Samsung's new Gear VR ($129.99) adds a Bluetooth controller that puts it on par, from a hardware perspective, with Google's Daydream View. But at least at launch, the VR apps on offer are a mess, keeping this VR headset an early adopter minefield rather than something you'd want to recommend to your friends. That said, most people will get the Gear VR and controller for free, bundled with a new Samsung Galaxy S8 phone. And as a free accessory, it's certainly good for some fun.

Putting It On

The Gear VR hardware hasn't changed much. It's a foam-padded headset with Velcro straps that go above and around your head. The foam padding is removable, in case it gets too gunky and you want to replace it. A Galaxy S6, S7, S8, or Note 5 phone snaps into the front, using either a USB-C or micro USB port. (There are removable port modules on the headset itself.) On the side, there's a touch pad, below back and home buttons for navigation. A focus wheel toward the front adjusts the headset to match your eyesight.

The headset fit just fine over my glasses. I found it comfortable and not sweaty, without the irritating light leak up the bridge of my nose that plagued me on the Daydream View.

To use the Gear VR for the first time, you snap your phone into it and then disconnect it, which prompts you to download the Oculus app. The Oculus app contains a UI and store that syncs up with an Oculus account on your PC, if you have one.

You get a 101-degree field of view that follows your head as you move it around. VR experiences are smooth, but slightly grainy, with visible pixels no matter what phone you use.

The 4.25-inch-long, 2.27-ounce Bluetooth controller changes the Gear VR experience in a big way. Selecting things used to be the most annoying part of using the headset: you either had to stare at something for several seconds, or tap the control pad on the side, jiggling your headset. Using a handheld controller is much easier. If you already own a Gear VR, you can buy a controller for $39.99.

The controller itself fits easily into the right or left hand and has a touch pad, a large button, a trigger, and home, back, and volume buttons. It's powered by two AAA batteries that Samsung says will last for 40 days of use. It can detect tilt, but not free motion in space. Using the Gear VR is still a seated experience, unlike the HTC Vive ($99.99 at Amazon) or Qualcomm's standalone Snapdragon 835 VR platform.

The Spring of Our Discontent

VR is nothing without content. That's the Gear VR's problem. The Oculus Store is full of games, but several of the apps I used worked poorly, erratically, or not at all.

While Samsung says 70 controller-enabled apps are in the works, there are only eight apps that officially support the controller at launch (five games, a star chart app, and two social networking apps). Even in non-controller-optimized apps, the main button works to select or fire, and swiping on the touch pad maps to swipes on the headset's touch pad. When apps worked, I found the controller to be easily responsive, although it had to be recentered (by holding down the home button) each time I put the headset on.

See How We Test VR Headsets

But I downloaded a bunch of apps and got a grab bag of problems. At one point, the Oculus app itself gave up and crashed. The games A Night Sky, Bandit Six: Salvo, Oogie, Temple Run VR, Wheelrush, and Zombie Strike all worked fine. But the Samsung VR video app stuttered in a Janelle Monae music video. The Disney VR app had buffering issues on Wi-Fi. The game Rangi had clipped audio. And the apps Rose (a VR film) and vTime (a social network) just wouldn't launch at all.

I'm also not convinced that some of the content platforms are being updated. Both Samsung VR and Within currently have a strikingly similar lineup of 360-degree videos to when I looked at the Gear VR last year. There's no YouTube app; you can get to YouTube via the browser, but that's a step behind Google Daydream. You can watch movies on a private "big screen" through a Netflix app, but there are no Amazon or Hulu apps.

Free Is a Very Good Price

As mentioned, most people will get the Gear VR as a free add-on with their Galaxy phone. Fine! It makes a great free add-on.

But for the Gear VR to be a real differentiator, there need to be real reasons to use it. Some of those reasons may come from Facebook, which just announced the new Facebook Spaces VR world at its F8 conference. Facebook owns Oculus, so Facebook VR is likely to appear on the Gear VR first.

In a briefing at Samsung HQ in Seoul, product strategy team VP Robert Kim said Samsung, Oculus, and Facebook are working together to make "the experience across Gear VR and Oculus Rift ($427.81 at Amazon) the same experience."

But I just can't recommend Gear VR enthusiastically until I feel the store and platform are richer and more stable. And if games aren't your thing, there also just isn't enough there. VR content platforms like Samsung VR and Within still feel like a stack of early demos and short movies made by content creators who did a few things and then left. There's no continual stream of new, engaging apps.

We gave last year's iteration of the Gear VR a higher rating, but that was based partially on the promise of new content. This is the third generation of Gear VR, and the platform feels stalled. Samsung and Facebook need better, more reliable apps to make the Gear VR a worthwhile purchase. For now, if you're interested in VR, you're better off going all-in with Sony's Playstation VR ($269.99 at Best Buy) or the HTC Vive.

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