Pimax Crystal Light VR Headset

design
The Pimax Crystal Light is an awkward hybrid of new and old. While officially a new headset and a totally freestanding member of the Pimax range, at first glance it’s apparent there’s plenty of recycled parts across the design of this VR headset. Almost all of the main front housing has carried over from the original Crystal, and unfortunately that isn’t a positive thing. When I think VR headsets I think smooth, sleek, flowing – Pimax has gone the opposite with the Crystal Light. Somehow the design is almost entirely hard corners, it defies some level of logic and it ends up feeling harsh and industrial, more like a utility tool plucked straight from a factory rather than something for your home.

Admittedly looks are just about the least important part of a VR headset so I’ll move past the unusual physical appearance, but what I can’t move past is the Pimax Crystal Light’s physical size. This is a giant VR headset, much too big really and it becomes a genuine issue. The Crystal Light completely dwarfs my Meta Quest 3 when placed side by side and while the extra thickness isn’t the end of the world, the added width is a problem. The main body of the Crystal Light extends well beyond the width of my face and ends up feeling really clumsy as a result. It wasn’t as big of a deal when sim racing but I’m simply not used to carrying an extra couple of cm off each side of my face in more active titles I found myself consistently knocking the edge of the headset with the controllers.

Pimax has stripped back a load of the extra internal bells and whistles from the original Crystal, most notably the battery pack and automatic IPD, and in doing so it’s managed to drop the weight of the Crystal Light down to just over 800g. It’s certainly still not the lightest headset going around but it doesn’t feel noticeably heavier to wear than the Meta Quest 3 and it’s not so heavy as to become uncomfortable in longer sessions. The problem is how that weight is distributed though because the Pimax Crystal Light is incredibly front heavy, even with the cable pulling my head backwards it was noticeably unbalanced and distracting during gameplay.
I’ve used my fair share of VR headstraps from different brands and Pimax was close to getting it right on the Crystal Light, close – but not quite. The stock offering hre is styled more like what other brands consider an elite strap with rigid side arms that wrap around to a rear pad and tightening knob. The result is reasonably comfortable and offers a good amount of adjustment, however the shape of the rear pad could be improved. Rather than grabbing underneat the back of your head, the triangular pad simply clamps against it and does little to offset the front-heavy nature of the headset itself as a result. I can’t help but feel a ring like you see on the KIWI design K4 Boost Head Strap would have been a better choice for overall stability and also gone a long way towards solving the balance issue.

While not carrying quite as premium a price tag as others in its own range, for a $899/£729 VR headset the build quality of the Pimax Crystal Light isn’t up to par for me. There’s just simply no luxury vibe and nothing feels or looks expensive. Everything has a hollow feel thanks to the hard plastic shell that I also found prone to creaking and groaning as you hold it. The controllers also suffer the same fate, made of harsh, glossy plastic they lack any kind of grip texturing and are sweaty and uncomfortable to hold, almost feeling like pretend toy VR controllers. Placing them side by side with the Meta Quest 3 controllers I found a stark contrast in both look and feel.
It’s little things that can ruin the vibe when it comes to build quality and the Pimax Crystal Light’s pads are a good example. Both are bare foam without any kind of fabric covering or a more hygienic silicon cover. Not only is the foam tiself a little rough on your face it’s also an absolute sweat sponge, not nice. The pads are also simply stuck on with velcro which feels like a bodged DIY custom job rather than the official installation method.
performance
Much like wired controllers, wired VR headsets have their purpose for the right user but are somewhat of a dying breed and after using the Pimax Crystal Light for a few days I can see why. Admittedly, things started out well. I battled with the original Pimax Crystal for days to try and get a reliable connection, a strange phenomenon for a wired device, but thankfully the bizarre and convoluted USB hub system is gone from the Crystal Light. Credit where it’s due, Pimax has done a good job of refining the connection process here and it’s now down to a single three-pronged cable. Setup is as simple as plugging all three in. You’ll need a USB 3.0 port, a DisplayPort and, as the headset has no battery, mains power via an included wall adapter.

