I Tried a Head-Mounted Display for the First Time in Ages — It’s So Sharp I Couldn’t Stop Staring

Honestly, I never really trusted products like this.

Hi, I’m Hide — tech journalist and part-time house-husband. Until I got the offer to try the GOOVIS G3 Max, I never imagined it would be this sharp. With this, you can genuinely watch movies and do computer work.

Head-mounted displays have always hyped you up in promos — “huge screen! so sharp!” — and then disappointed when you actually use them. The GOOVIS G3 Max lived up to the hype.

Thinking back to the Eye-Trek I tried in high school, I’m kind of moved by how far they’ve come.

**For my articles, I sometimes receive products on loan or as samples from companies, within the bounds of Yahoo! News’ rules. However, if a product doesn’t meet my standards for writing about it after actually using it, or if its downsides significantly outweigh its good points, I return it and don’t write about it. I don’t receive any payment from companies.**

Picture quality so sharp you can’t stop staring

I wasn’t even happy with the picture on the recent Meta Quest, so I never expected this level of clarity. That’s my honest reaction. On the Quest you can watch high-quality content if you work at it, but it’s a hassle. Even the dedicated YouTube 360 app downconverts high-quality content, so it really wasn’t pretty.

The moment I watched something on the GOOVIS G3 Max, the sharpness blew me away. It’s basically a “battery-free external display,” so you connect it to a computer or smartphone. In that sense it’s less convenient than something like the Meta Quest, which has a battery and runs on its own — but once you start watching, the experience is one of a kind.

Add the optional D4 Dongle media player — about the size of a smartphone — and it powers the headset while giving you Android TV. The first time I watched Ahsoka on Disney+ with it, the shock still sticks with me. The harder you look, the more detail you see, like the characters’ eyelashes. It was clearly on a different level from previous head-mounted displays where you could see the pixels.

## Light enough to wear all day

Apple’s Vision Pro also leaves out the internal battery, and going battery-free makes it really light. The GOOVIS G3 Max weighs a shocking 340 g, so wearing it for a long time is no problem at all.

It’s also carefully designed to keep light from leaking in around your nose and eyes, so when it fits snugly it’s pitch black and you can focus. You could work or watch movies on a plane or train. (On a train, though, you’ll probably miss your stop unless you use bone conduction or something so you can hear around you… lol.)

## The built-in speakers are cheap, but Bluetooth makes that a non-issue

There are built-in speakers, so you can enjoy it on its own if sound leakage isn’t a concern, but I recommend pairing it with good wireless headphones.

The GOOVIS G3 Max is just a monitor, so connect your headphones wirelessly to the video source and you get high-quality audio. For example, connect an iPhone to the GOOVIS G3 Max and listen through AirPods Max connected to the iPhone.

That way spatial audio works too, and you get everything from highs to lows — really satisfying.

Fine for computer work too — and you can use it without glasses

I connected it to my MacBook Pro too, and got a bigger workspace than the laptop’s own display.

The screen is sharp enough to read small text even at 4K, but personally, 2560 × 1440 was easiest to work with. At home I run a 50-inch monitor at 4K and fill it with apps split into five or six sections, and I could work the same way.

I can’t do that on the MacBook Pro’s display, and working away from home always felt cramped, so this is amazing!

Another highlight: you can use it without glasses or contacts. As a house-husband, I often work early in the morning or after the kids are asleep. I used to force myself to keep my contacts in (glasses really slow me down…), but with the GOOVIS G3 Max, you can adjust the diopter for each eye and see crisp and clear with your naked eyes. That’s seriously convenient.

After a bath, contacts out, ready for one more push — now my eyes are way more relaxed and I get a big screen, so I use it a lot.

It made me want to watch 3D content again

The 3D feature turned out surprisingly good too. You can watch 3D content in side-by-side format, where two images are placed left and right to match the parallax.

Finding content was tough at first, but searching YouTube for “3D side by side” or “3D SBS” brings it up. You’d think showing different images to each eye would lower quality, but in practice it’s almost the same as watching 4K content with both eyes.

The Avatar trailer happened to be available in 4K, so I watched it, and it was moving. For a while TVs that played 3D were a thing, and those Blu-rays are still sold — it made me want to watch them again.

I own Canon’s VR lens and have been shooting beautiful scenery in 8K VR, but I never had a good way to play it back in high quality. With the GOOVIS G3 Max, I can enjoy it at the push of a button without any complicated export process, which really boosts my motivation to shoot.

When Apple Vision Pro comes out next year, 3D content will get attention again, so I think this feature will be useful going forward.

I wish the screen felt a bit bigger

The picture quality is perfect, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with how big the screen feels. It’s like sitting a little behind the middle of a movie theater.

When you look in, it doesn’t hit you with “Whoa, huge screen!” — there’s about 3 cm of space on the left and right of your view. A bit disappointing. If the screen filled out to the edges of your eyes, it’d be perfect.

That said, a screen that’s too big can make you motion sick. Not with a head-mounted display, but when I watched projections over 100 inches at home, I got sick almost every time. With that in mind, this size might be just right.

The GOOVIS G3 Max also supports 120 Hz, so supported games play very smoothly. A screen that’s too big is risky there too, so this size might be an advantage in that case as well.

Still, getting this picture quality from something this light and small… times have changed. It delivers quality I’ve never seen from a head-worn display.

Related links: GOOVIS official site / GOOVIS G3 Max store

This story was originally published (in Japanese) on Yahoo! News Japan Expert.