Samsung’s first-ever XR headset, Project Moohan, is finally inching towards launch, and there could be good and bad news for anyone dying to know where it fits on the price spectrum. The good news? According to leaks from a Korean news outlet, Newsworks, Project Moohan will cost less than Apple’s wildly expensive Vision Pro, which debuted at $3,500. Phew! Price crisis averted, right? Wrong. Leaks suggest that the headset will still cost close to $2,000, with current conversions from Korean won translating the price to just shy of $1,800 USD.
Now, listen, we pay $2,000 for plenty of gadgets out there, including some flagship foldable phones made by Samsung, but there’s still a major difference between XR headsets and phones. The main difference is that we use our phones all the time for everything. In 2025, you basically need a phone, and while that phone doesn’t have to be foldable, it’s a lot easier to justify the price when you know you’re going to be using a gadget all day, every day. XR headsets, not so much.
As much as Apple has positioned its Vision Pro as an everything machine—for work, for fun, for FaceTiming your aunt—people still use headsets sparingly, and for good reason. Wearing headsets for a long time, even one that’s relatively lightweight like Meta’s Quest 3S, still sucks. You get sweaty, your eyes get fatigued, and you start to think, “Why am I wearing this thing in the first place?” And for Samsung, all of those cold, hard truths about headsets are working against anything that’s priced as “premium.”
© Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo The Quest 3S has sold more than most XR headsets, but the price is a far cry from the Vision Pro.While Meta has done a decent job of moving Quest headsets, it’s focused on pricing the headset at something more people can afford (about $300), which justifies the expense of a device that most people know (even without using one) that they’re not going to be strapping on their heads every day. And while we’re talking about Meta, it seems companies, Samsung potentially included, still haven’t learned from the foibles of Meta and its Quest Pro, which debuted at a now-affordable-seeming $1,500. As a quick recap, that headset tanked hard and was discontinued a little more than two years after being released. If only there was a lesson to be learned…
I mean, hey, I could be wrong here—maybe Project Moohan will bring something to the table that no other headset offers—but all signs so far point to the same obstacles faced by the Vision Pro. Both devices focus on the same things: a premium display, an eye- and hand-tracking-based UI, and a kind of flagship XR experience. I’m not saying the headset won’t be nice; I actually fully expect it will be, but so is the Vision Pro, and Apple hasn’t had much luck convincing even diehard Apple fans that its headset is as nice as the price would have you think.
We’ll find out soon enough, though. Leaks also suggest that Samsung is readying to hold another Unpacked event at the end of September where it will unveil its XR headset in full. And after that, we can finally see if Samsung fares any better in the world of pricey XR hardware, Vision Pro be damned.
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