Latest news with #Moohan
Tom's Guide
22-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
I tried out Samsung's Project Moohan headset — Android XR won me over
We've heard a lot about Samsung's Project Moohan in the past six months, from Samsung's teaser announcement last December to appearance at everything from Galaxy Unpacked to MWC 2025. But we're still waiting on key details on the virtual reality headset, including its specs and how much it will cost. After yet another appearance this week at the Google I/O 2025 developer conference, we're just waiting on those details. But having had a chance to wear a Project Moohan headset and even experience running a few apps on the device, I at least have a better sense of what you'll be able to do with Samsung's product once it arrives later this year. My hands-on time with Project Moohan was less about the headset itself — the Samsung representative walking me through my demo was politely tight-lipped about anything spec-related — and more an introduction to the Android XR platform that the headset is built upon. And from what I saw during that demo, Google apps updated for a virtual environment are very much a critical part of the Android XR experience on Moohan. Despite the lack of details on Project Moohan, we do know a little bit about the headset, which is the result of a partnership announced by Samsung, Google and Qualcomm in 2023 to develop an XR product together. According to Qualcomm back when Moohan was announced, the headset features a Snapdragon XR Plus Gen 2 chipset. That particular silicon offers support for up to 4.3K resolution in each eye, running at 90 frames per second. So it wasn't particularly surprising that graphics and apps looked very sharp when I tried on the headset. The passthrough mode does put an unusual tint around the people you're looking at through the Moohan lenses. I assume that's to add some depth to your view, so you don't feel cut off from the world around you the way you might wearing other headsets. Indeed, that's been my biggest complaint with any type of mixed reality headgear, but it's not an issue I ran into when trying on the Moohan headset. While Samsung hasn't confirmed the weight of its headset, it didn't feel particularly heavy during my demo — I certainly wasn't looking forward to removing it, as I am most of the time when trying on headsets. Putting on Moohan is simply a matter of slipping on the headset like a visor and then turning a knob on the back to tighten the fit and hold things in place. You'll definitely feel like you're wearing something over your face, but it's not overly burdensome, at least for the short time that I had it on. When I tried out Moohan, the headset featured light blockers that enclose the viewing area. But you can take those out to keep things open at the periphery — a way of staying rooted in the real world, the Samsung rep told me. And whether it was the light weight, the passthrough mode or just the overall design of the headset, I never experienced the sensation of disorientation that usually makes headsets a non-starter for me. You control Moohan with hand gestures: a pinching motion selected things while flipping around your hand and making the same pinching gesture takes you back to the home screen. There may be more gesture-based controls but apart from using my hands to scroll — more on that when we talk about the virtual view in Maps — those were the only controls I really needed on my tour of Moohan. I've never used Apple's Vision Pro, but I imagine the Project Moohan experience is pretty similar. When you go into virtual mode, you've got panels floating before you with different apps and information. The word "Moohan" apparently means "infinity" in Korean, and it seems like Samsung is using that as a guiding principal for its headset. The virtual world offers a seemingly infinite canvas, so why not take advantage of that with the apps running on Android XR? For the purposes of this demo, Samsung kept the focus on Google-built apps — things like Maps and YouTube that you'd find preinstalled on any Android device. Here, they've been optimized to work on Android XR, though, and the results can be very visually engaging. In YouTube, for instance, I selected a video highlighting the sights and sounds of Costa Rica, which played before my eyes like any 2D video on any platform. But I also had the option of watching a larger version of the video that took advantage of Moohan's display. Some YouTube videos could even display in 3D in the headset, adding a sense of depth to the footage. The effect felt a little bit like watching a 3D movie in a cinema, for good and for bad. For example, some motorcycles driving toward me looked three dimensional right up until they reached the camera, nullifying the 3D effect and reminding me that I was ultimately watching a flat image. That's more a limit of 3D video, though, and not really the headset's problem. In Google's Photos app, you can also view images with depth, wether it was photos of Google and Samsung reps setting up the demo space or a video of a little boy, cuddling his baby brother. The sensation is exactly what I imagine spatial photos and videos to be like on the Vision Pro, which is not to say that they're any less affecting when viewed on another headset like the Moohan. Perhaps my favorite demo featured Google Maps, as I could leap into an immersive view of a map and get a 3D bird's eye view of the area I had been searching for. It took a little to master the controls for scrolling and zooming in on the city scape — you have to use both hands, and I had a hard time controlling the precision of my zoom in the short amount of time I had to experiment with the controls. Nevertheless, I managed to go from a wide overhead view of Mexico City to a zoomed-in view where I could see the Arena Coliseo close-up. Summoning the Gemini assistant — Google's AI-powered assistant is as present on Moohan as it is on the company's own Android XR-based smart glasses — I could get information on Arena Coleseo, including when upcoming lucha libre matches were being held. Even better, when I asked Gemini to show me videos, we returned to the YouTube app with several lucha libre highlights cued up for my viewing pleasure. Project Moohan got a shout-out during the Google I/O keynote, including a reminder that the device will be coming out later this year. And when it does, all those remaining questions about its specs and price should be answered. The price question seems particularly salient, given how similar the experience of Samsung's headset seems to be with the Vision Pro. Apple's headset costs $3,499, clearly a factor in why sales and interest in the headset have petered out in the year its been available. If Samsung can deliver something that's in the ballpark features-wise but for a fraction of the cost, you may see an uptick in the interest in mixed reality devices like this one and the other Android XR-based offerings on the way. But that's not really what I came away from my time with Project Moohan thinking about. Rather I was struck by how well the Google apps running on Android XR had been optimized for the virtual space. It's that experience that's ultimately going to determine just how people react to Samsung's upcoming headset.
