Samsung Android XR Headset’s High Price Is Bad For Fans Of High-End VR

Samsung’s Android XR headset will cost as much as $3,000, comparable with the cost of Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

This latest report comes from Korean publication Newsworks, which also posits the headset will be go up for pre-oder on September 29 before a release in October.

The Samsung Android XR headset will initially be sold in South Korea, ahead of a global release, the timing of which is not clear at present.

Apple made the same move with the Vision Pro. It was released in Apple’s home turf in the U.S. first before expansion out to other territories in 2024.

It’s also worth noting the $1,800-3,000 estimate for the Samsung Android XR headset is based on a currency conversion of Newsworks’s South Korean won figures. There was no huge disparity between Korean and U.S. pricing earlier this year when Samsung released the Galaxy S25 Edge phone. However, the tariffs situation has solidified since then.

While the price estimate covers a fairly wide band, it is clear the Samsung Android XR headset is unlikely to dramatically lower the bar for price of entry for high-end VR experiences. The Samsung headset, just like Vision Pro, is expected to offer very high pixel density, which helps you lose yourself in a VR or AR experience. But it seems we are no closer to bringing that to the kind experience to the approachable level of the Meta Quest family of headsets.

Samsung announced the headset concept, and its design, back in late 2024, as part of a partnership with Google. It will not only mark Samsung’s re-entry into the space since its earlier experiments with Gear VR headsets, but also the launch of the wider Android XR platform.

This is the equivalent to Meta’s Horizon OS, which itself is built upon AOSP, the Android Open Source Project.

Samsung’s Android XR headset will demonstrate what’s possible in the space, while other manufacturers’ headsets will fill out the more affordable categories. XReal has already teased a pair of Project Ara smart glasses, for example, which are somewhat comparable with the $649 Real One Pro.