Samsung’s virtual reality headset will be $199 at launch

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Gear VR headset will cost $199, a Samsung spokesperson at New York Fashion Week told VentureBeat this evening. Two days ago Samsung unveiled the Gear VR, a virtual reality headset made in partnership with Oculus VR. The device, which uses Samsung’s Note 4 phablet as a screen, was announced without a price at the Berlin IFA 2014 consumer electronics show this week. Samsung says the device will be released later this year. Now, although the exact release date remains fuzzy, it appears we have a final price: $199 for the Gear VR unit, not counting the cost of the Note 4 smartphone, which is rumored to retail for $799 — or $299 with a contract. A Samsung spokesperson revealed the price to Fashion Week attendees at the company’s Lincoln Center booth in Manhattan, where it also promoted the recently announced Gear S smartwatch. If you’re already planning to buy an elephant-sized phone this year, the $199 price isn’t steep when compared to the $350 Rift development kit. But if you’re not into phablets, we don’t recommend forking over $400 to $1,000 to play around with Samsung’s Gear VR … although we definitely enjoyed ourselves playing around with it for a few minutes today.