Los Angeles Times
03-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
4 all-you-can-eat restaurants changing the buffet game in Los Angeles
Before the pandemic made people scrunch up their noses at the thought of communal serving ware, buffet restaurants in the United States made up a nearly $8-billion industry. It was an economical way to feed the entire family (or a particularly hungry diner), and most of the time, the sheer variety of food was its own luxury. If you grew up in California, your introduction to buffet dining was probably Souplantation, the all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar. My family ate at the Pasadena location at least once a week, and more if my parents had coupons. I still recall the thrill of being able to eat Caesar salad, macaroni and cheese, a cup of chili, chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins in one meal. The salad was sometimes soggy and the macaroni and cheese too loose, but the autonomy I had over my dinner was ever appealing to an 8-year-old with a hearty appetite. In 2020, the buffet restaurant market dropped 14% and the once-thriving all-you-can-eat Souplantation chain shuttered all locations. Now, with cereal boxes shrinking to the size of paperback novels and the price of eggs causing shoppers to flee the refrigerated aisle, all-you-can-eat restaurants are starting to gain back a bit of their allure. In Los Angeles, there's a new crop of buffet restaurants that opened in the last year, and a few established businesses attempting to fill once-empty dining rooms with new all-you-can-eat menus. Moohan restaurant opened in Koreatown in September with an extensive hot bar of appetizers and side dishes alongside a wide selection of Wagyu and prime beef. ''Moohan' translates into 'infinite' in Korean, and we wanted to offer our expertise to redefine the all-you-can-eat food scene in Los Angeles by making premium-quality and personalized dining experiences more accessible to everyone, because why not in this economy?' says Grace Jo, a marketing representative for Moohan. The restaurant offers both an essential menu for $37.99 and a premium menu with more meat options for $55.99. 'Wagyu and prime cuts of beef are typically served in restaurants with a hefty price tag, but at Moohan, anyone can enjoy the highest quality ... at a much more reasonable price with unlimited rounds of buffet offerings,' Jo says. I visited half a dozen of the newer all-you-can-eat restaurants around Los Angeles, in search of the best deal and food I'd crave regardless of the price. Here were the highlights: The setup: Each party is seated at a table with a grill in the center and various banchan and green salad. You order from an iPad at the table and choose between a regular all-you-can-eat menu or a premium version that comes with a handful more protein options including multiple cuts of Wagyu. The dining time is limited to 100 minutes. If you opt for the essential set, there's a bar with raw serve-yourself proteins like chicken, pork belly and beef intestine. Both menus include unlimited visits to a hot bar with a rotating menu of tempura, fried chicken wings, kimchi fried rice and yakisoba. There's unlimited banchan and salads, kimchi pancakes, cheese Buldak Ramen and a few sushi rolls. Premium items such as the Wagyu bulgogi are served on individual plates at the table. The staff is friendly, attentive and will grill the meats for you. Price: $55.99 for premium and $37.99 for essential Don't miss: The Wagyu bulgogi is not the overly sugary stuff served at nearly every all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant. The marinade caramelizes on the grill into a subtly sweet, garlicky glaze and the beef is nicely marbled and recognizably Wagyu. Avoid: It is difficult not to be distracted by the golden chicken wings and the hand rolls, but stay focused on the barbecue or you'll regret the space the mediocre spicy tuna temaki is now occupying in your stomach. I have to admit that I was hesitant to try this restaurant. The name is unforgivable and I imagined endless plates of maki filled with imitation crab and mushy rice. What I found instead was a menu that includes more than two dozen nigiri, including toro, 40 maki, sushi burritos and a long list of appetizers, salad, tempura, Korean barbecue and skewers. It will not compete with your favorite omakase, but the nigiri and maki are similar to what you can expect at the hundreds of neighborhood sushi restaurants around Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. The setup: The Western Avenue location of this restaurant has $3 valet parking out front and you can