Key Takeaways

• The Pimax Crystal offers unparalleled display quality and immersion in VR experiences.
• Integrated eye-tracking technology provides a performance boost in supported games.
• The headset is heavy but comfortable to wear, and its design allows for future upgrades and wireless PCVR capabilities.

The PCVR space has been stagnant for a while, but Pimax offers a ray of hope in the form of the Crystal. It's a premium, high-resolution tethered headset with reliable inside-out tracking, the best visuals you’ve seen yet, and integrated eye-tracking for a foveated rendering performance boost.

But it demands a more powerful graphics card than ever before to get the best out of it, and while it's the best in class for flight sim and racing enthusiasts, it's hard to fully recommend for everyone else.

Unpacking: There's a Lot

Inside the large and densely packed box you'll find:

• The headset, and foam glasses spacer.
• Two controllers.
• Two battery packs of 6000mAh, plus a battery holder.
• Video and power cable; proprietary connector on the headset side, DisplayPort and two USB on the other.
• USB power adaptor, and USB A to A cable to connect the hub to your computer.
• Two USB-A to C cables for charging the controllers.

Controllers: Functional but Nasty

The controllers feel a little cheap and are clearly modeled after the Quest 2, with large tracking rings that house the infrared LEDs. Meanwhile, the Quest 3 has done away with these rings.

The buttons feel a little too janky for my taste, and the joysticks too creaky. There's no resistance in the triggers, and they just don't feel that good to use.

The Pimax Crystal controllers are good enough in that they get the job done and track well, but have no unique features or design. They're a far cry from the PSVR2 controllers with their advanced haptics, adaptive trigger, and general Sony mastery of all things controller-related. The Valve Index set is cheaper and arguably has more advanced controllers, but I’m not a fan of those either—I’m forever accidentally dropping or grabbing items thanks to the pressure-sensitive grab features. At least the Pimax Crystal controllers have a basic physical grip button. If I'm honest, nothing compares to the enormous HTC Vive wands, which always felt like you were holding a gun or sword.

Design: Heavy but Comfortable

The Crystal headset feels rock-solid, which it should do because it weighs a ton. Or, more accurately, 960g (34oz). That’s almost twice the weight of the Quest 3, but a little less than the Quest Pro.

The Pimax Crystal uses a ratcheting strap to ensure comfort and a secure fit, as well as a basic fabric and silicone band on top. I’m a big fan of ratchet straps; they’re a lot easier to fit than a stretchy fabric band with buckles. Curiously, despite the added weight, it doesn’t push down on my face as much as I expected it to. This is likely due to the weight distribution of the battery pack being at the back of the headset, which balances it somewhat. The racket strap also helps here, enabling you to clasp it down in a more comfortable position. However, unless you do the straps up to an ungodly tightness, I found the inertia from the sheer weight of the headset was enough to make it shift around with any sudden movements. This is the first sign that it's suited more to slower-paced games, such as those in a cockpit where sudden head movements aren't usually needed.

Off-ear headphones are integrated, too, in a similar fashion to the Valve Index. They’re reasonable quality, producing a rounded sound stage, though the bass output isn’t quite comparable to on-ear headphones.

Bizarrely, the Pimax Crystal requires a battery even when used in PCVR tethered mode and connected to the powered hub. This is apparently due to the use of the XR2 chipset—the same used in the Meta Quest 3. However, given that most people will be using this in a tethered mode and completely ignoring the standalone functionality, it’s a frustrating design choice, but perhaps one that will come to fruition later with expansion modules such as wireless transmission.

The battery is swappable and should last around four to six hours of regular PCVR use, with two provided in the box. Assuming things are plugged in right, it should automatically charge when the headset is not in use. If you end up with a dud battery, you may find your play sessions getting cut short, but overall, this reliance on a battery was less of a problem than I had assumed it would be. However, I found the latching mechanism for the battery pack to be tricky; I can see myself breaking it at some point, which would render it useless since the battery slots in from underneath.

