My Thoughts on the Crystal after A Few Weeks of Testing.
Posted By ABCandZ on r/pimax
Review Summary
Hey there!
Just got my hands on the Pimax Crystal a few weeks ago, and I’ve gotta say, it’s been an interesting experience. After having some time with it, I thought I’d share my two cents.
First impressions? Crystal clear. Yeah I know it’s cheesy to say that, but I currently own Quest 2, Quest Pro, Pico 3, Pico 4, DPVR, PSVR2 and Varjo Aero and this bad boy boasts the highest end VR clarity I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Comfort? Here’s where it gets a bit “weighty.” It’s thicc - with two c’s. But surprisingly well balanced for what it is and you kinda get why it’s built the way it is once you use it. That being said, if you’re a VR fitness fanatic, it might feel like a mini workout for your neck.
Audio? With the DMAS speakers, your ears are in for a treat. It sounds great for my ears, even though I have not tried the Index. The fact that I get great audio quality and don’t have to wear something that isolates me from my surroundings and makes my ears sweat is a big plus.
Battery? Got the stated 6 hours per battery roughly. Yes it’s inconvenient that you still have to use a battery even in PCVR mode, but with the included usb hub it seemed fine and I rarely had to swap while using. As stated by others, the buttons to release the battery are terrible.
Hardware vs. Software? Ah, the age-old tango. Pimax really flexes on the hardware front, but the software dance can sometimes get a bit…clunky. I did not have any major issues like the ones stated months ago by people who got it early, but yes from time to time you might need to disconnect and reconnect the cable. I had no issues running it in parallel with a 1440p monitor + a 1440p ultrawide.
Let me know if you have any questions or if there’s anything else you’d like to know.
Here’s a link to my full review on my YouTube channel(not a sellout, pinky promise😁):
Cheers,
Andy
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My Full Review of the Pimax Crystal after A LOT of Testing 
Posted By ABCandZ on r/pimac
Source r/pimax
1 Like
Wider FoV Lenses (Prototype)
By Chisa on pimax Discord.
I got to try the wide fov lenses on the crystal.
**TLDR: its like the normal lenses, but an extra ~10 degree horizontal with some mild (2/10) distortion in the extra fov region. Cant imagine anyone would want to use the normal lenses with these as an option. **
The distortion profile looked good for the central ~100 degrees or so. The last ~10 degrees has a small amount of compression in the horizontal direction about 2/10 severity. It wasn’t immediately noticable and it was only taking the hmd on and off would it be observable. As a comparison, the Aero has both horizontal and vertical compression in this region about 6/10, the 8kx 8/10, XR elite 5/10, index 1/10, and vive pro 1 0/10. There weren’t any immediately noticable artifacts in the lenses and the “perceived” fov felt notably larger than index and more appropriate for a hmd of this scale. The overlap for me measured at 70deg; about the same that i achieve with the vive pro 2, and more than i get on the aero. It did not feel insufficient to me, but i am relatively tolerant to an overlap of this range. Pimax staff noted that the overlap may still change on the ultimate final version, and that the “ipd
setting” in the HMD is offset for these lenses as they are prototypes. Although this was far away from my IPD, it seemed to be correct for the lenses, as the sweet spot was dialed in correctly.
Raw data from WIMFOV below; i didn’t click upload so you’ll need to visualize it yourself. The numbers you care about are: 114 horizontal, 89 vertical, 69 overlap. I tested with the face gasket removed as i do not have a pimax shaped face to give it the best change.
{“values”:“43,57,46,34,57,54,35,42,49,59,55,52,41,32,38,43|42,35,47,57,44,46,58,58,44,39,37,47,52,59,59,48”,“model”:“Pimax Crystal”,“family”:“OpenVR”,“ipd”:6944,“zoom”:1000}
Source pimax Discord
2 Likes
Wider FoV Lenses Current Prototype impressions
Sebastian(MRTV) 
-1
WmZ4I?si=UjxMfw1TeWQ4QRRB
VRFlightsimguy -1
Tallymouse +1
Omniwhatever Mixed
- Similar to a better Vp2. Stereo Overlap reduced.