make a reservation online. There's a 90-minute time limit and to avoid wasting food, the restaurant requests that you order 'little by little' to gauge your appetite with each course. They also use small nubs of rice for their nigiri, tend to be modest with the rice around the maki and make a note on the menu to enjoy the sushi as is, and not leave a discarded pile of rice on your plate. While the rolls, appetizers, sides and most of the nigiri are unlimited, there's a page of 'special' sashimi and nigiri that you can order just one per person at the table. Maki are served as four or eight pieces, which made it easier to try more without feeling overwhelmed. Price: $54.99 for dinner, $39.99 for lunch and late night between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Don't miss: Order most, if not all of the 'special' menu to try the Spider Man, a deep-fried soft-shell crab over a sweet carrot puree, or the Screaming Orgasm, an unfortunately named dish of seared bluefin tuna sashimi in a 'screaming sauce' that tasted like a cross between sweet miso and ponzu. Avoid: The plate of bulgogi was a little tough and much too sweet, but you came for the sushi anyway. When Soup 'n Fresh, known as the Souplantation dupe restaurant, opened in a former Souplantation in Rancho Cucamonga last year, I was curious but not curious enough to wait in a line that stretched around the building. Now, there's a second location in Chino Hills, and on a recent Monday in Rancho Cucamonga, my wait at 11:30 a.m. was 34 minutes. Though Soup 'n Fresh has no actual affiliation with Souplantation, the layout and most of the soups, baked items and salad bar are indistinguishable from the original restaurant. The chunky plastic soup bowls were the same. The chicken salad with crispy wontons was slightly sweeter but recognizable, and they even had the same tuna pasta salad with both penne and shell pasta tossed with tuna and chopped sweet pickles. The setup: A staff member with a clipboard periodically marks how many people are in each party in line then calls diners in groups to enter the restaurant. You pay at the end of the salad bar and wait to be seated. Then you can return to the buffet for soup, pasta, baked goods, fruit and soft serve. Price: $17.99 for lunch, $19.99 for dinner. Seniors and children have their own pricing. Don't miss: If you're nostalgic for Souplantation, pile a little of everything you remember onto your plate. Ladle a bowl of chili and go nuts with the shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and onions at the end of the soup station. Swirl some soft serve into a bowl then take a cone to go. Relive the Souplantation glory days during the 2-hour time limit. Avoid: The cheese pizza and just about all the muffins were overbaked, with crusty edges and cheese that turned to plastic. The blueberry muffins smelled and tasted the same as the ones I remember, though they were made in a square shape, much drier and with far less blueberries. I used to wrap a couple in a napkin and snack on the muffin tops on the way home. These were far from the original, but it was still comforting to taste something so deeply ingrained in my childhood. This hot pot restaurant in Rosemead introduced all-you-can-eat dim sum in early 2024. The earlier you go, the better, as the dining room tends to fill up quickly, even on weekdays. Call to check current specials and hours or visit the restaurant's Instagram account for updates. Price: $15.95 for breakfast during the week and $18.95 on weekends and holidays. The setup: There's a dim sum cart with most of the steamed offerings such as dumplings, buns, pork ribs, radish cakes, chicken feet and rice noodle rolls. Everyone ordering all-you-can-eat dim sum also has access to the hot bar of food in the back room with a variety of stir-fried noodles, fried rice, egg rolls, more sides and dessert. Don't miss: The steamed salted egg black custard buns were worth a return visit. They were warm and fluffy and the salted egg yolk oozed out from the center like lava. The fried sesame balls filled with sweet red bean from the hot bar made for a great in-between-dim-sum snack and dessert. And the vats of stir-fried noodles reminded me of the plates of chow fun and chow mein served with orders of congee at just about every cafe I visited in the San Gabriel Valley as a kid. Chewy, slick with soy and prime for a lashing of hot sauce and vinegar. Avoid: I'm sad to report that the dumplings, including the shumai and har gow, were all tough and more than a little dry. The soup in the dumplings either evaporated or was lost to the steamer basket long before they hit the table.
