[Samsung Galaxy S7 Guides, News, & Discussion] Linked Devices:
I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the daydream view. It performs in ever metric right between the cardboard and the Gear VR.

The daydream drifts constantly the gear VR doesn't at all.

The daydream's FOV is a strict right angle while the Gear VR is 96 - 100°depending on the phone.

The daydream can't keep up with rapid head turns and you notice obvious black edges creeping inward toward your turn, the gear VR has flawless time warping no matter how rapidly you turn back and forth. I suspect the design of the daydream i.e. It's missing 3rd strap is meant to discourage you from turning your head too fast lest it fly off.

The day dream has lower resolution on the regular pixel but the same resolution with more SDE on the XL.

There is a ton of light bleed under the daydream view unit itself whereas the Gear VR is completely flush against your face.

The daydream doesn't have any adjustable lenses so if it doesn't work for you there's nothing you can do. The gear be has fully adjustable lenses and is designed to fit glasses. With the lenses being adjustable however you don't even need your glasses.

Although the daydream api support 3D binaural sound the pixel can't handle it and just collapses everything to stereo. Things are either to your sides or sound like they're in front of you even while behind you. There's no impression of anything above or below. Distant objects are played at a lower volume, closet at a high volume. On the Gear VR, it uses Samsung pro audio to create a completely convincing 3 dimensional sound field where you can not only hear all around you, where things behind you actually sound like they are, but above and below you too. It also processes doppler effect filtering so that objects far from you sound farther and not just softer.

The pixel also gets skin blistering hot after 30 minutes and will overheat not much longer after that. The Gear VR doesn't get phones nearly as hot and especially with the S7 with its vapor cooling system you can play through an entire charge and it'll only get a little above room temperature.

The daydream also crashes or fails to load at all pretty often as you can see from reviews. In my test the pixel would randomly reboot between changing titles at least once every 4 or times.

On the plus side the controller is fun and does add more possibilities. But unfortunately the controller and the headset both drift all the time and often in opposite directions. You have to press and hold the home button to re-center it a lot more often than is comfortable. If it wasn't for the controller the daydream would have no chance at all. It feels much more like a tech demo and isn't anywhere nearly as refined as the gear vr.

The gear VR also annihilates it in quality and quantity in terms of content.

It may seem like I'm being really hard on the daydream but for something as pricey as the gear vr it's really disappointing and annoying. If you try it you'll see exactly what I mean.

If I was coming from cardboard I'd be impressed but it's practically unplayable coming from the gear vr.

If anything it just demonstrates what a marvel of a piece of tech the gear vr really is, while even being 3 years older and performing on older hardware.