- If pimax gets ET working should be good. Otherwise stick with original lenses.
- Still not final projected retail said to be approx $130 us.
Bought the Pimax Crystal and nothing horrible happened… yet. It’s a tinkerers toy, though.
Posted By: flcknzwrg on r/pimax
This sub is full of various horror stories, and I appreciate to be able to read all of them. Alas, I’d like to add one that is not a horror story, just to balance it out a little bit.
Review
I ordered the Crystal and some accessories a couple of weeks back. From their store, as Amazon is not an option in my country (Norway), and there aren’t any other local resellers either. I fully knew that I was taking a risk, considering everything that I had read beforehand. But contrary to my fears, the packages were sent quickly and arrived without any problems or delays. Customs and VAT were taken care of, I had no surprise fees to pay at the border. An almost flawless experience, except for one little thing: the shipment wasn’t associated to my (new) Pimax account, so I couldn’t see my order status on their web page. Support rectified that within one day.
When installing the headset, I made a conscious effort to get going with only the boxed parts (i.e. the powered USB hub and the 4.5m three-pronged cable). Installation went through without issues - except for that indecipherable info popup that greets you when starting the Pimax installer. A sign of things to come? Nah, not really.
Setup went okay as well. There were a few issues and glitches, but not nearly as bad as when I set up my HP Reverb G2 back in the day (I was a super early adopter). I admit that things do seem a little bit… janky, for the lack of a better word, but they do work okay.
Battery life seems to be about infinite with the 4.5 meter dual-USB cable and the powered USB hub they sent (it does seem to pack quite a punch in terms of power delivery?). I haven’t tested with the longer 6m cable and the QC3.0-charger-to-sideport trick yet, but am hopeful that that will work. If it doesn’t, I can make do with the 4.5m cable as well - not ideal, but not a showstopper.
I will say though that this headset and the software and all the stuff you need around it (OpenXR toolkit, PimaxXR etc.)… this is solidly in tinkerer territory. This is not plug and play and forget. If you don’t know your way around a PC very well, you will probably get frustrated. The experience is not streamlined and solid enough for non-technical users, I am quite sure. But it’s in acceptable territory for me, for the time being at least.
So… maybe I was lucky to receive a unit that has worked for its first week of use now. I have yet to run an endurance race on iRacing (which I spend 90% of my play time with), but I’m optimistic that will work out - thus far it has run solidly without any crashes or (inside-out) head tracking glitches.
Which isn’t to say that there are no niggles - there are!
One week in and I’m already very annoyed by that audio latency and occasional crackle bug - I’ll have to make do with other headphones while I wait for that long overdue firmware update I guess. This has apparently been an issue for many months, perhaps since launch - not good. Then, eye tracking did suddenly stop working during an iRacing practice session two days ago - I went to fixed foveated rendering instead because I can’t have that during a competitive online race.
Then there is the comfort factor… this sure is a step below what I had with the Reverb G2. I knew that much before buying, obviously, so this didn’t come as a surprise. In its stock configuration with the “comfort” face cover (the one with the large forehead bit) I can do about 90 minutes before I get uncomfortable (forehead starts hurting). I can push longer, but it’s not pleasant. I hope that the apache headstrap, which is on its way from New Zealand, will help sufficiently with that.
Summing up: thus far I’m reasonably happy. When the audio latency bug gets fixed I’ll be a happy enough camper. When the apache headstrap arrives soon, I will hopefully be able to run 2+ hour sessions without getting uncomfortable. My ultimate longevity requirement is about 5 hours, for those Nürburgring Endurance races on iRacing.
