@Omniwhatever Road Trip in Aircar
Question On Black Levels vs Index.
I’ll put it this way.
There basically is no comparison with how far apart the Crystal is on the Index in black levels. It masscares it, doesn’t even deserve to be used as a measuring stick. At the highest level of local dimming(You have a few levels to choose from), the Crystal’s black levels feel favorably comparable to, I’d say better even, than my VA panel FV43U monitor does. They’re really good.
Depending on the scene there might be some blooming, but even at the highest levels 9/10 times it’s felt quite minor for me and the extra contrast was totally worth it. At least for me, I’m not very bothered by it.
If the blooming really bothers you then that’s what the local dimming options are for, since you can sacrifice a little bit of contrast, which is still a good step up from other LCD panels, for less noticeable blooming. But I’ve only seen 1-2 scenes which made me think about going down from the highest level.
@JameJame Answer:
Yup, I’ll confirm what Omniwhatever has said. Index black levels are awful, the Crystals are on a whole different level. The halo can be a thing in some games, but it’s adjustable and always better regardless. Huge improvement in things like glare and godrays also
Crispycheezus Answer:
I’ll have to test more dark games to really give a good judgement on the local dimming. But my current impressions are that it’s really really good. It’s enough for me to say that it’s OLED levels just because the OLED headsets I’ve used are fresnel and have glare. With the Crystal there is zero glare but small amounts of blooming.
I use my unit on the default 82% backlight brightness and it’s really really hard to pick out the blooming on it. You can see in my glare test image that it’s barely even there. You can pick out the spaces between the text and it’s black in-between. The video Pimax released is accurate. My unit looks the same.