I should also caveat by saying that while I found the Pimax Crystal to be comfortable, everyone will be different. It's a very subjective issue, with different head sizes, shapes, and eye positions. My wife could tolerate it for only a short time. A headset that's perfect for everyone doesn't exist, and never will. I would always encourage you to demo a headset before purchasing—which might be difficult with the Pimax Crystal. Still, the combination of a ratcheting strap and balancing weight at the back of the Crystal is far more comfortable, in my opinion, than a regular fabric strap and lighter headset.

Set Up and Experience Is Less Well Polished

After installing the required PiPlay software and putting on the headset, you'll be greeted by the same default barren Martian landscape that I remember from my original Pimax 5K review five years ago, but it's a higher resolution now. That’s even more pixels to view a bleak, unimpressive landscape that you can't interact with in any way or move around.

By contrast, the Meta Home environments are fun and varied; on a PC, you can even interact with them and place objects. Steam VR offers something similar. But at the very least, you'd expect a menu system. There isn't one here. You'll need to take the headset off to either launch a game directly or open up Steam VR and then jump in from there.

On occasion, the display would completely glitch out. This would then require a random combination of taking out and plugging in the DisplayPort plug, the USB cable, and/or restarting the PiPlay software and device service. There's a lot that can go wrong with any headset, but there are many things you can configure on the Pimax Crystal, too—which you often have to do to get things working correctly.

The Crystal is the most finicky headset I’ve played with yet. Which is a shame because when it works, it can be absolutely incredible-looking.

KayakVR has been my go-to experience for relaxation and really shows off the beauty of the Pimax Crystal's display. The vibrant colors and shimmering water are jaw-dropping, even if I can't whack up the resolution to full.

The Image Quality Is Superb

If the name of the headset didn’t give it away, clarity is what Pimax was aiming for here. With 2880 x 2880 pixels per eye, the default lenses offer 35 pixels-per-degree (ppd) of your vision. For comparison's sake, 60ppd is the magic number that’s said to be equivalent of human eyes. The Varyo Aero is 27ppd; the Meta Quest 3 is 25, while the Valve Index is around 15. It’s not an exact science, though, and headsets with a larger field of view (FOV) will naturally end up with lower pixel density, even if the resolution is the same. Many VR enthusiasts would happily trade pixel density for FOV.

Speaking of which, field of view measurements are also not an exact science, but Pimax states 115° horizontal, and 105° vertical. That’s a little more than the Quest 3’s 110/96, but roughly the same as the Valve Index. This is about as good as you can expect from current lens technology. Beyond that, you'll start to experience heavy distortion around the edges.

With an interpupillary distance (IPD) range of 58-72mm, the Crystal should accommodate most people. And if you don't know your precise IPD, just enable eye tracking in the settings utility: it'll automatically measure it every time you put on the headset.

Of course, it's worth pointing out that to really benefit from this high pixel density, you're going to need some seriously good hardware. For graphically detailed and intensive games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, you're looking at a 4070 or 4090. My 3060 can barely keep up.

But let's be clear: from a hardware and imaging perspective, you cannot beat the Pimax Crystal right now for tethered PCVR.

Dynamic Foveated Rendering Gives You a Performance Boost (in Theory)

As alluded to earlier, inside the Pimax Crystal is a magical piece of eye-tracking tech from Tobii, which senses your eye movements and relays back to your computer where you’re looking within the scene.

Apart from being able to show your eye movements in applications like VRChat, and setting your IPD automatically, this eye tracking can be also be used for Dynamic Foveated Rendering—which means only rendering the details for the bit you’re actually looking at. This is something the PSVR2 has also implemented. Since your peripheral vision is blurred anyway, it doesn’t need the same amount of details as what you’re directly looking at. So you should be able to get some degree of performance boost.

However, the game must also support DFR to get a benefit. I found a user-submitted list of titles and the claimed boosts. Note that some games are natively supported, and some you must configure to use a different driver.

I tried a handful of these, and in practice, it made no difference to my performance. The problem, as I understand it, is that because my system is unable to achieve 90fps, it targets 45fps and opts to interpolate frames in between for the best experience. Even with eye tracking on, the performance boost of perhaps 5-15fps (I'm guessing there, because again, I couldn't actually measure a framerate boost) wasn’t enough to make a difference—so it still targets 45fps. Unfortunately, I found no way of disabling this automatic frame interpolation in SteamVR.