And finally… yeah, those visuals, they are amazing. A huge step up from my Reverb G2. Not quite the quantum leap that I experienced when going from the Oculus Rift CV1 to the Reverb G2, but a big leap nonetheless. Horizontal FOV could be better for sim racing, but I can confirm with hmdtest that it’s a bit more than the Reverb G2 with mods maxing out its FOV, so it’s at least a small upgrade.
Would I recommend it though? Yes, but only if the money doesn’t mean much to you, if you own a headset like the Reverb G2 already. It’s a big step up, but a very expensive one.
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Pimax Crystal | 6 months of ownership… an opinion
Posted By: Tallymouse 
on r/pimax
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42ppd & 35ppd Lenses with Virtual Desktop /\ Pimax Crystal
Posted By: i/liebesmaennchen on r/pimax
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Pimax Crystal Second Impressions
Posted By: Headset historian on r/pimax
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Pimax Crystal - Things that are preventing me from liking it
Posted By: Warfare on r/pimax
Probably the wrong place for this, but just tried the Crystal at a friends house. The clarity beats my Valve Index, but the headstrap, and battery pack make for the most uncomfortable experience for something like flight sims. So much so that I would never buy the Crystal without looking for comfort modifications, or just a new strap. I mean, it is terrible.
Funny thing is, I am talking about comfort and usability, not even going to talk about the audio.
The battery pack makes the headset fall off when dogfighting and looking up, the battery will hit the chair or even your own neck. knocking the headset off center. The headset has no cushioning, I might as well rub sand paper on my face for how stiff the cushions are on the crystal. Also, it has too much wobble side to side even when tight.
Would be neat to see HMDs of every company put universal connectors for headstraps.
Would be nice to have a battery-less system, just have powered by cable unit version. Also, would be nice to see a menu button/steamVR button on the headset for quick access to settings or things like re-centering.
Great quality screens, but it feels like they gave up on the rest of it… I wouldn’t mind the extra $ if it had the comfort along with the quality/clarity.
f-bounce: Source r/pimax
3 months in w/ Crystal and I had failed to justify this expensive purchase
Posted By: KZ_D on r/pimax
TD;DR: Headset is alright but many deal breaking pain points made it fail to justify the high price tag. Overambitious product that delivers on its biggest feature but overlooks many others. Big waste of expensive hardware components (XR2 chip) and a really bad ecosystem.
Review
Thought pimax was years past their kickstarter days but this just feels like yet another kickstarter so I find it kind of hard to compare it with other completed products on the market…
Pros:
- Great Visual
- Surreal clarity (you do need the best GPU to drive it as choppy gameplay still breaks immersion big time) and a big enough FOV (coming from Reverb G2, this is pretty great). At this point there are no point reiterating this. However, the clarity comes with a huge asterisk, that being the constant lens fog (see fit & comfort)
- Edit: this headset also made me realized how truly important frame rate is for VR. I have a 6800xt and it has had a hard time driving hl alyx boneworks and h3vr (40-70 fps at 100% res). I found that the experience and immersion is paradoxically better with lighter games like hl2 vr mod and compound VR (both heavily recommended) that maxes out the refresh rate, so I actually had a bigger blast playing these relatively lower fidelity games in the crystal, the texture and polygon count isnt triple-A grade but the game being rendered with great clarity and smoothness is beyond immersion (about as good as the headset itself could bring (still room of improvement for FOV), locomotion is still the #1 immersion breaker in VR).
- Good Inside-Out Tracking
- Surprisingly Pimax was able to pull this off, didnt use any quest so cant compare with that but comparing with WMR controllers this is the difference between unusable and decently good. Only reason why I still prefer index controller is the finger tracking and ergonomics. Headset tracking is very solid. Overall just a surprisingly robust tracking system.
- Good audio (DMAS)
- My headset came with the DMAS headphones. Did not experience huge audio latency so for me personally this is a “pro” but the aforementioned issue is a well known problem among the community and many people has experienced it.
