If This Is the Price of Samsung’s Vision Pro Killer, It is Nonetheless Too A lot

Samsung’s first-ever XR headset, Project Moohan, is lastly inching in direction of launch, and there may very well be good and dangerous information for anybody dying to know the place it suits on the value spectrum. The excellent news? According to leaks from a Korean information outlet, Newsworks, Project Moohan will price lower than Apple’s wildly costly Vision Pro, which debuted at $3,500. Phew! Price disaster averted, proper? Wrong. Leaks counsel that the headset will nonetheless price near $2,000, with present conversions from Korean gained translating the value to simply shy of $1,800 USD.

Now, hear, we pay $2,000 for loads of devices on the market, together with some flagship foldable telephones made by Samsung, however there’s nonetheless a significant distinction between XR headsets and telephones. The predominant distinction is that we use our telephones on a regular basis for every part. In 2025, you mainly want a telephone, and whereas that telephone doesn’t must be foldable, it’s so much simpler to justify the value when you recognize you’re going to be utilizing a gadget all day, daily. XR headsets, not a lot.

As a lot as Apple has positioned its Vision Pro as an every part machine—for work, for enjoyable, for FaceTiming your aunt—individuals nonetheless use headsets sparingly, and for good motive. Wearing headsets for a very long time, even one which’s comparatively light-weight like Meta’s Quest 3S, nonetheless sucks. You get sweaty, your eyes get fatigued, and also you begin to assume, “Why am I wearing this thing in the first place?” And for Samsung, all of these chilly, exhausting truths about headsets are working in opposition to something that’s priced as “premium.”

See Quest 3S at Amazon

While Meta has achieved an honest job of shifting Quest headsets, it’s centered on pricing the headset at one thing extra individuals can afford (about $300), which justifies the expense of a tool that most individuals know (even with out utilizing one) that they’re not going to be strapping on their heads daily. And whereas we’re speaking about Meta, it appears firms, Samsung doubtlessly included, nonetheless haven’t discovered from the foibles of Meta and its Quest Pro, which debuted at a now-affordable-seeming $1,500. As a fast recap, that headset tanked exhausting and was discontinued slightly greater than two years after being launched. If solely there was a lesson to be discovered…

I imply, hey, I may very well be mistaken right here—perhaps Project Moohan will carry one thing to the desk that no different headset presents—however all indicators to this point level to the identical obstacles confronted by the Vision Pro. Both gadgets deal with the identical issues: a premium show, an eye- and hand-tracking-based UI, and a form of flagship XR expertise. I’m not saying the headset gained’t be good; I truly absolutely anticipate will probably be, however so is the Vision Pro, and Apple hasn’t had a lot luck convincing even diehard Apple followers that its headset is as good as the value would have you ever assume.

We’ll discover out quickly sufficient, although. Leaks additionally counsel that Samsung is readying to carry one other Unpacked occasion on the finish of September the place it’ll unveil its XR headset in full. And after that, we are able to lastly see if Samsung fares any higher on the earth of dear XR {hardware}, Vision Pro be damned.

See Quest 3S at Amazon