If your system is teetering on the edge of 90fps but not quite able to make it (or even near 120, which the Pimax also supports), then Dynamic Foveated Rendering could be just the trick to push you up and over, out of the trap of interpolated frames.

Camera-Based Inside-Out Tracking Is as Good as Expected

Four cameras on the front of the Pimax Crystal enable the headset to track in both standalone and tethered mode without the use of Basestations or external sensors. Like any camera-based system, it relies on your play space being well lit and with suitable markers around the room. An empty room with plain white walls and an unpatterned carpet will not track, nor will a dark room.

If you do have Basestations or want even better tracking (in low light, for instance), you can purchase the optional Lighthouse Faceplate, which replaces the camera tracking with the more reliable Lighthouse system. Although I have Basestations for use with the Valve Index, I wasn’t sent the Lighthouse Faceplate for testing, so I can’t comment on what difference it would make.

That said, I experienced no unexpected issues with the camera-based tracking. Mostly, I play racing sims and slow-paced adventure games, but the classic litmus test is Beat Saber. It had no trouble keeping up with my movements there—just remember to keep your controllers roughly in front of you, not to the sides or behind.

Standalone Mode Is Best Forgotten About (for Now)

In addition to operating alongside a powerful PC in tethered mode, the Pimax Crystal also features a standalone mode, similar to the Meta Quest. However, it's not nearly as developed (and that's putting it nicely), and perhaps never will be if it remains a niche option. Pimax simply doesn't have the clout to get developers onboard with its ecosystem, but you'll find a handful of apps there.

Watching movies would be a good use case for this standalone, but sadly the only option is Whirligig, which is my least favorite of media players, and currently sitting at a 2-star rating, with both reviews stating that it won't actually play movie files.

Tracking in standalone mode seems to work just as well as tethered, though the processing power limits what’s graphically possible.

Should You Buy the Pimax Crystal?

For many, the requirement to keep a battery pack on the headset charged when they use it entirely for tethered VR is going to be frustrating. But some might also consider it a non-issue that helps with weight distribution.

The standalone mode isn’t worth touching right now, and it may never be. At the very least, it should have provided a basic movie-watching feature—but it doesn’t.

There’s no doubt that the display hardware on offer here is the best you can get at a semi-reasonable price right now. But is it three times as good as an HP Reverb or Quest 3? That’s a difficult call. PCVR can be temperamental at the best of times (especially if you’re pairing it with steering wheels or flight sticks and a motion rig!)

The Pimax Crystal whacks that difficulty up a notch, and despite premium hardware, the software is still buggy, and your experience will be marred by it.

So who should buy the Pimax Crystal? I’d only recommend this for sim racing or flying fans with deep pockets willing to put in the effort to get things working right. The level of detail, field of view, and immersion that results when everything works fine is unparalleled.

For everyone else, the Quest 3 is a better overall buy if you want some of that sweet standalone action and wireless PCVR. If you refuse to have anything to do with Meta, either the Valve Index or HP Reverb G2 are probably your best bet for tethered VR, but both are outdated at this point. We know a new Valve headset, codenamed Deckard, is in the works, which is rumored to offer some sort of wireless streaming. But it's not officially announced, so it's likely at least six months away from shipping.

That said, I think the Pimax Crystal has a huge amount of potential. The top-end hardware, combined with eye tracking for foveated rendering, is future-proofed for a while. The software bugs can be worked on, and I’m confident improvements will come, along with various upgrades. Pimax has already announced they’re developing a 60G wireless module, though there’s no firm shipping date at the time of writing. A modular design is to be applauded, but only if those modules come to fruition.

For Pimax, the Crystal represents a pinnacle of achievement. On their eighth anniversary, they believe they've finally achieved the original aim of making "a VR headset that blurs the line between the real and the virtual". While there are always improvements to be made, and I'd question some of the design choices made for the Crystal, there's no doubt that it fills a high-end niche for PCVR sim enthusiasts.

If you have the hardware to get the best of it, the Crystal is the best-looking image you'll get in a PCVR headset. But for everyone else, there are better options.