- Thats pretty much it, other features like eye tracking works as advertised, Im on AMD card so variable rate shading dynamic foveated rendering does NOT work, only tested foveated rendering with quadviews and the optimization is pretty good.
Cons:
- Nightmare fit & comfort
- Breaking this into several points. People need to stop justifying complete product design failure in terms of ergonomics with “this product is for the tinkerers”
- Face Gasket
- What a PAIN. Not only does the crystal not feature eye-relief slider like that on the index or the gasket insert design like reverb G2, they had to push the lens as close to the eyes as possible (probably to half ass their straight up fake FOV claim they’ve made when they were launching this thing). This made crystal basically unusable for glasses wearers, for both glasses and lens inserts, because that the space inside the gasket is so small, the lens gets pushed so close to your face to the point that it fogs up REALLY BADLY and CONSTANTLY. Hardly usable with this persistent issue.
- Had to 3d print a face cushion which improved it slightly, but the length I have to go to find a slightly good workaround for this is INSANE.
- Big Head Fit
- Pimax stated that the headstrap should go down to the lower part of your rear head, but I just cant do it. The cable which connects the battery pack to the main chassis is too short. Absolutely baffling to me that they made auto IPD adjustment for people ranging over 20mm of IPD but make a headset that doesnt fit properly on bigger heads, what were pimax thinking…
- Weight & Size
- Chonker, 1kg and toaster sized, not as bad as I’ve expected when I first tested the headset knowing its 1kg though. And the weight would have been ok if pimax didnt fail so bad on the previous few points.
- Quality Control
- Green stuck pixel right at the middle of the left screen, really bright for dark scenes and massive immersion breaker. Appeared just 1 week in. Tried playing with it for a while but it did not disappear.
- Contacted support and they offered a repair but said that if they think that the damage is caused by the user they they would charge repair fee.
- It’s my fault however that I still didnt get it in for repair. Decided not to send it back because I was going from China to UK at that moment and really dont want to go through the trouble of sending it across half a globe and back, I would send it in when I go back to China when Christmas as it would be so much more convenient, so I’m not able to comment on their services just yet.
- I know stuck pixels could appear on any headset and has appeared on some oculus products, but I would really expect a better quality control for a premium niche product.
- Ecosystem
- Software
- The AIO mode is still not usable to any meaningful extent, makes the hassle of recharging the batteries every two hours and paying lots for the XR2 system in the headset useless. I’ve thought that AIO might be good for some media consumption with a big virtual screen but the AIO system is so horrendously bad that I dont expect it to use it for that purpose any time soon. The resolution is so low on AIO mode that it pains my eyes. The recent update which added local dimming to AIO actually worsened the already barebone AIO system by introducing really bad flicker and desync between two eyes.
- Dont get why we have to create an account on the pimax app to use our headset, and I have once ran into a bug which triggered the pimax app to display that my headset has been locked, although this appeared as a bug and my headset isnt actually locked but its great to find out that pimax reserves the right to brick your 1600$ headset remotely…
- Accessories
- Pimax has claimed that accessories like the LH faceplate and wireless module that is coming are not compatible and dont have any plan to make them so. Vive wireless and nofio are all lighthouse systems, why?
- They just teased the top strap prototype (similar to that on the varjo aero) as an accessory. Well they better price it very generously as I see this as an attempt of a fix for the comfort issue that is inherent in the base product rather than a feature upgrade (so it would make sense to not be included in the base product). I simply dont get why they would ship a headset without a proper top strap… In this community we were advised to by the apache top strap as if it is the consumers fault that we didnt purchase this as part of the headset rather than a design failure on pimax. I feel like pimax should take responsibility for the comfort issue, it is just so bad.
Overall:
The product is “mid”, not that its unimpressive, but instead the issues with the headset neutralized what is good about this headset. It seems like pimax is trying to put all the features on the market (AIO, MR, Wireless, Eye tracking, etc…) all into this same product, rather than focusing on just making a PCVR headset with great visuals and less issues.
