Samsung Hmd Odyssey Windows Mixed Reality Headset with 2 Wireless Controllers (XE800ZAA-HC1US)

I have a large pumpkin head and the Oculus barely fits me and my glasses do not fit without first being wedged into it before i put the headset on. The Odyssey is large enough to easily fit my glasses and goes on my head nicely, albeit I'm at the limits of the headset's max size. Which brings me to the first advantage of the Odyssey - the ease of personal configuration. There a little knob in the back to tighten the headset that makes it super easy to hand it off to guests to try out. Unlike the Oculus where there's a bunch of velcro straps that need to be adjusted.The Odyssey is incredibly comfortable, the display is clear, and the Samsung controllers are nicer than the generic ones that come with the other WMR headsets. The WMR controllers are connected via bluetooth and are a nice mix between the Vive and Oculus with the combination of the Oculus's joystick with buttons and the Vive's multi-function touchpad. This allows you to use apps on both platforms and not just WMR specific games.The display is much clearer than the Oculus. The screen door effect isn't gone completely, but it is easy to forget and I only notice it when I look for it. It's more of a slightly grainy vintage photo filter instead of a micro checker board. Finer details are much easier to see with the Odyssey than on the Oculus.The headset itself is also much more comfortable to wear than the Oculus and Vive, which surprised me based on its weight, but the design just works so much nicer and I can wear it for hours at a time. The nose flaps are a bit of an annoyance, but they do work to keep the light out as intended. I think I could personally live without them though.The Odyssey also has some features not available on any other WMR or VR headset, such as volume control, diopter control (how far apart your eyes are) with a larger range than the other WMR headsets, and built-in headphones.The builtin headphones are alright. They're not amazing, but they're also not bad. My only complaint is that I can't remove them and use my own Logitech headphones with its virtual 7.1 speaker setup and much deeper bass. The Odyssey headphones are adequate and I don't need to worry about my expensive headphones falling off my head as I look all over the place, so there's that. It's a pro/con that negates itself.The cable is only 13.1ft long which is perfectly fine for me. The majority of the time I'll be using the headset from my chair next to the computer, but I also got some extension cables so i can take the headset into my living room to show off to guests and let them run around and flail freely. You'll need a 10ft HDMI 2.0 with ARC cable and a 10ft Active USB 3.0 cable. Also, you should probably get a 50 pack of the cheap velcro ties for cable management.Setup was an absolute breeze. I used the WMR Portal Checkup to make sure my system met the requirements. You'll need a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle and that's easy enough to get on Amazon (get the best seller) for $10 to $15.I was kind of disappointed that the Odyssey didn't come with any free games, but Windows 10 does come with Minecraft and that is WMR capable. I gasped out loud in astonishment several times playing Minecraft in VR for the first time. I also screamed like a little girl with a skinned knee when a creeper dropped down from the top of a tree right in front of me.Steam has a WMR app that you can download and their Steam Home fully supports WMR. You can get "The Lab" for free off of Steam and it is just fantastic. So, even though there's no packaged games with the Odyssey, there are PLENTY of free games available online.Overall, I am COMPLETELY satisfied with the Odyssey and the biggest PRO is that unlike the Oculus or Vive, I don't need the wall mounted lighthouse sensors constraining me to a single room.

I have tried Oculus Rift, Pimax and now this. For simulator racing this is the new headset for me. I have been using Oculus for around 6 months now and wanted something with less screen door effect. The Pimax was my first choice since it was 4k. I waited months for that to arrive and was over it in 10 min. The ghost effect with the Pimax is horrid. It's beyond usable at all and would make me so sick. Of course it's a lot clearer in one small area. It also doesn't have a very large sweet spot at all. The Oculus Rift has a huge screen door effect. That is minimized to some degree with super sampling. Also the contrast is somewhat dull. When I heard the new HTC Vive Pro was using the Samsung monitors I had to read more about this HMD headset. From everything I read and heard this was a good headset with not much to do for setup. My son has also been going crazy lately over virtual reality games and I thought this would be worth a try to maybe place on the simulator rig. That way he would be able to play with the Oculus and I would have something of my own to use as well.I thought I would give this a try and not disappointed at all. With Amazon you are able to return things fairly easy so I thought I would give it a shot. The packaging is not best looking like Oculus, but much better than the Pimax. You get a decent looking box with things well enough protected to keep them safe. It's not as well packaged as Oculus, and feels like less thought went into that portion. That is okay though but with the idea of it being more portable you would think they would do something better. Either way you buy it for the experience. It took me a few minutes to set it up. Windows sees it right away and you have to have Bluetooth for the controllers to work. That was the only part that took a bit because I had to enable Bluetooth first. Then the controllers getting synced up was the most time spent setting it up. The button is at the bottom of the battery tray which the directions didn't really stand out on where that was at first. It's funny when they don't write something but give you a large picture and your lost... Either way after that I had to download one program from steam (windows mixed reality) and it was ready to go.My first impression was about the contrast. It's so much more than Oculus ever was. It's like going from something that has a gray gradient over it to clarity. This could be from the screen door or the monitors themselves. Either way its a huge difference in contrast and no real screen door to be seen. The game I mostly play is Project Cars 2 and it was so much more clear. Setting this up also cleared out my graphic settings. Everything was set back to low and it was still more clear than anything I have seen in Oculus. The only down side to this is that I see more jittering, sort of like ghosting but its jumpy. I don't know if that's frames dropping or something else. I have played with super sampling and graphic settings from low to high and it always seems to be about the same amount. The real irony is that loading the performance tools it looks like the cpu is the bottleneck and not my card. I didn't see my card ever go into the red which seems odd. I set the super sampling up to 1.4 and it seemed to smooth out which is the opposite of what I would expect. Either way I also tried Assetto Corsa and it was so clear and smooth. It was more smooth than Project Cars 2. I have not played this for the room experience so I can't say that I would like the controllers or not. I can't say what it will play and won't of Oculus games either. It seems steam has a way to get games to run but who knows from game to game if you will have the support you would get with Oculus and HTC. If you are looking for the best seated experience however this might be it for sim racing.Just for reference I have a 1080 ti graphic card, 16 gigs of ram, i7 7700 cpu and running a samsung 960 evo ssd. I was thinking of loading project cars 2 onto the ssd and see if that helps for the jumpiness. I have it minimized now but would like it a little smoother.