The Pimax app is a little rough around the edges, it’s not the most intuitive thing and certainly not the prettiest but it was quick to recognise the Crystal Light as soon as it was connected. The app throws a lot at you with sliders, dropdowns and checkboxes deluxe, but doesn’t offer much in the way of hand-holding and I’d have appreciated a more guided initial setup. I’ve used my fair share of VR headsets but don’t go too technical on what makes them tick and found things a tad overwhelming. One thing was clear though, the Pimax Crystal Light isn’t designed for non-technical, casual VR players, this is an advanced headset for an enthusiast crowd – and that’s a risky move.
If you’re a casual VR player wondering if the Pimax Crystal Light is a better choice than the Meta Quest 3 – it isn’t. For general gameplay I simply cannot recommend it as an option, it’s just not the right choice for pickup-and-play VR gaming. Trying to play VR staples like Walkabout Minigolf and Beat Saber with the Pimax Crystal Light was a frustrating experience from start to finish and if you can’t get the basics right, well, that’s a problem. Neither title is demanding and yet a couple of hours trying to play both was filled with disconnections, poor performance and immersion breaking stumbles. Now admittedly my PC is a pretty standard mid-range machine, it’s no powerhouse but with a 12th-gen i7 and an RTX 3070 it can generally run close to max settings on most titles in 1440p. More importantly, I’ve happily played hours and hours of both over a wireless connection to a Meta Quest 3 and even the Quest 2 before that.

While I’ll concede this might be a VR headset that demands a beefier setup than mine, even at a basic level before diving in game I found the Pimax Crystal Light to be flawed. The cable is thick, heavy and not particularly flexible, and it meant no matter how I tried to position it I always felt like it was trying to pull my head backwards. Standing over a make or break putt, that was a distraction I could have done without. The cable is also a fixed length of only 5m, which sounds like a lot at first but suddenly feels surprisingly short and limiting for games like Walkabout Minigolf where I’d prefer to, you know, walk about a bit.
Swapping my clubs for sabers and moving to a fixed-point game like Beat Saber meant the cable limitation was less of a problem, but instead it highlighted a fresh issue I found with the Pimax Crystal Light – controller tracking. It’s just not reliable enough to the point it largely ruined my experience. As I flung my arms around in every conceivable direction trying to keep up with the onslaught of red and blue blocks, the Pimax Crystal Light’s inside-out tracked controllers simply couldn’t keep up. They would often jitter or in some cases briefly lose their place in the world all together, I could accept the odd blip but this was happening multiple times per song. These kind of high movement games also served as a reminder that Pimax opted to retain the large plastic tracking rings around the top of each controller. I lost count how many times I recoiled as I heard and felt them smack into the edges of that massive front housing.

The thing is though, while I would never choose this as my go-to VR headset – I can see the potential in the Pimax Crystal Light and I can understand the appeal. The visual quality is stunning, the 2880×2880 per eye QLEDs are capable of producing beautiful graphics, with clear, detailed and richly colored images. When I managed to get the headset to work it placed me in some lovely scenes. Though it tried to kill my PC in the process, I was very briefly able to have F1 24 let me sit in a car in the garage and look around. The detail was unbelievable, even the smallest text details on a little sticker in the car were sharp and legible, I’d have loved to have actually been able to head out on track.

The Pimax Crystal Light’s unbelievably crisp, deeply black yet highly saturated displays are proof of what’s possible moving forward, and, if you have the right setup to power it, what’s possible right now. I’ll concede I’m not using the Crystal Light ‘properly’ in my testing. This is an enthusiast VR headset for high-end setups and I’m testing it as a normie. I can see how in precisely tuned and more importantly, static simulation setups that this headset would provide a lot of joy to the right player. Situations where the headset needs to act as a window into the virtual world are where the Crystal Light wants to be. Pimax was named as Microsoft’s ‘Official Peripheral Partner’ for MSFS2024 and it’s a partnership that makes perfect sense, I can imagine the joy clearly reading every dial in the cockpit must bring, if you can get things off the ground.
summed up
The Pimax Crystal Light is probably not the right VR headset for you, and I say that without knowing anything about you. I can be so confident in this because the Pimax Crystal Light is not the right VR headset for an overwhelming majority of gamers. I’m pleased to see Pimax trying to innovate though, that’s always unlikely to work first time and competition is a great thing for the future of VR. The more brands in the game, the more they’ll push each other forward.
The Crystal Light is a good tech demo for Pimax’s displays, a showpiece for what’s possible with VR graphics and perhaps a nod to what’s to come in the next year or two but it’s not the finished article right now. While it features the best displays of any VR headset I’ve tested, they live in a body that doesn’t reflect its steep $899/£729 price point and it requires sizable further investment to function. Keep doing your thing Pimax, but right now I’ll watch your progress from afar.