I totally agree with comments made on the company in SadlyItsBradly and Omniwhatever’s review, what a weird company, I have no idea how to do business but I just cant wrap my head around some of the product design & engineering decisions made by Pimax. Well its pimax’s own responsibility to overcome the challenges being a relatively small and niche company in the VR scene and in that regard I’m pretty disappointed by them because of their overambition and critical design issues.
f-bounce: Source r/pimax
Crystal in DCS: blown away
Posted By: zoijar on t/pimax
Review
Since the internet has a tendency to list the negatives and not give any praise: I got a Crystal this week, and it took me 2-3 days of tuning to get it fully and satisfactorily up and running, in particular for DCS… but… I’m absolutely blown away! It’s stunning. This is the DCS I always dreamed of. Every gauge is razor sharp. You know that super tiny hydraulic pressure gauge in the F16? https://hispapanels.com/tienda/1452-thickbox_default/f-16-hydraulic-pressure-gauges.jpg I can read the ‘x’ on there sharply without moving my head closer to it! It’s insane.
And the best of it all? Well, I used to get about 35-40 fps on my Index (where I couldn’t make out a single number on the hydro pressure gauge) and now with quad foveated rendering I can render at 200% at a steady 60 fps with the same hardware. So my frames almost doubled, while keeping the quality settings all pretty close to maxed out (3090 RTX).
So… I don’t say this often, but despite the initial difficulties with the Crystal (I almost send it back… twice!) I’m seriously impressed with this product quality-wise. It’s fast. Super-sharp. High contrast. Imho very comfortable on the head.
Things I do (still) miss: accessories are too expensive, the cable is too short and 250 euros for 1.5 meter longer cable is a bit much. Accessories are out of stock. The pimax GUI needs some work, in particular so it can be used while wearing the headset, so you can immediately compare the difference of the settings. See-through must be enabled, as it’s super-useful to do a quick room scan without taking the headset off. A 72/60hz full-res wireless module would be amazing. The finger tracking sounds awesome but I read it doesn’t work well in DCS… if only it did, that’d be an instant buy.
I’m confident some of these will be fixed. Thanks pimax team! Great product!
f-bounce: Source r/pimax
My experience
Posted By: Oldatheart54 on r/pimax
Sooo I had been waiting to jump on a new headset for a couple of years to replace my Reverb G2. Checked out the Aero but the lack of audio and included tracking annoyed me. So I… cautiously…investigated the Pimax Crystal.
I’m a massive user of MSFS 2020 and this was the primary purpose (i’m now also playing modded Skyrim VR which is the absolute tits)
So what do i think? Would I make the same choice again? Well, speaking now - yes I would. But two weeks ago, I was over it.
I was getting crashes in MSFS and my batteries were not charging. I was so pissed…I was very close to asking for a refund but then I took a deep breath and decided to research and tweak. I worked out my crashes were due to HAGS (I really hope they fix it) and I bought an external hub and charger solution so I don’t need to worry about my batteries and crappy Pimax hub that worked like 20% of the time.
Now I have no issues, beautiful colours and importantly, amazing immersion. It’s shit I had to buy some extra stuff but honestly it was worth it
So my overall feeling is the Pimax is not perfect and has issues that should already be fixed. But if you have the confidence to tweak and spend sometime with the headset (be prepared to get frustrated at times) the ending experience is well worth it, but it’s not for everyone.
They are releasing semi frequent updates to firmware and software which is positive too.
Anyway, hope this helps anyone on the fence.
(What I bought for my infinite battery loop for Aus customers)
f-bounce: Source r/pimax
Pimax Crystal review after 6 months.
Posted By: CSOCSO-FI on r/pimax
Review
It’s been around 6 months since I received my Crystal.Yall might have seen a review or two from me ranting about the hate-love relationship I had with this headset. TLDR: I haven’t had any “major” issues for a while now and as of now I am pretty happy with the headset but it wasn’t always like this. I will also tell you guys about all the mods I have done so If you want, keep reading.
