-tracked gesture to quickly get back there. And yes, there is both hand tracking and eye tracking in this headset. At no point during this demo did I use any controllers, although I do believe it'll support controllers, might even come with some controllers in the box, don't know that yet. But this was a very easy headset to just set up, put it on, and just use it. And I think also will be super easy to share, so if I just wanted to hand it to someone and they want to see what I see, they put it on, all they really have to do is hold down that that one button and it'll...

line up the lenses to match their eye distance, and then they're off to the races. So you're messing around using this thing. These windows have these really large handles underneath them or above them to grab them and move them around in 3D space. You can also grab any corner to resize a window to basically any aspect ratio you want. And then since it's the Android headset, it has two main things going for it.

One is the Play Store, and two is Gemini. So first of all, all Play Store apps. will work on this Android XR headset.

So that includes phone apps and tablet apps. Matter of fact, these apps seem to respond well to me changing them to literally whatever aspect ratio and size I want. I was kind of trying to break it and it seemed fine the whole time. So the idea is that any headset that runs Android XR right out the box will have the same advantage.

Tons of apps available. And then there's also spatial apps specifically, which are built for headsets and are fully optimized. So YouTube, for example, they have a spatial app for it. This wasn't as eager to let me change aspect ratios, but the whole app has this more specifically multi-window experience and lets you add an immersive background at any time if you want to, similar to certain Vision Pro apps having their own built-in environments. And then also the headset always seemed to play nice with peripherals.

So moving quickly between this random Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and hand controls was pretty seamless. So I love that even more. But hear me out. The Gemini integration.

was actually the most interesting part to me. And it might not even be for the reason that you're expecting, but I think it was really cool. So at any point, you can just go home and hit the Gemini button and just talk to it.

Basically, it starts running an instance of Gemini Live in the background. You know, the live conversational version of Gemini that you can sort of talk back and forth with and carry on a full conversation with. It does that in the headset.

And also, Gemini is multimodal, which in the headset means that it can see everything that you're seeing. So you can ask Gemini about something that's just in front of you, and it can give you answers just like as if you'd taken a picture of it with your phone. So it can translate signs or answer trivia questions or just tell you about what you're looking at, etc. Can you take me to here? Sure.

That looks like Wadi Rum in Jordan. One update I would like is for it to be able to subscribe to YouTube channels and like videos, but it doesn't seem to be able to do that yet, so you have to do it with your mouse and keyboard. Whoa.

So that was cool, but Gemini can also navigate the UI for you. So it was able to move around windows, organize my windows for me, close a bunch of windows, and then it can actually move around inside of apps. I believe this would just work with spatial apps, but I was having a lot of fun messing around inside of Google Maps and just jumping around to different places just by...

talking to Gemini and then occasionally selecting things with a pinch. And Gemini would know how to search for things. It would know how to use a search box. It would find things in Maps, switch the UI from street view to the zoomed out view. It could do all of this through voice.

And that saves a ton of moving my hands through the air to the point where it was pretty significant. Hey Gemini, take me to the South Mountain Reservation. I can do that. And then there's also built-in circle to search in real life.

It was a little buggy when I was playing with it, but the idea is really cool still. So if you hold down the top right button on the headset, it plays a little animation, and then you can pinch your fingers together and just circle in real life whatever you want to search. And it pops up a window exactly the way it would on an Android phone, and Google searches that thing.

And it's so sick when it works. It seems so obvious for a Google headset, but yeah, I'm glad it's actually here. Now, it is still Gemini, which is to say it's not perfect.

It's still lacking a little bit of functionality from Google Assistant, right? And I talked about bugs, like there's an awkward bug where if you circle to search, but then your hand is in the circle, it takes a screenshot of your hand and searches that. So they got to figure out a way to instruct people to circle the right way.

But this is still a massive difference versus the Vision Pro, which has no Apple intelligence features, no AI features at all, and probably won't be getting any anytime soon, it looks like. And I just feel like using these headsets for a long period of time, I've noticed there is a good amount of fatigue from the tiny, you know, touch targets and the pinching and just moving your arm around a lot. It's a small thing, but it's a lot more than a mouse and keyboard. There's just a lot more arm movements. And so I found that the fact that I could minimize that by just talking to the headset was surprisingly high on my list of useful features.

Hey, Gemini, my windows are kind of a mess. Can you organize them? I can help with that.

So my takeaways from my couple hours here, you know, I could judge things like display quality and field of view. which were both fine, by the way, not remarkable. It had pretty good sharpness, much better than it looks in my screen recordings, I can tell you that. Just a notch behind Vision Pro. But also these things could all change a little bit by the time the final headset comes out.

I also like the hardware design. I like that you can easily remove this light shield and keep some peripheral vision and some light coming in from the rest of the room around you. It just subconsciously made it feel slightly more like glasses, even though they're obviously not glasses.

But overall, it's almost been more fascinating to see what... Google is doing at a software level with their first new platform, like their first new OS really in like 10 years. So I feel like I just got to test drive a concept car where they have a whole bunch of new ideas about how driving works. And if this is the Pixel 1, let's say, of Android XR headsets, then that leaves room for other higher end and lower end headsets to come out with Android XR, just like there are higher end and lower end phones. I asked.

Samsung would not tell me the price of this Project Muhen headset, so it could come out at any price. It's probably a little bit more premium, but the idea, again, is it'll inspire much more development, more spatial apps, and then all the headsets that run Android XR get better. So let's keep an eye out on the landscape of VR and XR headsets when this comes out.

And now, shout out to Best Buy for sponsoring this portion of the video. Best Buy is the go-to for the latest and greatest selection of tech, including virtual reality products, so stuff like the MetaQuest and other VR gaming and accessories. So shop now in-store or online at BestBuy.com.

Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think. Catch you in the next one. Peace.