Samsung is the first partner to formally announce a new MR headset based on the newly announced Android XR. The device, codenamed “Project Moohan,” is planned for consumer release in 2025. We went hands on with an early version.
Note: Samsung and Google aren’t yet sharing any key details for this headset like resolution, weight, field-of-view, or price. During my demo I also wasn’t allowed to capture photos or videos, so we only have an official image for the time being.
If I told you that Project Moohan felt like a mashup between Quest and Vision Pro, you’d probably get the idea that it has a lot of overlapping capabilities. But I’m not just making a rough analogy. Just looking at the headset, it’s clear that it has taken significant design cues from Vision Pro. Everything from colors to button placement to calibration steps, make it unmistakably aware of other products on the market.
And then on the software side, if I had told you “please make an OS that mashes together Horizon OS and VisionOS,” and you came back to me with Android XR, I’d say you nailed the assignment.
It’s actually uncanny just how much Project Moohan and Android XR feel like a riff on the two other biggest headset platforms.
But this isn’t a post to say someone stole something from someone else. Tech companies are always borrowing good ideas and good designs from each other—sometimes improving them along the way. So as long as Android XR and Project Moohan got the good parts of others, and avoided the bad parts, that’s a win for developers and users.
And many of the good parts do indeed appear to be there.
Hands-on With Samsung Project Moohan Android XR Headset
Starting from the Project Moohan hardware—it’s a good-looking device, no doubt. It definitely has the ‘goggles’-style look of Vision Pro, as well as a tethered battery pack (not pictured above).
But where Vision Pro has a soft strap (that I find rather uncomfortable without a third-party upgrade), Samsung’s headset has a rigid strap with tightening dial, and an overall ergonomic design that’s pretty close to Quest Pro. That means an open-peripheral design which is great for using the headset for AR. Also like Quest Pro, the headset has some magnetic snap-on blinders for those that want a blocked-out peripheral for fully immersive experiences.
And though the goggles-look and even many of the button placements (and shapes) are strikingly similar to Vision Pro, Project Moohan doesn’t have an external display to show the user’s eyes. Vision Pro’s external ‘EyeSight’ display has been criticized by many, but I maintain it’s a desirable feature, and one that I wish Project Moohan had. Coming from Vision Pro, it’s just kind of awkward to not be able to ‘see’ the person wearing the headset, even though they can see you.
Samsung has been tight-lipped about the headset’s tech details, insisting that it’s still a prototype. However, we have learned the headset is running a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 processor, a more powerful version of the chip in Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
In my hands-on I was able to glean a few details. For one, the headset is using pancake lenses with automatic IPD adjustment (thanks to integrated eye-tracking). The field-of-view feels smaller than Quest 3 or Vision Pro, but before I say that definitively, I first need to try different forehead pad options (confirmed to be included) which may be able to move my eyes closer to the lenses for a wider field-of-view.
From what I got to try however, the field-of-view did feel smaller—albeit, enough to still feel immersive—and so did the sweet spot due to brightness fall-off toward the outer edges of the display. Again, this is something that may improve if the lenses were closer to my eyes, but the vibe I got for now is that, from a lens standpoint, Meta’s Quest 3 is still leading, followed by Vision Pro, with Project Moohan a bit behind.
Although Samsung has confirmed that Project Moohan will have its own controllers, I didn’t get to see or try them yet. I was told they haven’t decided if the controllers will ship with the headset by default or be sold separately.
So it was all hand-tracking and eye-tracking input in my time with the headset. Again, this was a surprisingly similar mashup of both Horizon OS and VisionOS. You can use raycast cursors like Horizon OS or you can use eye+pinch inputs like VisionOS. The Samsung headset also includes downward-facing cameras so pinches can be detected when your hands are comfortably in your lap.
When I actually got to put the headset on, the first thing I noticed was how sharp my hands appeared to be. From memory, the headset’s passthrough cameras appear to have a sharper image than Quest 3 and less motion blur than Vision Pro (but I only got to test in excellent lighting conditions). Considering though how my hands seemed sharp but things further away seemed less so, it almost felt like the passthrough cameras might have been focused at roughly arms-length distance.
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