• The first issue I had was comfort. I would say %90 of this issue was fixed by the Apache comfort strap. ( I just call it an “H strap”) I also feel like for better eye comfort I needed a thicker face pad. I did get one and it shrinks the FOV by a few degrees but not bad at all. I did change back to the original one but sometimes after playing for hours, I do feel like pulling the headset away from my head feels better for my eyes. Just by a few millimeters… but for now, I am staying with the original headset.
• I also wanted to use my own audio headset but it’s hard to fit over or under the headset. Yes… I tried to remove the speakers. I wish there was a better way to control volume. It would be awesome If I could control game volume and chat volume separately and maaaaybe if we could have an easy-to-reach and easy-to-find mute button so when I need to talk to my family or sneeze or get a call I could just easily mute. I did end up using the original pimax audio. I bought some cushions for Skullcandy Hesh which fits right over these pimax speakers ( got them from wicked cushions) Just make a slit in the back of the cushion fabric and slide it right over the speakers. Does not make a huge difference tho but I like it.
• Throughout the months a lot of things were patched up / fixed and released. Not all things are completely perfect but they work pretty well. I rarely have any issues with controller tracking. Some people complain about audio latency. Luckily it does not bother me much. I don’t play beat games. We have eye tracking now and whatnot which works for me but I feel like I need to recalibrate it every single time I start the headset ( 10 second process… max 15) Dynamic foveated rendering works but I wish we could manually adjust ring sizes and resolution to achieve even better performance.
• Still have chromatic aberration but I got over it, mostly… Wish it was fixed, obviously!
• Changing the battery was a pain at first but once you realize you gotta unclick 1 side at a time and not both at the same time it was actually super easy. Unfortunately, the hot swap did NOT work for me.
• With the USB hub I always had connection issues. Without usb hub I had zero issues with connecting to the headset. I was told to use the usb hub but it helps with the power and hot swap. I don’t think I got more battery time using the usb hub. Ended up buying a 100w wall charger and cable. Cost me close to $100 and all I had were issues. Charger never wanted to work. ( It had a little screen to show me power consumption.) I was told I bought the wrong ones so I got these:cable
chargerAfter trying these I still had an issue. Then on discord I was told I was not supposed to use the usb 2 cable if I tried to do the “infinite power hack” and now I had to follow a full unplug - replug sequence to initiate the correct “handshake” between the charger and the headset. Finally it all worked and still working. I do have to unconnect the cable when I turn off the headset otherwise it will stuck in a restart loop. Not a biggie. Haven’t seen a low power warning since 
• Oh… I also got this to secure the cable(s) to my desk’s leg since I did not want to use a ceiling-mounted apparatus. Just put 3-4 together. zip tie the bottom one to the leg at the top and the bottom and this thing is suuuuuper flexible and awesome. i can also easily unhook the cables or unscrew the top 2-3 parts leaving the zip tied one as is so it won’t be in the way.I mostly play seated to be honest. This is PERFECT for sim racing and seated playing. I would say probably better than trying to mess with ceiling mounts.
• Can’t think of anything else right now. I really enjoyed the headset in the past months without any issues, really. If I bought the headset today I would probably have an easier time telling everyone to get one right away. If I had a friend who bought one I am sure he would have a lot easier time and more fun if I was there to help out, explain stuff and teach the tricks. I really hope anyone who buys these nowadays doesn’t have such frustrating times as some of us had after the release.
• I need a freaking 4090… or 5090. lmao. 4090 is still suuuuuper super expensive. I have a hard time getting 90fps in Asetto even at 0.75 render resolution using dynamic foveated rendering. It looks super choppy when fps falls down to 50-60. When I play on racetracks (without traffic) I can set it to render resolution x1 and game looks sooooooo good. ( btw I have a 3080ti)
Thanks for reading, Peace.
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